SORRY, OLD ARTICLE

[kskiska]

ON EDIT: SORRY, BUT THIS IS DATED Wednesday, March 28, 2001
MODS PLEASE REMOVE

SFGate.com, the Web site of The San Francisco Chronicle, suspended three staffers for a column that the site's boss said was "grotesquely outside the standards that we have."

Robert Cauthorn, vice president of digital media for The Chronicle, suspended writer Mark Morford, news editor Vlae Kershner and features editor Amy Moon for a week for their role in the incident.

Moon and Kershner were suspended without pay, starting yesterday. Morford, a union member, will be paid during his suspension, which started Monday, although he was told the suspension might result in his being fired. Cauthorn would not discuss the suspensions or when, whether or under what conditions Morford's column would return.

(snip)

The column typically offers humorous and controversial takes on offbeat news stories culled from The Chronicle and wire services. On Friday, Morford wrote what struck Cauthorn as a particularly outlandish take on an Associated Press story from Philadelphia: "Female teacher accused of sex with 13-year-old boy while friend watched."

"I riffed off of that (story)," said Morford, whose offending column is no longer online. "I wrote that from my own experience as a teenage boy, we shouldn't jump on this as a bad thing in every case. . . . I would bet that most teenage boys in this country would say that given the choice, this would be a positive adventure for many of them. . . . For teenage boys, there are things far worse than having older females perform a sex act in a parking lot."

more…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/03/28/BU107431.DTL

[ultramega]

1. Hmmm. 13 is "teenaged".

Sixteen, yes. 13 is adolescent.

[boobooday]

2. Oh No!

I love Mark Morford -- he's so funny, and he's the most funny when he is skewering the prudish PUBLIC sexuality of the U.S. right wing.

Damnit. But it is a CRIME to talk about sexuality as normal human behavior in this country.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[wryter2000]

4. Hey, I write sex

I write romance novels and erotic romance, and I care a lot about censoring explicit material, but I write about sex between consenting adults. 13 is too young. That excusing sex that's grossly exploitive.

[wryter2000]

3. Free speech and all

But I'm not defending that sort of crap.

[short bus president]

5. he f*cked up

While it would be perfectly acceptable for a 13 or 14-year-old boy to speak this obvious truth (surely this is a common male adolescent sex fantasy), it is not something an older man can say without arousing feelings of ookiness. It's like a white guy using the "n word."

[Hell Hath No Fury]

6. Morford has been amazing...

on Bush and Iraq.

I hope he's not fired.

[TahitiNut]

7. The age of consent in Mexico is 12.

The idea that 13 is too young is most certainly one of context.