Porn

I need to get something off my chest.

Recently, I posted what some have called "pornography" in conjunction with a story about tons of stolen uranium in the DR Congo, and how you didn't hear about it on American news programs, specifically because those shows felt the coverage of yet another untalented American Idol contestant's inability to stay away from a camera and to get paid for taking her clothes off and having sex was infinitely more important.

In other words, I posted a pornographic picture of Antonella Barba licking a penis, because it infuriated me that the news would spend ten minutes on this story, but not two on the uranium. I heard more about the opinions of Americans about the treatment of Antonella as opposed to some other bimbo named Frenchie from some other season.

I posted this picture not gratuitously. I did it to prove a couple of points. In addition to the one I've outlined already, I posted it because I felt that the smarmy treatment these pictures were getting, the lurid non-descriptive descriptions, deserved to have Americans smacked across the face to wake them up.

Termed "engaged in sexual acts," if I recall correctly, which could be anything from kissing to full out sex with an entire herd of horses. I refuse to buy into to the psychosis of America when it comes to sexuality, even if it means I am uncomfortable with some of the imagery I see (particularly on some GLBT sites, but that's my own emotions and not a reflection of their content). And if by making a few people uncomfortable, so be it.

This comes up, because Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks and Liars had featured this story, until a handful of public (and presumably, more private) complaints forced Mike to revisit the post and find that, indeed, I had posted that picture, at which point he made the editorial decision that C&L should not be associated with porn, and took the feature down.

Fair enough. I'm not going to criticize his decision, altho I will point out that other sites undoubtedly have had even more pornographic content than my one photograph in nearly two years of blogging, so where does one draw the line? And it was incumbent upon me to give fair warning that the post was "Not Safe For Work".

For that, I apologize. I was angry, and sometimes in anger, assume that I can make people as mad as I am, thus negating my own ethical code to try to see things through other people's eyes.

There are a raft of other issues I could raise here: what precisely is pornographic? Why are you blogging from work in the first place? Where do you draw the line between "if the boss sees this, I'll be fired" and "I have to hide my blogging from my boss" because don't BOTH situations endanger your job? I could raise the issue that the A list bloggers have begun to give into the pressures of running a revenue-generating site, thus are beginning to mainstream their content in order to accommodate customs, mores and the law (noticeably, however, still violating copyright law by posting, say, news clips from other networks, and other creative content).

So rather than open the door to that rant, I'm going to make a statement here: I will post porn when and where I see fit, if I feel the pornography is germane to the discussion I'm raising. I will post porn the same way that I would post photos of dead Iraqi babies, or protestors giving George Bush the finger, or any myriad of other possibly offensive images. I do not draw the same distinction that many other Americans draw when it comes to images of people having sex, just because there's a nipple or a penis showing.

I will not post pornography for the sake of titillation, and if anyone GOT titillated by that photo of Antonella Barba sucking some guy's penis, then shame on you for having such a childish and immature attitude towards both sex and the news. Don't blame me for your embarrasments.

[/soapbox]