Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

When a media source such as Mother Jones or Everytown for Gun Safety implies that “we have a gun problem,” they are making exactly the same reasoning error as if they said, “we have a black people problem.”

And black population was six times more predictive than gun ownership was.

In an extensive report from BuzzFeed, cartoonist John Kricfalusi—the creator of iconic Nickelodeon series Ren & Stimpy—has been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, promising them careers in animation at his studio Spumco while allegedly grooming them for sexual relationships. One of the women, Robyn Byrd, says it all began in 1994 when she was only 13, after she sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about how she wanted a career in animation and how important Ren & Stimpy was to her. Kricfalusi, who was 39 at the time, responded by sending her packages of toys and art supplies, and eventually he helped her set up an AOL account so they could communicate more regularly.

Kricfalusi visited Byrd at her home and told her that she could “become a great artist,” and later he invited her out to Los Angeles, where she says he “touched her genitals through her pajamas” while they were at his house. She was 16. In 1997, Kricfalusi gave Byrd an internship at Spumco; she lived with him during this period, prompting him to allegedly call her “his 16-year-old girlfriend.” Convinced that he was helping her launch the career of her dreams, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi once she graduated from high school.

Apparently, this was all an open secret in the animation world at the time, partly due to an interview Kricfalusi gave with Howard Stern in which he creepily noted that a “hot chick with big cans and nice legs” he had drawn for a comic book was “underage, too.” People working at Spumco allegedly shrugged off the relationship between Byrd and Kricfalusi, with another former intern noting that Kricfalusi once “left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her.”