Dr. B:
The hypocrisy of trying to brand someone a dangerous pedophile over a throwaway line in a piece of fiction written a decade ago, while saying that arranging to have an actual 15-year-old girl solicit someone for sex is harmless and cute and a silly little prank, you know, like, cha'!
You need to stop and think if these are really peolpe you want to call your "friends", 'Beenie baby.
Which is pretty much the definition of solicitation. What happened to the battle-cry "Kids, not conquests!", hmm? The question now remains just how much she was aware of what was going on, if and to what extent she was coached by a third party, and who this person or persons was/were. Your "friends" suggest it was my would-be college roommate who set me up. I've discovered that up until very recently, he worked as a director of some department at my old alma mater, so I got in touch with his former bosses and told them of the station. I was informed he suddenly resigned not long after my first e-mail. Coincidence? Perhaps. I mean, it's not like like they shuffled him off quietly to avoid any appearance of impropriety...right? Still, in a world well-known for its lies, cover-ups, and resentful, jealous trolling that masquerades as love and respect, it seems very suspicious. According to his dossier, the suspected solicitor of barely-legal Betties is also the founder and spiritual leader of an outfit called Chosen Generation Ministries. Well, well. Looks like I might be defrocking a false prophet pretty soon... if your new pals' claim is true.
My theory, however, is-- as it was so perfect and felt like the work of someone who knew me pretty well-- that it was one of my old co-workers seeking misguided revenge on me for my TV ratings column almost shutting down the campus paper... and that if the late faculty adviser ordered the attack or had any knowledge of it, now would be the best time for such information to come out. Unless The Herald pulled a Hillary Clinton and threw away the internal memos, deleted the e-mails, and boiled the servers in acid to cover its tracks.
You know, I realize I may be treading over previously trod ground here, but I find something absolutely fascinating about Thumb's paranoia here, specifically in that it's
manufactured paranoia.
Have you ever noticed that Sweet
has to turn everything involving him into a battle or a conspiracy? There was a quote from a while ago where he had written google or youtube or someone, mentioning that they may have to buy him a new computer because it went on the fritz when he visited their site (too lazy to look it up now). The kid that tormented him so at the Beau's shop wasn't merely a rambunctious child, but a potential threat to his life. Of course, as ever, there's Jon's constant desire to put down others due to ethnicity, skin color, economic class, or political stances - remember, he even dislikes so-called RINOs.
Sweet seems to maintain a general sense of resentment towards society in general, whether he actually interacts with different demographics or not. There always has to be a fight, always has to be judgement, always has to be suspicion and acrimony and condemnation.
The thing of it is, even when it is explained to Sweet, in terms that even he cannot ignore, that what he describes as a college experience so hateful and destructive was simply a mundane, mostly innocuous series of events that he brought upon himself, he nonetheless has to insist there was some kind of conspiracy. Lazy as he is, he excels at moving the goal posts. For every reasonable, logical proposal, there's always going to be a "But why?" sure to follow.
"My theory, however, is-- as it was so perfect and felt like the work of someone who knew me pretty well--"
Right, someone who knew him pretty well - like a ROOMMATE, PERHAPS? See, that's the most reasonable place to take things, the most sensible place to go. But I think I know why Jon is perpetually trying to keep these silly conspiracy theories alive.
The simple truth of the matter is that Jon Sweet is a useless human being. He wrote a few weeks ago about how he took his mom to dinner at Taco Bell. Rubbish. He couldn't take his mom anywhere. She controls his money and he can't drive. It's fine to pretend to that sort of thing when you're ten years old, but not when you're nearly 40. Jon is as useless as he is powerless. There is nothing he can do in this life under his own power, unless he uses his imagination, and even then, he can't escape.
Look at his fantasies, filled with rage and violence and vengeance, with the occasional pervo fantasy for good measure. Jon never really sees himself as truly winning anything realistically. He has violent power fantasies because he knows that he's a powerless person. It's the same thing with the conspiracies. Which of the two is the more comforting belief?
1. I'm a lone voice of truth in a wilderness of falsehood, surrounded by decadent and selfish villains who would do anything to silence me and sway me from the path of spreading righteousness and light to a world that desperately needs it,
or
2. I'm a disruptive, ugly, anti-social freak who people yell at, haze, avoid, and expel from polite society because of my terribly immature behavior and baffling incompetence.
It's all part of Sweet's desperate need to blame other people for his problems, else he'd be in danger of having only himself to blame.