Bloomberg Businessweek Celebrates Adultery Website for Valentine's Day
Infidelity. Adultery. Those aren't exactly words that come on typical candy conversation hearts. Valentine's Day is after all a traditional holiday of love and romance, not of cheating and betrayal.
Yet, Bloomberg Businessweek used the holiday to highlight AshleyMadison.com a website that helps married people (7 out of 10 on the site are men) have affairs. The company's motto is "Life is short. Have an affair."
Like Ashley Madison, Bloomberg Businessweek must be counting on the idea that "sex sells." The magazine's offensively sexed-up cover design showed a woman's spread, fishnet-clad legs and was clearly an attempt to grab readers. On the newsstand copy those legs take up a little more than a quarter of the page, but an image on the BusinessWeek website shows a much larger image of legs taking up the entire cover.
Bloomberg Businessweek too sympathetically detailed the hurdles CEO Noel Biderman, the "lone genius-possibly evil and certainly entrepreneurial-behind Ashley Madison," has faced running such an "illicit" business including the difficulty of public relations for a company that helps people cheat and get away with it.
The magazine refused to take a stand for morality saying only that, "[Biderman] is running a budding empire built on an activity that most people would say is wrong."
Biderman complained about Fox's refusal to air an Ashley Madison Super Bowl commercial, Facebook's reluctance to accept their advertisements and investors' that have walked away because of what the company does.
But still, BusinessWeek closed out the story by trying to make Biderman look like a good husband and father even after he admitted in the story that he would "stray" if "sex was now off her [his wife's] radar."
The final paragraph read, "Then Biderman paused to check his BlackBerry. 'My wife just
called, that's the one phone call I like to return,' he says. 'It's my son's birthday today. I'm supposed to sneak out to go to his school to give him a cake.'"
- Julia A. Seymour's blog
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Comments
I don't consider myself a prude, but I find that cover offensive
Submitted by Lipton on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 5:47pm.
Unfortunately, I don't get either magazine so I can't take away business that was never theirs.
Not just offensive; it's
Submitted by motherbelt on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 5:56pm.
Not just offensive; it's demeaning and insulting.
How twisted must one be to have extramarital sex be the first thing that comes to mind for Valentine's Day?
I have to wonder...
Submitted by Phryj1 on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 6:52pm.
How many of Bloomberg's staffers are having affairs right now? After all, there has to be some reason they're giving a tacit endorsement of an adultery service,
But the very idea that a man would justify cheating by saying it's because he isn't getting enough at home -as if sex is something a man is entitled to, as opposed to something special that couples share- is sickening.
Men who cheat are lower than garbage. Companies that help them cheat are even lower than that.
Progressives seem to be completely averse to facts and logic. Apparently, reality has a conservative bias.
1,2,3....
Submitted by Tenebrous on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 8:22pm.
...cue the simpering, mindless, moral midgets who claim that this is not important and will have no effect on our lives.
Visions and Principles blog
~No effect
Submitted by Wrathful Brunette on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 9:32pm.
Interesting how feminism has led to the cheapening of womanhood, the coarsening of society, and the breakdown of the family. Women are far more exploited and disrespected in this country than they ever were.
And that, "simpering, mindless, moral midgets", (like it, T) has an effect on all our lives.
No fault divorce
Submitted by Radical1979 on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 9:38pm.
Part of that cheapening and disprespect is a result of no-fault divorce. This allows people to commit adultry and have no consequences.
As someone who suffered
Submitted by ant on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 12:13pm.
As someone who suffered through this scenario as a pre-teen, I can say these people are profiting on the heartbreak for the family involved ( that is if they get caught, I guess).