'First The Grotesque,' Indeed

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Well, that was fast.

Last last night, I embedded Bill Whittle’s new “First, The Grotesque” video on the Weimarification of pop culture, and added a few quick thoughts of my own. At the conclusion of the video, Bill asked:

It is as in the case of 1930s Germany, a culture whose elites, unlike the solid sensible middle, are bored, jaded, and above all filled with the self-loathing and self-hatred that can be described as nothing less than a death wish. And as the art becomes more and more grotesque it’s not the cause but rather the symptom, of a bomb whose fuse has grown very short, and whose explosion and counterpoint has not been, or is likely to be, something that we’re going to enjoy.

So what comes next? It didn’t long for an answer of sorts: “The Washington Post Adopts Slate’s Outrage-Trolling Business Model: Hey, Maybe Teachers Should Rape Their Underage Students,” Ace notes today:

Twitchy goofed on this yesterday.

The Washington Post announces a new Common Core centered on the 3 R’s: readin’, writin’, and rape.

As protesters decry the leniency of Rambold’s sentence — he will spend 30 days in prison after pleading guilty to raping 14-year-old Cherice Morales, who committed suicide at age 16 — I find myself troubled for the opposite reason. I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized….I do think that teachers who engage in sex with students, no matter how consensual, should be removed from their jobs and barred from teaching unless they prove that they have completed rehabilitation.

Wow, rehabilitation. Throw the book at ’em, huh?

But the utter hysteria with which society responds to these situations…

Just let that sink in.

This wasn’t a spontaneous comment; she chose those words, edited those words, resolved upon those words for her final draft.

…does less to protect children than to assuage society’s need to feel that we are protecting them.

You know what would protect them? Making teachers who have sex with their minor students go to “rehabilitation,” Filner style.

I don’t know what triggered Morales’s suicide…

Her family has some thoughts on the matter. You might want to peruse them.

..but I find it tragic and deeply troubling that this occurred as the case against Rambold wound its way through the criminal justice system. One has to wonder whether the extreme pressure she must have felt from those circumstances played a role.

One might also wonder if the statutory rape of a minor had something to do with it, but only an uptight grumpus would think that.

Read the whole thing.

I assume Jeff Bezos hasn’t officially taken control of the Post yet, and the lawyers are still working out all the details and dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the contracts.

I hope he knows what he’s getting into; and the blowback that it could bring to the relatively politically-neutral Amazon.com. Just sayin’.

Update: “I repeat, this was published in the Washington Post, Wesley J. Smith adds at the Corner. “How low can we go? I am afraid we are going to find out.”

Indeed we will.

More: “In January of this year, Rush Limbaugh warned about ‘a movement to normalize pedophilia,’ and was mocked by Soledad O’Brien,” notes Stacy McCain. “Well, here we are in August, and the Washington Post is publishing columns advocating the legalization of student-teacher sex.”