[Diogenesis]

[Paul Atreides]

Wow! Until Obubba Been Laiden showed up on the cover I didn't know Esquire still existed.

[Aquinasfan]

We're swimming in the sewer and have become accustomed to the smell.

[Dems_R_Losers]

This is a wonderful article. I recently bought Vanity Fair and was simply speechless at the onslaught of pornographic ads in the magazine. Even wristwatch ads feature semi-nude models. A women's fragrance ad features an entirely naked model. It was particularly jarring because this month's "regular" issue is packaged with a beautiful and tasteful mini-issue about the heroes of September 11. I commented to my husband that if anyone wanted to see what the fundamentalist Muslims really despise about America they should just look through this magazine. Not to mention all the so-called women's mags like Glamour, Mademoiselle, etc. that now feature almost nothing but articles about sex.

The pornographication of America is no longer just wrong, it is getting us killed.

[Focault's Pendulum]

Damn!!! I read that entire article before I realized it didn't contain any hacked passwords!

[CatoRenasci]

In Tom Lehrer's words:

when correctly viewed everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
Or the Wizard of Oz
There's a dirty old man!

(From Smut! on That Was the Year That Was! 1966)

[Paul C. Jesup]

If nudity is so evil, then why are we all born nude?

[CubicleGuy]

Twenty-five years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge commented on the American scene in The New York Review of Books. "Never, it is safe to say, in the history of the world, has a country been as sex-ridden as America is today."

With the exception being America, twenty-five years later.

[Lurking Libertarian]

think back to the Esquire of days gone by. Ernest Hemingway published "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in Esquire. Tom Wolfe, in a renowned essay, singled out Esquire as the primary home of inventive literary journalism in his generation. It published 5,000-word pieces by Norman Mailer and Garry Wills (and this author). It was the monthly magazine of Dwight Macdonald, movie critic, and Malcolm Muggeridge, book critic. Is the Esquire given over to erotomania unique? Of course not, but it isn't just one more girlie magazine. It is a sign of the times, the day of pervasive presence. Eros is crowding at us on all sides, as the erotic and the pornographic merge.

Esquire started as a sex magazine. It published the "Vargas Girls" every issue untile Vargas moved to Playboy. It had excellent articles and fiction, but so did Playboy.

[Lurking Libertarian]

If twelve-year-olds are caught looking in curiously at gangbangs at eight in the morning, why . . . spank them.

Take responsibility for raising your own kids? What a bizarre thought. Better let the government do it for you!

What WFB doesn't realize is that we no longer live in the 1950s. If the power of censorship is restored to the Government, National Review is as likely to be censored as Hustler-- more likely, in some parts of the country. This is a nation that elected Clinton twice, remember. The few prosecutors who still bring obscenity prosecutions can't get juries to convict-- even Provoo, Utah, recently had a jury acquit a defendant in an obscenity trial.

[stuartcr]

The more open the world is, the more communications/media there are, the more porn. It's a human thing, you'll have to get used to it. If it wasn't effective, it wouldn't be.

[helmsman]

Sexual mores are just that. They are floating codes of sexual morality that change with whatever religion happens to be dominant in a particular culture at a particular time. The sexual morality code of the last two thousand years that tells us that we should have one mate for life and not even tolerate carnal desire was borne out of Christianity (or, more precisely, primarily the teachings of the Apostle Paul), the dominant western religion of that period. Before the Christian church, there was the more local Judaic religion which, at least in it's early history, allowed men to take multiple wives. As the history of Mormonism testifies, our Christian culture would not react well to that ancient Jewish custom. Indeed, it would be quite interesting to see what fundamentalist Christians would think of King Solomon if he were alive today, with his 1000 women (many of whom were his wives, many of whom were not). Clearly sex for recreation and fun, which Solomon was quite obviously practicing, was not so great an offense back in his time.

It is interesting, also, to observe the extent to which very secular Americans of the modern day subscribe to these very Christian notions of sexual morality. People who have absolutely no allegiance to Jesus Christ, people who support and practice all sorts of other abominations (like abortion) still, for some reason, aspire to marriage, monogamy, and sexual fidelity. These people obviously do not stop to think much.

So, pornography is wrong just because it is? I'm sorry, I can't accept that. But, it's wrong in God's eyes, you insist? Well, is polygamy wrong in God's eyes? If it is now, it certainly wasn't before. No, in my mind, for something to be "wrong" it must cause a direct and serious harm to an innocent party. Are Children harmed by pornography? Perhaps. But children are also harmed by lots of things that we don't ban or stigmatize. If you put a four-year-old at the wheel of a Buick, that would probably cause harm. If you served the same tot a bottle of scotch whiskey, that would probably cause harm. And, yes, if you sat the little person in front of the tele to watch "The World's Largest Gang...." that would probably sexualize the child far before he/she is ready and cause harm. But just because some things cause harm to children, doesn't mean they are wrong. It simply means they must be kept away from children by adult society.

[libordeath]

Whadya talkin' 'bout? PORN IS COOL!

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Rather than start a new thread, this is a good place to ask, did anyone watch the Real World last night? The one where Malik and Gisella had sex? They weren't even in love. Just casual friends "with an intense physical attraction to each another", as Gisella put it.

I still can't get over the casualness with which they did it. Not only did they do it right next to their roommates, but they did it on national TV. Thankfully, MTV didn't show more than a second of it (literally), which surprised me, because I thought MTV lived for that sort of interaction.

I can only imagine how proud their parents must be.