Jimmy John's—Supporting Rape and Prison-Industrial Complex

Brueghel's The Blind Leading the Blind

Getting ready this morning, and on comes a commercial for Jimmy John's restaurant.

Intro features a harmless-looking, scared young man walking into a jail filled with menacing-looking characters, one of whom suggestively alludes to the coming prison rape for the scared, young man.

But the kid calls Jimmy John's restaurant and a delivery saves the day.

Jimmy John's restaurant evidently believes the coming prison rape is funny.

And that America leading the world in its total prison population and rate of incarceration [Iran, Russia are pikers] is fodder for what it finds is an amusing lede-in to its commercials.

"Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences," notes Adam Liptak in a recent Times piece.

"The .... current American prison system, is a leviathan unmatched in human history," notes Glenn C. Loury in Boston Review.

That's fine with your local Jimmy John's restaurant. Rape is funny. Massive denial of liberty is equally amusing.