A headline from the LA Times:
Rug store owner showed porn to teenage intern, police say
Wait a minute ... they have interns now in the rug business? Is nothing sacred anymore? I understand that the practice of interning -- i.e., young people from affluent families working for free to get a networking leg up on the competition -- had infested many industries. But, I had assumed, the venerable rug merchant business, which has been a byword for thousands of years of being in it for the money, would not stoop so low.
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19 comments:
What kind of girl interns at a rug store?
Oh, right, the kind who knows she can manipulate the owner into some kind of lucrative tort.
Cha-ching!
Wait - they arrested this guy for showing porn to a 17 year old girl? I'll bet she's seen more porn than he has.
What kind of girl interns at a rug store?
A carpet muncher.
A rug store - you mean a seller of men's wigs?
From the LA Times article:
"The owner of Sirous and Sons Rug Gallery, 222 Ocean Ave. in Laguna Beach, was arrested Thursday for allegedly showing pornographic images to an underage[sic] intern.
The 17-year-old girl told police that Saied B. Maralan, 53, had shown her the images on his computer..."
"Intern", "computer" and "images" are all euphemisms. I'm not sure about "rug" and "gallery".
Maybe the rug in question here is bodily hair and not necessarily on the top of the head.
Maybe Ms. Cator can computerize the rug and turn it into a magic carpet ride.
"Wait - they arrested this guy for showing porn to a 17 year old girl"
He is being held on 1 million dollar bail. This country is a farce. I think most states 16-17 is the legal age of consent but not for porn I guess. You can see naked people in any R rated movie, even some PG-13 movies have some nudity I think.
Looks like someone got taken for a (carpet) ride.
Also, $1 million bail? For showing a teenager what a cleaner age called "dirty pictures"?
I guess he is a flight risk, though.
Technically, 'intern' is not synonymous with 'unpaid intern'. I realize that may change. Anyway, assuming she was unpaid, the *owner* at least has his mind on his money. Convincing someone to do unpaid work for you seems like a winning business proposition (generally... maybe not for welding structural steel but you know what I mean).
Uh, anyway... so what was the crime again? Being creepy?
California labor laws are among the strictest in the country, and offering unpaid internships can cost the employer fines and back pay:
http://laborlaw.typepad.com/labor_and_employment_law_/2007/11/unpaid-internsh.html
For larger companies, this also opens up the possibility of a class action suit. An entire industry has sprung up around these sorts of claims:
http://paymeovertime.com/faqs/index.php?q=18
He is being held on 1 million dollar bail.
Presumably the applicable law permits prosecutors to treat the guy who shows porn to a 17-year-old the same as the guy who shows porn to a 9-year-old.
Not to defend child porn, but the law (and the way it's applied) can border on the insane. There was the case of the guy caught with a video of Traci Lords (an 80s porn star who was later revealed to be underage): sentenced to consecutive terms for each FRAME of the video, for an 81 gazillion year sentence.
I hate the phrase "moral panic", cos it's usually employed by libertine ideologues, but I'd say it's applicable here.
Cennbeorc
Maybe she was looking to the future, when "being in the rug merchant business" would be a resume quirk, as for this guy. (My college roommate's girlfriend's father)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_G._Atiyeh
What kind of girl interns at a rug store?
Happens all the time in Iran.
Intern usually means nothing more than another way of saying "low paid employee", or "trainee". It tends to be used in jobs that attract kids from upper-middle class backgrounds (organic farms, "micro" or "retro" crafts and industries, grant and foundation funded jobs, etc). It just gives a classier ring to their work.
Unable to confirm Cennbeorc's claim of a massive sentence for someone viewing an underage Traci Lords vid. Closest you come with a google search is a 1994 case in which a guy who was selling such material was sentenced to one year.
I hate the phrase "moral panic", cos it's usually employed by libertine ideologues, but I'd say it's applicable here.
IOW, freedom sucks, because it benefits only criminals, perverts, psychopaths, traitors, commies, nazis, anarchists, islamists, terrorists, Harry Potter fans, and the like. No way a law-abiding normal person such as yourself would need anything so subversive!
>IOW, freedom sucks[...] No way a law-abiding normal person such as yourself would need anything so subversive!<
How does opposing overzealous prosecution of anti-porn statutes indicate an anti-freedom bias? Are you getting into a moral panic over the term libertine?
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