Goofing in the Bathtub
Framing Innocence: A Mother's Photographs, a Prosecutor's Zeal, and a Small Town's Response
by Lynn Powell
Reviewed by Maggie Barron
In the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote that while he could not define obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” The Court agreed with him that the film in question was not obscene, but could not agree on why the film was not obscene. The case yielded four different majority opinions, none with the support of more than two justices.
For those of us who don’t have to rely on jurisprudence for our definition of obscenity, it’s still no clearer. Photos of a toddler in the bathtub don’t raise many eyebrows. But what about a six year old? An eight year old? Does it matter what the child is doing in the tub? Does it matter if the photos are taken by the child’s mother or taken by someone else? Somewhere along the way, our own sense of discomfort kicks in, alarm bells go off in our heads, and we think to ourselves, “that was okay, but this is over the line.” We know it when we see it, but it’s hard to explain what it is.
How well-meaning adults can disagree, and the devastating effects this disagreement can have on one family, is the subject of Lynn Powell’s fascinating new book Framing Innocence. In 1999, Cynthia Stewart, a mother in 
Oberlin, Ohio, dropped photos off to be developed. A month later, police officers knocked on her door with “serious questions” about those pictures, particularly ones that showed her naked eight-year old daughter Nora rinsing off in the tub. These photos, which she maintained simply showed her daughter joking around, eventually resulted in criminal charges, including photographing a child in a sexual performance.
Cynthia’s story, and the story of the Oberlin community’s response, makes for riveting reading. A poet by trade, Lynn Powell’s account moves briskly and economically. Though she plays a role in the unfolding story (as a neighbor and head of Cynthia’s Legal Defense Fund), she doesn’t allow her voice to overtake the narrative. This serves the story well, particularly in the pages she dedicates to the Kafka-esque Child Services hearing. Relying heavily on actual court transcripts, Powell allows the complete absurdity of the proceedings to come through; the questions that emerge are at once incredibly important and cut close to the familiar bone—especially those that concern the welfare of a child—and completely ridiculous. When asked how an “average person with average sexual instincts” could perceive Nora’s facial expressions in the photos, witnesses answers range from “sultry” to “silly.”
Yet Powell is most successful in her portrayal of a town struggling to understand the law and how it affects their lives. As Cynthia’s community rallies around her, Powell conveys the ambiguity and anxiety that accompany people’s distinctions of right and wrong.
“If it wasn’t appropriate to take photographs of your naked children, was it appropriate to see them naked? Was there something intrinsically wrong with being in the bathroom with your bathing eight-year-old child? And, if not, why was it wrong to take pictures of something that was not wrong in and of itself?”
In her column for The Nation, Katha Pollitt observed, “What makes the photos of Nora porn seems to be that they struck a handful of total strangers as ‘over the line.’” And while it would be easy to dismiss the prosecution as unreasonable, Powell’s account is balanced. Police and prosecutors “could see Cynthia’s pictures only through the eyes of the perverts [they] prosecuted,” but may also have exploited the photos to advance their political ambitions.
Framing Innocence is an eye-opening chronicle not just of one case and one family, but of the very black and white ways our legal system addresses gray. As Cynthia said to the prosecutor, “Even now with you and two police departments and two grand juries telling me the pictures are over the line, all I see is my daughter goofing in the bathtub.”
Maggie Barron is a former Brennan Center staffer.
The barns were unpainted. I wondered why Canadian farmers would allow their barns to degrade from exposure to the elements. The answer, I discovered, was government. At the time, Canada taxed painted buildings, so farmers left their structures exposed to avoid the penalty. These things make quite an impression on a child.
Yes, but what if it's the wrong impression?
My fact-checking suggests it is. Large unpainted barns were often erected in Southern Canada in the late 19th Century --- and far from degrading, some of them were surely on the Armeys' route North when Dad took Dick fishing in 1950.
The Canadian government had nothing to do with the décor of those barns.
The reasons the barns were unpainted were culture and esthetics.
A childhood misimpression casts a long shadow. At some point, Armey might have run across a different explanation. But this one fits his politics so perfectly. And now he passes that misinformation on.
