Pee-wee's great threat to the world

Paul Reubens has been arrested again.

Once again you will be able to watch the witch-hunt from the (dis)comfort of your own home. The initial Reuters story is sketchy, but the American puritanical elements should be as alarming as they are unsurprising.

Reubens, whose career was nearly derailed in 1991 by a lewd conduct scandal, faces a misdemeanor count of possessing child pornography stemming from a search of his home by police in November 2001, a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office said. [An acquaintence, actor Jeffrey Jones, was charged with hiring a teenager "to pose for sexually explicit photographs."]

... Charges against the performers grew out of searches conducted by police at their homes in related investigations.

In 1991 Reubens was arrested for masturbating in a darkened porn movie theater, and his charge this past friday seems to have been for possessing ordinary vintage physique art photographs which often included images of males U.S. laws today consider to be children.

Putting it into perspective, none of the facts as reported eleven years ago or today would be against the law in most, if not all of Europe, nor would they have attracted much interest as a scandal.

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Published on November 16, 2002 12:43 PM.

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