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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   38910 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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#2 Is straight up witch-hunt logic. Defending yourself by saying the sculpture David is non-pornographic does not suggest you were on other occasions showing kids pornography.

Imagine a teacher in a cooking class giving the students baggies of sugar powder to decorate their muffins and telling them, "It's not what it looks like, it's not cocaine, don't tell your parents". I understand the need to build rapport with the kids, but you don't do it by making drug jokes.

EDIT: I think the joke works much, much better if you don't pull it in different directions. Don't say "nonpornographic/not cocaine" and "don't tell your parents". Lean into the joke. Say that what counted as porn back during the Renaissance. Of course, this only works when your audience is old enough to know what porn looks like.

Sure, but should we suspect from such a joke that the teacher had on other occasions given the children cocaine? That is what the point I was rebutting suggested.

If someone did exactly that, I would be approximately 100% confident that they were joking and think that a parent that was angry about the joke was deranged.

Imagine a teacher in a cooking class giving the students baggies of sugar powder to decorate their muffins and telling them, "It's not what it looks like, it's not cocaine, don't tell your parents".

I had teachers who made that kind of joke at school. Nobody complained, but then again, we weren't Americans, and our culture (rural conservative Presbyterians/Catholics) might be more relaxed about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll...

The likelihood of a 11-year-old not getting the joke and going, "mom, what's cocaine? Miss Rafa told us what she gave us wasn't cocaine and said not to tell you" is much higher than that of a 15-year-old doing the same.

Our physics teacher used to smoke with us behind the school and tell us about HBD of penis sizes, but

  • we were in high school

  • he wasn't doing it during the lessons

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