Song Sung Blue

Anyone looking for evidence of the decline of American popular culture need look no further than the love song. That's what Mark Steyn does here, casting a baleful glance at the American songbook, then and now. Then: glorious Gershwin numbers like "The Way You Look Tonight." Now: Julio's vulgar spawn grunts and pants his way through "Tonight (I'm F***ing You)" and ex-Mouseketeer Jason Timberlake tells his booty call that boffing her is like getting take out--and he means it as a compliment!

But then, that's what happens when the entire culture become locked in a protracted adolescence. Speaking of which, don't you hate it when you buy a used laptop, and it turns out to be stolen, and the original owner, thinking you're the thief, exacts revenge by hacking into his old--your new--computer and posting nekkid photos of you for all to see?

Some victims take pleasure in publicly shaming the thief who nabbed their laptop. Young entrepreneur Mark Bao used BackBlaze to tap into his stolen laptop where he found a home-made video of his thief break-dancing (which he posted to YouTube). A year after someone stole a Macbook from hacker Andrew ‘zoz’ Brooks, he regaled a Defcon audience with the tale of how he tapped into the computer to figure out who the thief was and where he lived; he also shared with the audience naked photos the thief had taken of himself in the shower, as well as messages exchanged with women on dating sites. When I watched that amusing and highly embarrassing pillory, I wondered to myself, “What if the person who is in possession of the computer isn’t actually the thief, but is being shamed as if he is?”

Well, that’s exactly what happened to Susan Clement-Jeffries, reports Evan Brown at Internet Law Cases. She unknowingly used a stolen laptop to exchange explicit photos with her boyfriend and those photos wound up in the hands of a theft-recovery company and a couple of detectives, who called them “disgusting” when they arrested her. Now she’s suing the police department and Absolute Software, and she’s got a strong case.

While working as a substitute teacher at an “alternative high school” in Ohio in 2008, Clements-Jeffrey purchased a laptop from one of the students for $60. The low, low price probably should have tipped her off that the laptop was stolen. The student told her that the laptop was messed up and that his parents had given him a new one. In fact, the laptop belonged to another school district and had been reported stolen by a student who had checked it out and was using it at a public library.

Clements-Jeffrey, 52, got the laptop fixed up and then started using it to correspond with her long-distance boyfriend. Given the distance, their correspondence was at times quite sexually explicit, including steamy emails and instant messages (gSex?) and the exchange of naked photos...

52 going on 13--and thick as a Chicken McNugget. (Gee--I think I'll write a "love" song about it.)