Flying Oskar: Casual (Legal) Encounters

A line in the sand has been drawn. In a world reeling from the stench of moral compromise, one courageous man has taken a stand for common decency. Standing against a technological demon threatening to shred the moral fiber of our very society, this hero stands tall, fires a warning shot over the demon’s head, and delivers an ultimatum; “I’m gonna give ya’ till 5 p.m. Eastern on May 15th to get out of my state, demon. After that, I’m a-gonna bring the righteous hammer of justice down upon your head.”

The hero, undaunted by the size of the beast, knows that he — and he alone — can end this immoral reign of terror. Only the chosen one, our guardian of probity, can protect us from the malevolent demon known as craigslist.

The hero in this particular story is South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, and the aforementioned ultimatum was delivered in a letter to craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster last week. (Click here for the PDF of the letter.) In the letter, McMaster threatens legal action against craigslist if it does not remove the ads on its South Carolina sites related to “the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material” by this Friday at 5p.m. McMaster further accuses craigslist of having “knowingly allowed the site to be used for illegal and unlawful activity.”

Now I don’t want to be the one to throw water on a good old-fashioned moral crusade, but McMaster’s outrage seems a tad convenient to me.

First, there’s the timing. McMaster has all but said he’s running for governor in 2010, and it just so happens that craigslist is the media talk de jour these days thanks to Phillip Markoff, the so-called “craigslist killer,” who assaulted and robbed three women he met through erotic ads on the site, killing one of the women. The formula couldn’t be more perfect: a media feeding-frenzy over a murderer with a penchant for meeting prostitutes through craigslist ads, and the position as Attorney General to get in on that sweet media action by writing a grandstanding letter to that company’s CEO. It’s manna from political heaven.

Then of course, there’s the fact that almost all lawsuits involving internet sites over the conduct of their users have ended in favor of the sites. Surely someone with the legal acumen Attorney General McMaster knows that the odds of being able to shut down craigslist’s “erotic services” section with a lawsuit are pretty slim.

If he were truly concerned with doing something about prostitution on craigslist, he may have taken the more low-key approach of the Attorney Generals of Connecticut, Missouri and Illinois, who had a private meeting with Craigslist to discuss the company’s stance regarding its “erotic services” section. It might not have scored McMaster as many column inches and soundbites as he’d wanted, but it almost certainly would’ve been more productive.

And then there’s that other telling bit of information in McMaster’s letter. The Attorney General isn’t just outraged over the erotic services offered in the ads; he’s upset about the porn too. Apparently some of the prostitutes selling their wares on craigslist are letting the potential guests check out the goods before they pony up the dough. It’s not just the prostitutes though. It’s also the people over in the “casual encounters” section of craigslist. These supposedly morally repulsive degenerates post all sorts of shamefully graphic pictures of breasts, backsides, genitalia and sex acts right there on the site.

Imagine that: Porn on the Internet!

Of course in order to go into those sections, you have to go through a warning and disclaimer informing the user that the section is only for those 18 and over and that the section may include “adult content.” Craigslist also states that it has implemented a content labeling system compatible with many commercially available and open-source internet filtering software. In fact, I was able to block myself from seeing the “adult” sections by simply altering the parental controls on my computer. The only way I’m going to see erotic images on craigslist, is if I want to, and if I want to block my child from seeing those images, it’s not very hard to do.

It all makes McMaster’s argument about the “unrestricted manner in which graphic pornographic pictures are posted and displayed by users on the craigslist site and their accessibility to minors” seem pretty disingenuous.

What’s really going on here is some time-tested pandering to the social conservative electorate that dominates the SCGOP. McMaster will have a tough primary fight next year, and any feathers he can put in his social conservative cap will help him stay in the good graces of the state Republican Party’s Christian conservative base. For all those reasons, I’m pretty sure that a couple of things are going to happen on Friday. Craigslist will still have an “erotic services” section on their local South Carolina sites, and Henry McMaster will make good on his threat.

I have little doubt that McMaster will do everything in his power to stick up for the good upstanding citizens of South Carolina with the fervor that only a demagogue can muster. I won’t be at all surprised to read in the coming weeks that McMaster decided that the only way to defend the righteousness of the people in South Carolina is the file suit against the purveyors of this indecency. He won’t hesitate to spend state money on his fruitless crusade, and he’ll never miss a chance to tell the people about how what he’s doing is right. Then when the case is struck down — which is sure to happen — McMaster won’t miss a beat.

He’ll be right there to tell us all that he fought the good fight. He’ll assure us that he’s a good man just fighting against the coarsening of society. McMaster will use the case and its defeat as a battering ram against a supposedly decaying society that has lost its moral sense of purpose. This sense of purpose, he will assure us, is one that we can regain, and all we’d have to do of course, is vote for him. Henry McMaster’s going to try to sell us an old wine, but craigslist has given him a brand new shiny bottle to put it in.