Oh, you just know it was meant to be funny. Eight-year-olds using naughty words has always been funny. Especially at bar mitzvahs, birthday parties and, of course, on YouTube.
There will be some who will, therefore, feel a tinge of sympathy for Josh Eastman.
The Connecticut Post tells me that Eastman, of Bridgeport, Conn., is alleged to have taken it upon himself to give YouTube viewers exactly what they want: a little reality TV amusement.
So he reportedly encountered his neighbor's 8-year-old son in the garden, encouraged him to use rude words and inappropriate racial epithets, and filmed the experience. Eastman was allegedly none too shy about his role in the movie, as he was reportedly heard on the film encouraging the child to use these bad words.
Unlike, no doubt, quite a few of the cultured viewers on YouTube, the boy's mother didn't find it all that funny. She contacted the police, who arrested Eastman on charges of impairing the morals of a child.
It seems, though, that Eastman was shocked at his arrest. He told the AP: "If they didn't like the video they could have just asked me nicely to take it off, and I would have taken it off."
I am slightly perplexed by the "just asked me nicely" part of his quote. Why did Eastman feel he should have been asked nicely, when he seems rather more enamored of the slightly less nice forms of expression?
He claimed to the AP that he had not encouraged the boy and that the boy was well-known in the neighborhood for using less than neighborly language. He also denied the mother's claim that he had paid the boy $1 for his trouble.
Still, one can, perhaps, understand why he thought YouTube might have been the place for this work of art. The site has a rather hearty collection of "swearing kid" videos.
Now, however, Eastman will have to answer for his directorial debut in court on September 8. I wonder if cameras will be allowed inside.