The New York Post’s front page headline is once again making headlines itself.
“Enjoy a Foot Long in Jail,” blared Thursday’s edition with a picture of disgraced former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle. The 37-year-old appeared in a federal court yesterday agreeing to plead guilty to having sex with minors and distributing child porn.
Today’s cover: Subway’s Jared got his kiddie porn from the former head of his youth charity https://t.co/40Puf1ZvyK pic.twitter.com/MFviDxbREE
— New York Post (@nypost) August 20, 2015
The twisted tale was lewd and disgusting enough, yet for many people the Post crossed a line with its joke about prison rape. Numerous media outlets covered the cover, including the Huffington Post, Mediaite and the Blaze, but it was Gawker that wrote the most brutal takedown, calling it a “front-page rape fantasy.”
Reaction was mostly negative from Twitter users in response to the Post’s tweet blaring the cover:
Responding to rapists getting arrested by joking about prison rape just normalizes rape as a form of punishment. https://t.co/ppjHcKF9jd — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 20, 2015
@nypost Rape is rape. Prison rape is rape. You support rape? Sick.
— Rabid Badger (@rabidbadger) August 20, 2015
.@nypost pic.twitter.com/j8ZCJSiQM3 — Michael Curry (@mcurryfelidae07) August 20, 2015
The Post wasn’t alone in writing the same alleged joke, because a search on Twitter shows the same punchline being made by lots of people over the past few days. In response, people have been calling out those jokesters alerting them how distasteful that joke is, even if Fogle is a human masquerading as a steaming pile of trash:
maybe the answer is yes, maybe no, but worth thinking about bc the odds are high that survivors are reading yr tweets.
— netflix & shrill (@theshrillest) August 19, 2015
Hey guys, instead of making a joke about Jared Fogle, donate to places like @Childhelp. — Danielle Campoamor (@DCampoamor) August 18, 2015
Yet, leave it to Vice to actually find the angle we’ve all been secretly wondering: How will he be treated in prison? One prisoner told them that because of Fogle’s notoriety, he’ll likely be signaled out and harassed by his fellow inmates.
“His best bet is to do his time in segregation where no one can get to him,” they said.
More in Media
AI Briefing: How political startups are helping small political campaigns scale content and ads with AI
With about 100 days until Election Day, politically focused startups see AI as a way to help national and local candidates quickly react to unexpected change.
Media Briefing: Publishers reassess Privacy Sandbox plans following Google’s cookie deprecation reversal
Google’s announcement on Monday to reverse its plans to fully deprecate third-party cookies from its Chrome browser seems to have, in turn, reversed some publishers’ stances on the Privacy Sandbox.
Why Google’s cookie deprecation reversal isn’t actually a reprieve for publishers
Publishers are keeping a “business as usual” approach to testing cookieless alternatives despite Google’s announcement that it won’t be fully deprecating third-party cookies after all.