Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Virginia has convicted a man for looking at cartoons supposedly showing under-age characters having sex. He faces 15 years in prison.

Goodness. Does this mean fans of Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, or Sylvester and Tweety will be brought up on charges of cruelty to animals?

Of course, not so long ago (and perhaps not so long from now...) Virginia would have banned any images depicting a black man touching a white woman. People should not be allowed to think dangerous thoughts. Obviously.

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Shame on Dog Poop Girl!

Dawn has read that in Korea, citizens use cell phone cameras to capture scofflaws in the act of scofflawry, and then zap the image into cyberland; the oft-noted Oriental shame-fixation is then counted upon to make sure the offense is not repeated. Most recently, Koreans have targeted "dog poop girl," a luckless lass whose failure to clean up after her Shihzhu's subway mishap was caught on chip. Her image became the most Googled item in the country, and the school she supposedly attended was so swamped with condemnatory email its server plotzed (though DPG actually attended a different school...).

As revolting as "netizen" (a play on the word citizen) shame-based reportage is, Dawn cannot help but wonder if it might be wise to allow social stigma to punish social transgressions often handled (brutally) by the police in our culture. So many sex crimes, for example, are­ at their worst­ violations of etiquette: hogging a stall in a busy t-room, littering parks with used condoms, soliciting johns indiscreetly, and so forth. Perhaps Dawn would trade a few laws for a little more social shame....