Pornography

Stop the presses! Decadence dominated the publicity oozing out of the Cannes Film Festival in France. The festival’s highest honor, the Palme d’Or (or Golden Palm) went to “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which drew most of its buzz from an explicit ten-minute lesbian sex scene.

This, apparently, was art, not pornography. The Cannes jury headed by Steven Spielberg took the unprecedented step of insisting that the movie’s two stars be included as Palme award recipients. New York magazine’s Vulture blog cooed these awards were the festival’s “Most Pleasant Progressive Surprise.”

Give Anthony Weiner another chance! Slate’s William Saletan fawned over the genius political rehab strategy deployed by former disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), as he’s mulling whether to run in New York’s mayoral election this year. Saletan’s  April 10 piece, laughably headlined " I'll Be His Weiner Wife, " observed how the recent Weiner expose -- sorry, I mean feature -- in a recent New York Times Magazine “doesn’t look like a strategy. It’s so deeply embedded in the narrative that you can’t see it."

"Weiner has made this a story not about himself, but about his wife and their future together. You have to forgive him because she has forgiven him, and if you hold a grudge against him, she’s the one you’re really punishing," Saletan argued. Cut Weiner out of politics for life and you hurt Huma as well. Heck, you're probably hurting America too! Isn't that patronizing at best and misogynistic at worst?

When the Associated Press reported on the upcoming “Sex Week” program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, the reporter calmly noted that the “student-initiated” event will begin on Friday, April 5, and include several generic seminar topics.

However, when Fox News Radio's Todd Starnes described the same program, he indicated that it will include such controversial aspects as seminars by a lesbian bondage expert and a campus-wide scavenger hunt for a golden condom.

Sometimes it’s hard to measure the distance between the supposedly establishment, respectable press and the seediest corners of hardcore pornography. On March 1, ABC’s "Nightline" celebrated a porn star named "James Deen" (real name: Bryan Sevilla). The apparent "news" hook is his role in a forthcoming movie with the evermore pathetic Lindsay Lohan.

ABC reporter Cecilia Vega sold Deen as a 27-year-old hazard to teenaged girls. They’re boasting he’s found a new frontier of porn consumers, "some of them so young we couldn't even interview them on camera. Their parents had no idea that secretly they have a crush on a porn star. It is a phenomenon that not even the man at the center of it fully understands, but it's one that he fully defends." Insert ooooh-ahhhh track here.

When the first season of Ryan Murphy’s twisted blood-and-sex fest premiered on FX in 2011 Entertainment Weekly put “American Horror Story” at the top of its “Must-Watch” list.

The original “American Horror Story” pushed explicit content on cable television with voyeurism, dual masturbation, graphic sex and an unhealthy dose of murder, blood and gore. It even featured a child taking vengeance on a bully by slashing his face to bloody ribbons for 43 seconds.

The book industry seems to be collapsing, at least that hallowed old paper-and-glue industry that promoted serious ideas. Even talk-radio and TV hosts are spending less time with authors. There are exceptions – but they won’t make you feel optimistic about books.

Exhibit A of today’s kind of author: Jenny McCarthy, the former Playboy centerfold who’s parlayed her nudie shots into a long list of TV gigs and six best-selling “humor”/advice books (which absolutely no one might guess were written by someone else). Her latest must be her lamest. It’s called “Bad Habits: Confessions of a Recovering Catholic.” She’s wearing a nun’s habit on the cover. Original, huh?

If you needed more proof of America’s culture rot then brace yourself, because on July 30 you’ll be able to experience classic literature with an NC-17 twist. For those who’ve always longed for sexual exploration between Sherlock Holmes and Watson, or for a bondage re-telling of “Jane Eyre,” get your Kindles and Nooks ready.

But Jane Eyre and Sherlock Holmes aren’t the only beloved characters to be bastardized by writers behind the laughable Clandestine Classics. Thanks to publisher Total E-Bound audiences can relive their hormone-infused high school fanfiction days through a plethora of classic tales, from the Bronte sisters to Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

On Thursday, CNN anchor Carol Costello credited Dan Gainor, the head of the Culture and Media Institute, as a leader in the charge against a new MTV series, which was supposed to follow virgins seeking to lose their virginity. Costello read Gainor’s quote on air: “This is part of the media attempt to mock people who have morals and to treat virginity like a disease that must be cured. She observed that “conservative critics fought back” against the show, forcing its cancellation.