Misperceptions can be useful. In the early '90s, the economics professor cast his lot with Conservative Republicans at exactly the right time, beating the drums in the House of Representatives against Bill Clinton's efforts to reduce the deficit the old-fashioned way --- by raising taxes. Later, when his side was in charge, he was one of the Republican leaders who delighted in cutting taxes and growing the federal budget.
But consistency was never Armey's strongest suit. His view of the Clinton sex scandal: "If I were in the President's place, I would not have gotten a chance to resign. I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, 'How do I reload this damn thing?'" This quip backfired --- it inspired some of his former students to recall episodes of sexual harassment by Professor Armey. (There is now a second Mrs. Armey.)
In 2003, after eight years as Speaker of the House, Armey resigned and joined the Washington law firm now known as DLA Piper as a senior policy advisor, or, in plain English, as a lobbyist. The job paid well --- a reported $750,000 a year. But lobbyists are not in the public eye, so he also became co-chairman of Citizens for A Sound Economy, which, the following year, became FreedomWorks. The cause grew rapidly, and, by 2008, FreedomWorks was paying Armey a salary of $550,000.
The philosophy of FreedomWorks is straightforward: “Lower Taxes. Less Government. More Freedom.” Lobbyists have more pliable philosophies. So while FreedomWorks loathes national health care --- in his book, Armey and his collaborator, Matt Kibbe, write that “the government should be concerned with protecting my liberty, not my liver” --- DLA Piper represented drug companies that, at least initially, supported health care reform. FreedomWorks opposed TARP; Armey's firm represented General Motors, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.
Conservative bloggers noted these conflicts and attacked. Armey said he was the victim of a conspiracy --- 'I wouldn't be surprised if it [the criticism] stemmed from information put out by allies of the Obama administration” --- but in August of 2009, he resigned from DLA Piper. "I hated to walk away from that kind of money," he said. “How many times in your life, or anybody's life, do they have an opportunity to earn that kind of money when they are 69 years old?"
These days money is not his problem. The Tea Party movement is. Not its numbers --- by Armey's count, the movement is hotter than Lady Gaga. And not its message --- that is now Republican doctrine.
The problem is that Armey and Fox and the right wing bloggers have been screaming “Take back America” for so long that I don't see how they fail to incite some event that sets “real” America against illegals, deviants, liberals and, mostly and especially, the President.
It gets worse. In the courts, the Tea Party is losing, The Administration vs. Arizona. Overturning Proposition 8. A New York lesbian on the Supreme Court. With every decision that “they” lose, you can picture their rage spiking.
At some point, this kind of volatility has its catalytic moment. At a Tea Party event, someone will turn on an idiot protestor. Or a Tea Party member will decide to right some wrong. A gun will go off. And there, along with blood and death, will be the media's useless and overdue finger-pointing.
On August 28 --- the anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington --- Glenn Beck is leading a march on Washington of his own. This is worrisome. Since January 19th, 2009, Beck attacked the Tides Foundation on his show 29 times; in July, one of his fans was arrested after a shootout with the California Highway Patrol. His plan: “to start a revolution" by attacking the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation. So Beck has called for marchers at his rally to sign an oath of non-violence. Bring your gun if you must --- it's your Constitutional right --- but don't pull the trigger.
This is the key point: Glenn Beck must make sure he cannot be held responsible for any violence.
Ditto Dick Armey.
That is why, I think, Armey uses the final 65 pages of his 245-page book to make it clear that FreedomWorks is not a leader of the Tea Party movement. Nobody is. It's local. Grassroots. FreedomWorks is around simply to support those groups and give them tips on organizing their events and meetings. Talking points, rallies, slogans --- all that comes, spontaneously, from patriots whose names we wouldn't recognize.
These pages are not terribly illuminating. They are very likely untrue. But to talk about them in journalistic or literary terms is to miss their purpose. “Give Us Liberty” may bear a publisher's imprint --- surprise: the publisher is Rupert Murdoch --- but it is not a book.
Dick Armey has, cleverly, published his legal defense.