Tucker Carlson is making the news of late: The liberal research center Media Matters compiled a collection of clips from roughly decade-old interviews and guest spots of his and set it loose on social media, banking on outrage mobs to target his sponsors and take him down.
His remarks supposedly run afoul of the entire outrage gamut, but there’s one particular subset of that outrage that never fails to amuse me: “He sexualized a teenage girl!”
He didn’t lay a hand on her, mind you. There’s no action on a teenager implied here. It’s his attitude they’re condemning.
That attitude being, “Hot teenage girls are hot.”
In this case, the teenage girl in question was then-17YO Caitlin Upton, a Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina.
If you’re not familiar with with Miss Teen USA contestants do, basically they get onstage looking as no-makeup fugly as possible so you’ll take pity on them and maybe give them scholarships to offset the fact they’ll never qualify for a sugar daddy.
Or not.
Yes, the Miss Teen USA pageant is a forum for young women to go onstage and look pretty for prizes but don’t you dare sexualize them you monster!
O…kay….
Never mind that “sexualize” is pretty much what teenagers do with one another all the time. High school is a meat market. We all know this.
Of course, Tucker Carlson was himself about 37 years old at the time. That changes everything, right? A 37-year-old sexualizing a 17-year-old? That’s gross!
Except….
Guess what the age of sexual consent is in South Carolina.
16.
16.
Same as it is in thirty-two other states.
And in six other states besides, the age of consent is 17. The age of consent is 18 in only eleven states.
The average age of consent across all fifty states is 16-1/2. Even if you account for population differences in those states, the average age of consent is still 16.85, which means the average American believes that it’s perfectly okay for 17YOs to decide to have sex with whomever they want.
Which leads me back to this issue of “sexualization”.
Tucker Carlson “sexualized” Caitlin Upton when he was 37 and she was 17.
But according to both South Carolina law and the general opinion of the population of all fifty United States, Tucker Carlson could legally have sex with Caitlin Upton when he was 37 and she was 17.
Tucker Carlson is literally being criticized for wanting to do what he legally could have done.
Now, here’s the question I want you to think about:
When was the last time you heard anyone on the political Left condemning the “sexualization” of teens also condemning the age of consent laws in thirty-nine states for being too low because teen sex is wrong?
I’m going to guess…never?
Which is weird, because having sex with children is pretty much the last and only form of sex that the Left objects to — so much so that they leap at any chance to associate conservatives with it. I literally just got this meme replied to me on Twitter as I was typing this column:
So you would think that the Left would want to change the laws of the land and raise the age of consent to 18 everywhere so they could, Chris Hanson-style, ask more conservatives to have a seat. But they don’t. They simply can’t risk alienating their younger voting base (which, if Democrats have their way, will include 16YOs) by suggesting teenagers having sex is wrong. All they can do is condemn conservatives for having thoughts in their heads about perfectly legal activities — and look incredibly stupid for doing so.
Categories: Society
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