Look beyond the hype and the lame rhetoric and unveil the thinly veiled references, and it's all about shame. "Internet Safety" is primarily a euphemism for attempts to keep young people in the dark about sex. "Protecting" kids from sexual content is the usual verbiage, but why is our culture obsessed with protecting a group of people from something that's never been proved to do them the slightest harm?

It's ignorance that harms children. The only thing limiting kid's access to information achieves is protecting neurotic adults from their own shame.

Now that they have established that people involved in something unregulated by washington is dangerous, they can wait a little while and then "do something about the problem".

Fuckin' bloggers. Fuckin' truthers. Arrrgh. Why can't we go back to the good old days of Zionist Occupation Government controlled media, the way it should be??

It's not the intertubes which clearly is 10000000% of everyone on earth slathering to rape your kids. It's the world we live in which somehow came to the belief that there are no frictions, conflicts, threats, dangers, risks, noise, second hand smoke, red meat, foreigners, bad people or ugly babies in the world, BY LAW.

I sometimes wonder why people and crazy parents like this don't simply zonk themselves comatose so as not to be exposed to the big bad world. Why not? Isn't death the most risk free state of all? In the meantime we can't make up our empty stupid minds whether to infantilize everything and everyone or criminalize them.

Most therapists or the police will tell you that those dreadful monters that our young might meet thru the internet are nothing compared to the monsters in their own homes.

A very minute proportion of the youngsters sexually abused ever report this abuse. Why not, well the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. To lose a parent, an older sibling or any of the other relatives who will do terrible things to their kids is too much for a child who has already had their sense of self-worth destroyed.

When he or she contemplates first, who are they going to tell, then what are the consequences, will they be taken from the home and put in care? Will that parent, older sibling of either sex, uncle or aunt, cousin or revered, [by the parents] friend of the family be taken and subjected to court proceedings and possible incarceration? Will they ever see them again? Will they be believed? Will those that they do love and trust start looking askance at them? Could they possibly have been unwittingly seductive?

Even a parent who is betraying their trust is still valued for other things and will be terribly missed. Most kids who are abused put up with it. Eventually when they are old enough come and see people like me and pour their hearts out telling of the shame, guilt and awful destruction wreaked on their sex lives. Hoping to at last achieve some relief from their misery and shame. Most of them blame themselves for 'seducing' the person who abused them. It can take many years for healing to take place, I suspect most are never fully healed.

The dangers of the internet are miniscule compared to the dangers of insufficient education given to parents-to-be on how to deal with these feelings towards their young. Do we ever explain to young folk that perhaps when they have children they will start to have incestual wants and desires for a helpless child? Where can they go for help in dealing with these feelings? Do we protect our young with keen observation as they grow so that we can perceive when something is wrong in our homes? No, we create smoke screens and false concerns so that the real signs of distress and abuse are hidden. Shame on us as a society that we have so little concern for our young.

Study other cultures that do not have such a problem, such as Bali, see how they raise children so that they are free of those desires. Go and visit Holland and other Scandinavian cultures that deal with these subteranian [Sp] desires, who anticipate them and deal with them with education that involves parents, teachers, children etc., in a group setting.

Good heavens we can't even talk about this between ourselves, we just hope, quite forlornly that somehow our beloved children will avoid this particular problem. Well on the whole they don't.

Rayner

OK, after suspending judgment for as long as I could, it's become apparent even to me that Salon has an anti-Obama agenda.

And what is most frustrating about this blog is that Mr. Manjoo obviously shares that agenda, but isn't being the least upfront about it.

Mr. Manjoo, I actually respected you for insisting that there was not enough evidence to prove voter fraud during the last elections, and that without such evidence you would not confidently advance such a claim. That was an honest conclusion based on your interpretation of facts as you perceived them--and you presented your case openly and clearly.

Lately, you are doing neither. Your argument by innuendo is underhanded, and it is poor journalism.

Do you think that the fact that you are writing a blog now rather than a column somehow gives you the license to be dishonest, disingenuous and sloppy?

Make your case against Obama openly, using the sound principles of reason we know you to be capable of, or quit playing games with your readers. This is beneath you, and beneath Salon.

All the concerned Senators have no idea what the hell they're talking about-most of them couldn't find the space bar on a computer, let alone the Internet.

This discussion is dangerous, because it gives them a reason to crack down on the Internet even more than they already have-and all for "the children".

Where do the adults fit it-you know, the 80 percent that do use the Internet? Does everything have to be for the damn children?

I'm so sick and tired of these arguments that everything must revolve around a non-voting, non-ruling segment of our society.

I'm tired of being given the finger by those who give us the finger every time I turn around.

They're running the country, or so they think.

Actually I think the kids are running it by the merit of existing. The adults don't matter, but we pay the bills and the price when "concerned interests" decide to trample our rights just a little more every day.

Enough of the "danger of the month club"!