The MTV series, called “My First,” was going to follow virgins preparing to lose their virginity. The casting call for the series read: “We’re looking for adults who are ready to go all the way. Let MTV come along your journey… as you try to lose your virginity!”

Video after the jump.

Dan Savage, the controversial sex advice columnist and noted anti-bullying activist, caused quite a commotion at a high school journalism convention in Seattle two weeks ago when he actually cursed at the youth audience as he spoke negatively about the Bible.

Citizen Link reported August 18 (video also follows with commentary, serious vulgarity warning):

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose accused GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum of focusing too much on foreign policy and social issues, instead of the economy: "You talk about President Obama being an appeaser. You talk about [Obama] being soft on pornography and those kinds of things, rather than the bread and butter economic issues that you say are essential to who will win."

Earlier in the interview, Rose hinted at the left-leaning talking point that the Republican Party was waging a "war on women." He asked the former Pennsylvania senator, "Do you believe that there are particular issues of concern to women more than other voters?" [audio clips available here; video below the jump]

In light of Rick Santorum's promise to "vigorously enforce" federal obscenity laws, CNN questioned whether any candidate should even be talking about pornography right now. Host Fredricka Whitfield expressed her disbelief that the subject was even in the news conversation, during Friday's 11 a.m. hour of Newsroom.

Santorum has not made the issue the centerpiece of his campaign, as GOP strategist Ana Navarro pointed out. It is, however, an important matter for social conservatives who make up a strong voting bloc for the candidate. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Bill Maher unsurprisingly took some vicious cheap shots at Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on HBO's Real Time Friday.

In his final New Rule segment, Maher said, "If Rick Santorum is your youth minister, you’d ask your parents to switch you to the one who just molests" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Rick Santorum had a bit of a testy exchange with NBC's David Gregory on Sunday's Meet the Press.

After Gregory asked if Santorum was going to "rail against areas of our culture that [he] disagree[s] with" if elected president, the former senator smartly replied, "It's so funny. I get the question all the time, 'Why are you talking so much about these social issues'...as people ask me about the social issues" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It didn't take long for CNN to buy into the hype of New York's legalization of same-sex marriage and pose this question: Is it time for marriage equality in America? CNN asked the question on both the 11 a.m. 12 p.m. EDT hours of Newsroom.

The network referred to the words of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who stated that he believes "it is time for marriage equality all across the country." Cuomo signed New York's same-sex marriage bill into law over the weekend.
 

Vice President of Business and Culture Dan Gainor appeared on the January 24 broadcast of Headline News' “The Joy Behar Show" to discuss the raunchy new teen drama from MTV “Skins.” Gainor, who appeared on a panel with Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing Group and Rachel Sklar, editor at large for Mediaite.com, highlighted MTV’s blatant push for ratings and lack of consequences on “Skins.”

Video below fold

Derrick Burts, 24, started working as a porn-film actor in June. By October, he'd contracted the HIV virus. The AP story on Burts contained this jaw-dropping sentence: “He said he began to have doubts about the business after contracting chlamydia, gonorrhea, and herpes in his first month of work, but was convinced to keep working.”

Burts claimed "I wasn't stupid or oblivious, I knew what was out there. But it's not something you think about when they fill your head" with lucrative offers and promises that the work is safe. Lured into the porn world with the promise that he looked like money, Burts concluded his greed was unwise: "Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn't worth your life."

Vanity Fair’s attacked conservative men with its latest political satire: a soft-core pornographic, borderline homosexual and obviously photoshopped “Official 2010-2011 Republican Beefcake Calendar.”  Humorous perhaps, but also an attack on those candidates and certainly not the magazine’sfirst jab at Republicans and conservatives.

In an effort to possibly shift “GOP tidal-wave” dialogue or to simply make depressed Democrats laugh, Vanity Fair has showcased a racy, crotch-shot-laden calendar of headline-making GOP men just one week prior to the important 2010 midterm elections. While only a few of the photographs actually improve the image of the Republican men, by making them look extremely masculine with rippling muscles, most of the photos mock the men by photo-shopping their heads onto men in arguably “gay” poses.