The Mock Weekly has been the campus’ premier satirical publication for decades, consistently parodying the major developments of student and academic life. Given its commitment to breaking issues, however, many were puzzled by the absence of stories about child pornography in both last semester’s issue and the current edition. Why, despite the attention paid to students’ alleged dissemination of child pornography, has the subject not elicited any satirical write-ups?

Simply put, it’s a question of semantics.

“Child pornography is no laughing matter,” said Bob Lopate, senior officer at the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children (MICAC) Task Force, in a recent interview. “Putting any age modifier in before the word pornography is likely to put people on edge.

“I’ve been able to grow desensitized to [child pornography] myself,” he continued, “but whenever my wife takes out the camcorder and asks me if I feel like making any ‘grown-up porn,’ I just have to say no thanks. I’d much rather read a book [than have sex], should that be the terminology.”

Lopate doesn’t regret his career choice, though. “There are an estimated 45 million kids with Internet access. It’s important that we protect them from exploitation—be it from solicitations to appear in child pornography, the offer to view child pornography, even the garish sight of seeing the word child precede the word pornography.

“I guess it bothers me because I find sex to be so liberating,” he mused. “There’s often that moment of release, when you feel yourself to be in harmonium with the great Creator who engages with everything and everyone. If that isn’t ageless, I don’t know what is.”

Lopate noted that in the past year, as many as one in five children using the Internet received a suggestive e-mail from someone they didn’t know. Unfortunately, a crime so common is also hard to prosecute, since perpetrators are often clever and disguise their identities. “In most legal pornography, the unflinching eye of the camera allows the majesty of sexual intercourse to shine through the otherwise crude surroundings,” he added. “This is true of masturbation fetish videos, group sex websites, even elderly porn––Goddammit, I said it again!”

For the gravity of the offenses persecuted by the MICAC task force, Lopate admitted that humor is never absent from the office. “Sometimes one of my colleagues will call me over to his monitor under the pretense that he found something really deplorable [online], and it’ll turn out to be a website posting the latest Ziggy comic strip. I get a real kick out of that.”

Just don’t mention the phrase child pornography around Lopate––or Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon, for that matter. Simon, who recently conducted a telephone interview with The Mock Weekly, gave his insights as to why the subject fails to provoke laughter. “It’s because most people can’t relate,” he said. “If you really want to charm an audience, touch on stuff they’re familiar with––like growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Everybody’s done that.”

Simon then went on to share some of personal comic strategies. “Look at my play Lost in Yonkers. One of the reasons they gave that the Pulitzer Prize was because it had stuff everybody can laugh at: bickering relatives, neurotic kids…It also managed to put everything together in a touching second act which taught a valuable life lesson. And there was no child pornography in that play.”

In addition to receiving accolades throughout his six-decade career of writing for television, theater and film, Simon is also the only living American playwright to have a theater named after him. “Here’s a tip,” he said. “If you want to find out if something is funny, look and see if there’s a k sound or an ump sound in it. So, if you say to somebody, ‘Do that dance for me, I’ll give you a dollar,’ that’s not funny. But if you say, ‘Do that dance for me, I’ll give you a nickel,’ then you’re getting somewhere.

“Take it from me, the only living American playwright to have a theater named after him. Leave the child pornography alone.”

Simon, with characteristic comic timing, then deliberated for a moment. “Then again, say you don’t call it child pornography, but videos of child humping…Now that’s funny!”