Here’s a joke from my old blog:

Q: How do you separate the grown-ups from the children at the Huffington Post?

A: With a crowbar.

This was in response not only to the linked material, but to the centrifugal talking points that accompanied the almost-extradition of Roman Polanski from Switzerland a few years ago. You remember, “it wasn’t rape-rape” and “what was that little girl doing there anyway?” and all of that. At the time, I turned it all into an essay entitled “With the Rich and Mighty, or is Roman Polanski as smart as Michael Vick?” (available as part of my Typing into the Void collection, which I mention instead of rattling any kind of tip jar. It’s only $2.99 on Kindle!) It seemed to me then, and seemed to me now, that proggies are entirely willing to give legal passes to members of Designated Victim Groups and/or Significantly Important Artistes. Polanski was both.

Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old charged with statutory rape on a 14-year-old girl, only meets the first requirement. But that’s good enough for the sterling intellectuals at Daily Kos, who are busily pretending that Florida law, which has set its age of consent at 16 or 18 years old, depending on closeness of age, somehow has a “unless it’s for hot lesbo action” corollary. Other McCain has the goods.

I seem to recall an Ally McBeal storyline along the same lines: defending a woman in her 30’s charged with seducing a 16-year-old boy because she was full of so many feels and just had to Bridge her Madison County, IYKWIMAITYD. It’s okay if you’re a woman, or gay, or a gay woman. Heterosexual males, on the other hand…

(Sidebar: How stale are my pop culture references? I mean, Ally McBeal, Bridges of Madison County, and then I toss in a quote from Wargames. These jokes are all old enough vote. I need to hang out at Buzzfeed some more.)