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Revere-Ageism Hard at Work

I’ll admit that when I first heard senior citizen criminals claiming they couldn’t get fair trials because of discrimination, I didn’t take them seriously. I didn’t believe that “ageism” was a real problem. But apparently I was wrong. Some time ago, in New York City, a certain special-interest group was able to circumvent the law and keep a reprehensible felon out of jail. This time, however, it came from an unfamiliar source: the powerful Children’s Lobby.

While many have not heard of them, they have in fact been working for years to give children special legal advantages, many of which are clearly discriminatory. Thanks to the Children’s Lobby, hardworking multimillionaire rock stars like Lars Ulrich have been shafted yet again, as a chronic criminal-offender is let off with a slap on the wrist. The perpetrator? One Brianna LaHara, age twelve. Ms. LaHara admitted to sharing over 1,000 music files over a three-month period, yet was allegedly “shocked” to find out that she had been named as a defendant in a 261-person civil suit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America.

What I can’t decide is which is more outrageous: that LaHara thought she could get away with flouting the law or that the media and millions of sympathetic Americans actually believed her. Within days, the country was in an uproar, and the media was quick to show its pro-children bias; for instance, multiple news sources used the highly inaccurate description of “Little Brianna”, despite the fact that LaHara is actually considered to be of average height for a twelve-year-old. Additionally, many seemed to blindly accept her “story” that she thought that it was “OK” to download music simply because her mother paid a service fee. Had any of those so-called reporters actually investigated her background, they would have found that LaHara was an honor student at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School. Did LaHara really expect us to believe that an honor student wouldn’t know that file sharing was declared illegal under the 1984 Supreme Court Sony Betamax case? Or were we to believe that St. Gregory’s simply doesn’t teach that in seventh grade? Once again, the Children’s Lobby was trying to play us for fools, implying that simply because LaHara couldn’t watch the movie “Holes” without an adult that she shouldn’t be held responsible for her actions.

But even more shocking was the public support of this admitted delinquent. All of a sudden, it seemed that age is supposed to be a major factor in determining guilt. Wow, what a great idea, Children’s Lobby! Forget evidence and justice; let’s just let criminals off the hook because of their age. Sorry, but if a 14-year-old can get the death penalty for murder, then I think “little Brianna” should be able to face the music, too. Instead, in a mockery of justice, the RIAA was shamed into settling for a pathetic $ 2,000 fine. That comes out to an insignificant two dollars a song- laughable, when one remembers LaHara broke the law an incredible one-thousand times. Imagine what would happen if a sixty-year-old had accidentally crashed his car into one-thousand Seven-Elevens? The outcry would be deafening. Yet somehow, because LaHara is a “minor”, and she “only” stole from the music industry, people are acting as though she should get a free ride. There’s a word for that: sickening.

As if keeping a twelve-year-old out of jail wasn’t bad enough, now LaHara’s supporters are trying to discredit the RIAA and convince people that somehow it is at fault. Wayne Rosso, president of a “peer-to-peer” Internet service, even stooped so low as to compare RIAA executives with Joe McCarthy and Joseph Stalin. This despite the fact that the RIAA has repeatedly stated that it doesn’t “have any personal information on any of the individuals” named in the lawsuit. I.e., not only was the suit not biased, it was the most not biased it could possibly be! What more do kleptomaniac-lovers like Rosso want?

To add insult to injury, just days after the RIAA settlement became public, the Child Lobby struck again: in a scant five hours, an online raffle raised enough money to pay for all of Brianna’s RIAA fine- thereby leaving her free to contemplate further online thievery with no fear of punishment. It’s clear what lesson pre-teen criminals are going to glean from this: if you whine about your birth certificate and pander to the media, you can commit nearly any crime and get away with it. Where does this slippery slope end? Today, it’s a twelve-year-old getting off for file-sharing. Tomorrow, it could be a nine-year-old avoiding prison for decapitating a nun. End reverse-ageism now!

(Paid for in part by the AARP.)