Huffington Post Publishes Photo of Woman Arrested for Misdemeanor

CYBERSPACE—I’m a member of the adult press, which marks me as several notches below the mainstream media class, but sometimes I feel like a saint in comparison. Case in point, this shitty little story first published by the Chicago Sun-Times about a woman arrested by police in Naperville, Ill., for being in a van in the parking lot of a motel, topless, with sex toys and a loaded gun.

The woman had apparently retreated to the van—while her three kids were in a room at the Red Roof Inn—to “pleasure herself,” presumably with the sex toys. The woman, who is from Texas, said she was unaware that it is illegal to have a loaded gun in Illinois, but the cops still charged her with “a misdemeanor count of unlawful use of a weapon for not having a valid FOID card.” The kids were old enough to be left alone.

Whoop-de-doo, right?

Only then the hyperbolic Huffington Post gets a hold of the story, and guess what they do? Unlike the Sun-Times, they post the booking photo of the woman. Let me repeat that. They post the booking photo of the woman. And precisely what did this poor woman do to justify further embarrassment before the entire Huffington Post readership? Let me answer that. Nothing. She wanted to masturbate.

Here’s what I hope. I hope someone like Larry Flynt has his investigative SWAT team scour the globe for the images that have to exist somewhere of Mrs. Huffington Post going down on a goat, and publishes them in the pages of Hustler magazine and then online on every peer-to-peer and social network on the planet.

Why would I suggest such a horrible thing about a person I actually admire? Because enough is enough. Because these—what are they called now—progressive creeplings who find themselves in the often powerful position of editor too often go out of their way to humiliate people for no apparent reason. They exercise editorial discretion elsewhere; why not with the mom caught with her top off? Personally, I think it's a form of unjustifiable cruelty.

Call it Media Torture Porn, an infinitely more disgraceful form of the real thing, which, believe it or not, is as a rule consensual. I am a liberal—not a progressive!—but these people make me ashamed to be in the same political universe. More like a black hole.

You know what? Scratch letting the SWAT hounds off their leashes. I wouldn't want to see that happen to anyone.