Sure, you might call this post “perve bait” or “SEO for child molesters”. I call it a serious inquiry into the nature of child pornography. I also call bums foul-smelling, lazy motherfuckers. So, if you’re still with me, then feel free to proceed.

By referring to underage sex acts in heavily wooded areas, I’m not inquiring as to whether the child in question is sitting on the furry face of Smokey the Bear. But if the child were sitting on Smokey’s face, it’s likely that the bear would be shouting something about putting out his fire. (And/or lighting his fire.) Of course, his words would obviously be smothered under the prepubescent flesh of an amateur child pornographer, armed only with her cell phone and a YouTube mobile profile. Damn, if they’re filming the shit that goes down in classrooms, and when there’s a whole YouTube drive-through pranks genre, I’m sure as goddamn hell they’re filming themselves rounding first, second, and third bases. And when they reach home plate, it’s time to hit mommy and daddy up for another hardware upgrade.

(Incidentally, the fact that I crack up when I hear the last line of this video clearly means that I have not and will never grow up. Or that I find this, this, this, this, this, and this funny.)

In an era of fake FBI child porn links, we the porn consumers have a lot to worry about. (I use the royal “we”, of course, meaning you depraved bastards.) Next time you click on the link to busty sex-crazed teens, not only do you have to worry about whether that huge-breasted slut is an FBI agent (wait, that might make a good fantasy…), but you also have to worry about whether she’s 15 years old. And just because she’s got a mouth full of jawbreakers doesn’t mean she’s illegal. I mean legal. Or whatever the joke is supposed to be. But the point is, these poor, innocent, exploited, little teens could be the ones doing the exploiting.

But here’s the key question for legal scholars. If a couple of 16-year-olds film themselves doing the proverbial nasty in, say, Rhode Island, and then release their videographic masterpiece in both Rhode Island and Tennessee, do the porn aficionados in Rhode Island get to whack off sock free? I mean scott free? What about those poor, child-molesting perverts in Tennessee? Must they please themselves only before the sacred image of an 18-year-old? Or are they stuck with FedExing themselves the back half of a pig and playing make-believe without the guilt-free pleasure of going whole hog, only dreaming of the day when they have a 100% FDA certified, honest-to-goodness Yankee hot dog? Our southern friends have enough problems. If it’s a hot dog they want yanked, let them deal with their natural versus artificial pork quandaries. Having to rub pig gums for the detection of the complete eruption of the third rear molar (only to find the sow is only 2.5 years old) is not the way I’d want to spend my time in front of my computer monitor.

We can get more philosophical. Do kids own the right to their own bodies? And I don’t mean in the sense of: can they abort the non-human clump of cells within their abdomens. (The answer to that is: the parent can make any decision he or she wants to make - as long as it doesn’t condemn his or her daughter to 9 months of unwanted slavery. So, “fuck no” is the technical answer to whether you can force your daughter to give birth.) In our context, the question is: can some chick (yes, I’d prefer the image in my mind be that of a chick) - can the chick photograph or videotape herself and make it available for someone to see? And does the age of the viewer matter?

My answer might be anticlimactic. But I think the viewing of photos and videos, per se, is never a crime. It’s the means of capturing those images that’s either moral or not, or a violation of rights or not. (Here’s one reason why it’s advisable for me never to run for president.) But if a 15-year-old films his- or herself naked, it absofuckinglutely should not be a crime whether someone looks at those photos. And (here’s why I get disqualified even from city councilman) if someone else takes the photos, it doesn’t change the situation. Busting people for seeing shit is the authorities’ way of admitting that they’ve fucking lost and can’t figure out who committed the goddamn crime. They know that no one is going to start arguing in favor of their right to view child porn. And they’re right, no one does have the right to the product of the rape or other sexual violation of a young person. But it’s a violation of no one’s rights to open one’s eyes. Whether it’s to view the image of a sex crime in court as a member of the jury, or it’s because you thought that clicking on the teen with huge tits link would take you to a seventeen-year-old instead of a sixteen-year-old, your act of looking didn’t violate anyone’s rights. (Beyond doing the actual filming, it’s any actions that constitute part of the cause of a crime. More on this later.)

All this nonsense has filtered down from the disintegration of the concept of rights, and, therefore, of the understanding of what an actual “crime” is. Viewing child porn, or reading the mass-market paperback diary of some ax-murderer’s exploits, doesn’t constitute a crime. Nor, necessarily, does witnessing the aforementioned acts live, in person. We can get into the morality of someone standing there watching something like this take place and doing nothing. Likely, we’re talking about scumbags. Possibly, but not necessarily, we’re talking about a criminal who helped make the crime happen. But it’s the “need” for someone to blame that feeds the emotional hunger of the enraged masses. And, obviously, if you happen to identify a real connoisseur of child porn, no one’s gonna bitch and moan about their arrest. And no one’s going to, or should, defend the motherfucker. The problem is, what if - dare I say - he’s innocent? Are any of these hasty accusers going to take a step back and reconsider whether the child-molesting pervert might not have actually done anything wrong? Doubtful.

The key word is “done”. What has the accused in fact done? Morally, or perhaps psychologically, we might have a problem with the person who enjoys seeing a crime, whether it be a child molestation or a car accident. But let’s try to remain human, for fuck’s sake, and reign in our emotions before gathering the mob and wielding the torch. The issue is more or less this: Is the individual in question like a restaurant owner paying for someone’s slaves to run his kitchen, or is he a customer who wandered in and got served coffee by some Chinese woman? In other words, did the transaction facilitate the crime?

For all you know, the Chinese woman is just some sixteen-year-old American chick with a fetish for heat and hot water. And that happens to be legal in some states.