To want to jail this man sends us on a slippery slop of eroding away our First Amendment rights of free speech, and here is why:
First off, we have to establish that none of the 1st grade children shown in the video weren't harmed in the making of this video, and I'll go even further to show that they weren't harmed by its release. SO we have this guys in a classroom full of kids. What does he do? He actually entertains them with 2 innocent children's songs. So the actual physical interaction between this guy and these kids was a positive thing. So he got his video and took some time to edit it and do his thing. Now I don't know if you guys know many 1st graders, but they have pretty short attention spans. They're going to be pretty hard pressed to remember to look this guys video up (which they wouldn't know to do anyways, because he told the school that his video was to help get accepted into a big 10 college, no one knew that it was going to be on youtube). Further more, most first graders don't know enough about language and the internet to effectively look up this video, which they wouldn't know about anyways. First graders should also not have unfettered internet access so even if they could look it u a webblocking program or a responsible parent shouldn't allow them. So no children were harmed in the making of the video, and also there is no way for the kids to view the video outside of an adult showing it to them. In that case it would be that adult acting as a pervert, exposing the kids to rank material rather than the prankster. Now since the video is removed, there is no chance of them encountering it in the future either. Their character is in tact as well through all of this. Thanks to the widespread media coverage of this, which I'm sure is exponentiated in its locality, everyone who would encounter the kids know that they are not little sick perverted twerps that they appeared to be in the movie. Rather everyone would know that they are indeed innocent and good kids and they will be treated accordingly.
So I think that I've established pretty well that the kids have not been damaged by this prank.
Now I could maybe get behind prosecuting this guy if he put out a youtube video actually praising pedophilia, like yelling fire in a crowded building is a crime, but thats not what he did. While his lyrics were gross and not appropriate for children, they were not condoning actual pedophiliac acts.
So now we are left with this: the man didn't actually hurt anyone, the man didn't condone any illegal behavior, the man made an extremely tasteless joke which made many of us uncomfortable.
So some of you guys want to jail him for making people uncomfortable with crude subject matter?? Jail for presenting the wrong words to something? Free speech can be a rough road, as you have to hear alot of dumb stuff in it's process, but it is the way in which mankind can flourish and reach his best potential, by not hindering its populace in expressing their thoughts, even if most of those thoughts may suck.
When you start going down the road of suppressing speech which is uncomfortable to you, then you make that a precedent in our society. Soon enough you are at a dangerous spot where a black person speaking his mind about whats wrong with society regarding race may make some people uncomfortable, so why not jail him. Or that woman who thinks she should get paid the same as her male coworkers, causing too much of a fuss, making to many men uncomfortable, lock her up.
OOOOr you get that guys talkin about how weed should be legal, what a confused doper, tryin to tell my kids that weed is ok, just like alcohol. Lock him up and throw away the KEY!!!
Come on MPers, more than most you guys should have an even keel about being locked up and the right to free speech.
Freedom isn't easy, it take a lot of work and patience to cultivate, but if we shout "throw the book at him" every time someone does something we don't like, you can guarantee we are asking to have that freedom ripped away. Why? Because someone someone is sure to have their issues with us, and without practicing tolerance, we are giving those people the right to lock US up when it comes their turn to object to someone.
I'm not saying live in anarchy, but rather lets be careful with our actions and respect the freedom we deserve as well as the freedom others deserve. This includes the freedom to live life and make mistakes, it's how we learn and grow. Certainly there are cases which people need to be locked up in order to protect people from harm, but we should be very diligent in making sure that we are only locking up physically dangerous people, because to extend confinement much beyond that puts us all at risk. If someone needs a lesson in common decency, we should help cultivate that in the person, rather than say, you screwed up, not gonna work with you, maybe you'll learn something be bein locked up for twenty years, but prolly just become a hardened killer from life in the jail system.
Come on, we all grow pot, it's FEDERALLY ILLEGAL. You guys really wanna start throwing stone from the glass house you live in???
Edit:
By all means I'm not trying to defend this guys actions, what I am trying to defend, however, is our constitutional rights. I see far too many Americans acting in a way which will certainly negate them and this thread reminded me of that, which i guess is why i got riled up and wrote this