By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
That’s what U.S. District Judge William Young told former sportscaster Bob Gamere yesterday after Gamere whined about the five-year prison sentence he’d just been handed for distributing child pornography.
No kidding. What Gamere seems to have lost sight of is that actual children were exploited, and that his actions helped spur demand for more such exploitation.
Or maybe he doesn’t care.
Memo to Boston Herald editor Kevin Convey: When leading with a celebrity-arrest story, make sure the arrestee is an actual celebrity. It’s always tough to go with one of these stories when you have to give over a good part of it to explaining who Reese Hopkins is. I mean, was.
At least us old-timers have heard of Bob Gamere, the former television sportscaster who’s been arrested on child-pornography charges (Herald coverage here; Globe coverage here).
A friend of Media Nation asks if it really makes sense to lock up Gamere. Since Gamere is innocent unless found guilty, let me change the question: Does it make sense to lock up a 69-year-old man if he’s been distribuing child pornography via e-mail? Of course, I’m talking about a theoretical 69-year-old man, strictly in a hypothetical sense.
Answer: Hell, yes. This is not mere possession, which probably shouldn’t be punishable by prison. Anyone who would do what our hypothetical 69-year-old man has been charged with doing is a danger to society.
OK. Off to look at the redesigned Boston Globe. More in a bit.