Okay, this is not as important as, say, Melania Trump’s tribute to husband Donald, which in itself is not that big a deal, I mean, for an immigrant.1 It’s not like she committed rape, for Pete’s sake. So what I’m writing about is even less of a big deal. But still.
In the first place, it is connected, albeit tangentially, to Melania Trump, because this is about the platform approved at the 2016 Republican National Convention, which is the same national convention at which Melania Trump spoke, which definitely ties the two together.
That Republican platform included a plank saying that pornography constitutes a national crisis. Judith Shulevitz, writing in the New York Times, admits that it isn’t that bad. According to Judith, “Parents don’t have to believe that such material is a direct cause of sexual violence to be driven a little crazy by it. It’s bad enough that it’s giving our sons and daughters some very creepy ideas about how they’re supposed to look and act.” She goes on to tell us that she’s worried about her 12-year-old son watching porno on the internet.
Judith, when I was 11 years old, I went to Boy Scout camp, where I was subjected to a deluge of smutty jokes from roughly 9 o’clock in the morning to 9 o’clock at night for two weeks, which, frankly, gave me some pretty creepy ideas about everything. When you’re 11, you’re in 6th grade, which is the grade when boys and girls take turns on the playground examining each other’s penises and vaginas. At least they did back in 1956.
As for kids picking up “very creepy ideas about how they’re supposed to look and act,” I think they can get those from the New York Times, particularly “T” magazine—“T” as in “disgustingly expensive”.
Afterwords
Unsurprisingly, Judith manages to find an “expert” who tells us what’s “trending” in porno: “artificial snuff films”, which I find almost as convincing as an earlier Times trend story “Terrariams making a comeback”, penned by the estimable Emily Weinstein.
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Which is great, by the way. ↩︎
