So famous dieter and Subway spokesman Jared Fogle has admitted to paying minors for sex (which is, as I understand it, statutory rape) and having child pornography, and will spend between five and thirteen years in prison, as well as paying restitution of $100,000 each to 14 identified victims.
This is the New York Post’s headline: “Enjoy A Foot Long In Jail.”
WTF, New York Post? What the fucking fuck?
Rape jokes about prisoners (and usually about male prisoners) are commonplace and disgusting. And it’s notable that they often don’t just joke about rape, but implicitly endorse rape. This headline isn’t merely joking about rape happening, it’s eagerly hoping for rape to happen. It’s approving of rape as a form of punishment.
(It’s also unoriginal and trite – it’s a joke that thousands of Twitter users and schoolyard wits made before the Post did – but the triteness doesn’t bother me.)
What Fogle did was evil and inexcusable. But if he is raped in prison, that would also be evil and inexcusable. It’s not complicated.
Here’s a handful of related links:
- Obama: We Need to Stop Making Jokes About Prison Rape | Mediaite
- Rape Should Not Part of the Penalty for Prisoners | Advocate.com
- Top 10 Alternatives to Today’s NY Post Headline
- New York Post cover blasted over tasteless Jared Fogle ‘joke’ – Digiday
- We Asked Prison Inmates How Jared Fogle Will Get Treated Behind Bars | VICE | United States
- Stop the Jared Fogle “footlong” jokes: Why do we still find prison rape acceptable, let alone funny? – Salon.com
- The New York Post’s Subway Jared rape joke is awful—but not just for the reason you think
Wait wait wait… you’re telling me that The New York Post had a headline that was in bad taste?
But… the Post is normally so careful to avoid controversy and present a careful, reflective and caring view of the news, I just… I just can’t imagine them doing something in bad taste!
So… you understand that the whole point of that headline is to get exactly this response, right? The entire reason they wrote it is so that somebody working at Salon would write an article tut-tutting them.
Yeah it’s gross. Of course it’s gross. Of course it’s not funny. It’s not trying to be funny, it’s trying to shock people, and specifically it’s trying to shock the kind of people who write for Salon into writing introspective articles about how unacceptably shocking that terribly shocking New York Post is.
They’re trolling you for publicity, not making a bad joke out of ignorance or malice.
Christopher – if you’re right – and I think you are to a point, though I don’t think that’s the whole story here – then the post wrote a prison rape pun for the express purpose of getting publicity. How is that not “making a bad joke out of malice”?
I do see a reason for optimism, though–I think we’re approaching a critical mass of people who don’t accept these types of jokes and are willing to criticize them. John Oliver and President Obama probably helped at least a bit.
Easy to condemn prison rape. Now let’s see someone DO something about it. And for that matter, let’s see them do something about the control that gangs exert in prisons.