Head In The Sand

You know, I just don’t know what’s what anymore. To be truthful, I have always been sort of clueless. I think I know what is going on, but when push comes to shove, it turns out I wouldn’t know my asshole from a hole in the ground.

The incident that has started me thinking abut this is the recent Tom Flanagan comment about child porn. I talked about it last night and if I had any doubt about the hole in the ground and an asshole, I just have to look to Tom to see what an asshole is. I thought that I knew what child porn was, and for me it is pretty basic, an adult has his or her way (sexually) with an under aged person. Like everything on the planet, there are many shades to this issue.

I was watching my grandson Hurricane swimming a couple of years ago, and taking pictures when the security guy came up to me and told me that cameras aren’t allowed. I explained that I was the grandpa of one of the kids, and he told me that it didn’t matter. Of course I put the camera away, but I just don’t really know how taking photos from 30 meters away constitutes child porn. I suppose that someone with deviant tastes could take pictures of kids and look at them in his home. Taken to the extreme, I suppose that a person could follow and target a kid using a camera. I guess that I just don’t live in a world where that happens.

I know it does happen, but in my mind it couldn’t happen very often. That’s me putting my head in the sand by the way. Yes, it is sick. I thought about how some men (not me of course) will look at pictures of naked women and even movies of naked women and men having sex. This is condoned by our society more or less and I don’t think most people feel that it encourages the average guy to go out and kidnap and rape a woman. This might be me with my head in the sand again.

This is starting to sound like I don’t think this practice is wrong. I do think it is wrong, certainly about kids and even to some degree about women. I have never personally seen a stripper other than on TV (the Sopranos) and will more than likely go to my grave in this state of grace. I don’t think it is evil, I just don’t see the point of it. I would sit there wondering what turns a life would have to take for a young woman to strip for a living, and if they are cold up on the stage with no clothes on. Mind you, I would prefer to see a young woman stripping than calling me at suppertime to see if I were interested in having my ducts cleaned.

I was raised middle class. I became middle class and I remain middle class. Not just middle class, but suburban, North American middle class where we are insulated from the ugly parts and things in the world. Somehow, if something bad happens, it must be the fault of the person it happened to. I guess the middle class (me) is getting a lesson on how life really is in the world after all of this time.

I am truly saddened that some people can’t tell what is right and what is wrong. This just goes to prove what I have always believed; there are far too many people in the world.