Pornography

In a report on the Republican senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Nancy Cordes portrayed tea party favorite Christine O'Donnell's conservative social views as being on the fringe: "[She] has crusaded for abstinence and against porn. Writing once that 'when a married person uses pornography, it compromises the spouse's purity.'"

Cordes noted O'Donnell's position on those issues following a sound bite of primary opponent Mike Castle declaring: "I think she's too extreme for Delaware." In another sound bite after Cordes's comment, editor-in-chief of The Hotline, Reid Wilson, explained: "If Christine O'Donnell wins the primary election she's going to have a very difficult time winning in what is still a very blue, very Democratic state."

In concluding the report, Cordes observed: "...until recently this seat in Delaware seemed like it was in the bag." Fill-in co-host Erica Hill replied: "Ah, but no longer."

Following the report, Hill interviewed O'Donnell, focusing on the candidate's position in the polls and financial issues being raised in the campaign. Throughout the interview, the headline on screen read: "Primary Day; Controversial Tea Party Candidate Takes On Establishment."

The popular classifieds website Craigslist may not have a legal liability when it comes to use of its services for sex trafficking and prostitution, but they have a social responsibility to address the issue, Culture and Media Institute Assistant Editor Nathan Burchfiel told CBN's "Newswatch" Sept. 9.

The site recently shut down its "Adult Services" section after 17 state attorneys general sent a letter to the company outlining its role in illegal activities including child prostitution and sex trafficking. The section is no longer available to U.S. users, but Burchfiel pointed out that the change doesn't seem to have had much effect.

"What they've done is blocked off this one section of the site in the United States only, it's still available internationally, and these companies, these businesses that have been advertising essentially prostitution, some of them underage prostitution, illegal sex trafficking, have just moved those ads to different parts of the site," he told anchor Wendy Griffith. "They're still getting up there. They're still really easy to find, frankly."

A Sept. 8 Culture and Media Institute report noted that while Craigslist appears to have addressed the issue, ads for brothels and other "adult services" are still readily available across the site. Dozens of listings appeared in other sections of the Washington, D.C., Craigslist, including numerous ads for business under investigation by local authorities.

Children today are often so voracious and versed in the latest communications technology that they make their parents feel like Miles Standish and Betsy Ross. Three-fourths of young people between 12 and 17 now own cell phones, reports the Pew Internet and American Life Project.  And get this: 87 percent of those who send text messages told researchers that they sleep with or next to their phones. Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, and one in three send more than 100, or more than 3,000 texts a month. By contrast, only 30 percent of teenagers talk on those caveman “land line” phones.

But all this cell-phone (not to mention Internet) usage carries new risks – even new crimes.

Last year, the hot trend was sexting – teenagers sending each other lascivious messages (and often nude or semi-nude photographs). If a teenaged boy received a nude photo of a friend and e-mailed it to buddies or posted it on a Facebook or MySpace page, there was the very real possibility of being prosecuted for distributing child pornography.

Now there’s a new and related crime in the court houses. It’s called “sextortion.”

E! Online "The Awful Truth" columnist Ted Casablanca on Aug. 21 called the graphic depictions of sex and violence on HBO's vampire drama "True Blood" "highly ironic" and promoted the show as "great fun."

Casablanca defended the show on Fox News Channel's "Geraldo at Large" in a discussion with host Geraldo Rivera and Culture and Media Institute Assistant Editor Nathan Burchfiel. The debate was sparked by the controversy surrounding a recent Rolling Stone magazine cover that depicted "True Blood" stars naked and covered in (fake) blood.

Burchfiel pointed out that while the shows originate on premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime, many "worst-of" clips are available online within hours of broadcast, and many popular shows like "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" have found their way onto basic cable via syndication, a likely future for "True Blood."

"It's highly ironic, Geraldo," Casablanca said of the show, adding, "It's a highly intelligent, very clever indictment of the very conversation that we're having right now and it's an allegory to our times."

Hugh Hefner, America's most celebrated and legendary pornographer, has less and less reason to celebrate. His Playboy magazine empire is crumbling — he may even be bought out by competitors — and his prototypical leering pose with girls young enough to be his great-granddaughters is now just plain creepy. His 2009 Christmas card featured 83-year-old Hefner standing between two 20-year-old twins who are his newest live-in girlfriends. Each was wearing a pink tank top with "Hef" painted on it in white. Hefner's women are forever the plastic toys under his tree.

Into this sad picture comes documentary filmmaker Brigitte Berman with a gushy new two-hour infomercial titled "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel." How gushy is it? Washington Post critic Michael O'Sullivan found "the Hugh Hefner in this movie is Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and William Kunstler all rolled into one."

In fact, Berman is so in love with her subject's cultural and political influence, she told one interviewer that when the news came out that Martin Luther King Jr. had cheated on his wife, Coretta, "that never affected 'I have a dream,' so I found it really curious" that Hefner couldn't be seen more as a civil rights hero and less as a seedy porn king.

CNN refreshingly devoted an entire segment on Wednesday's American Morning to highlighting pornography's destructive impact on society, especially Internet porn. Guest Gail Dines detailed the harmful impact of pornography on men's sexuality, and anchor John Roberts even cited a study that found that 56% of divorces "involve one party...who has an obsessive interest in pornographic websites."

Roberts brought on Dines, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston and author of "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality," at the end of the 7 am Eastern hour. After citing the gargantuan number of pornographic websites on the Internet, the anchor first asked, "You say in your book and in studies that you've done that pornography today is not your father's Playboy, that it's mostly gonzo porn that's really changing our attitudes towards sexuality and women. What are you worried about?"

Dines answered that her concern was the "level of brutality and cruelness, in pornography's affecting the way that men think about women, and it's affecting the way they think about themselves and the way they construct ideas about sexuality. Because the more men view pornography, the more they begin to think like the pornographic world."

Eccentric comedian and former talk show host Roseanne Barr claimed on her blog July 8 that Republicans are avid kiddie porn viewers who like to have sex with young children.

The liberal activist and comedy queen was blogging about sicko children's author K.P. Bath, who was just slapped with a six years prison term for child porn possession last week.

In an item titled "typical republican child porn consuming geek," Barr posted a mug shot of Bath and wrote that he was "a typical republican who loves reagan and palin and despises the 'nanny state' and socialism."

The Bravo cable network has a new reality show called “Work of Art,” a competition dedicated to finding the next great American artist. The half-dozen contestants, 20-something aspiring artists all, enter the famous Phillips de Pury art auction house. Mr. de Pury himself ushers them into the special room where they are presented with a collection of paintings by Andres Serrano, the man who came to fame in 1989 with the ghastly photograph, sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts, depicting a crucifix dunked in a jar of urine. They are hugely impressed. The final painting they are shown is just that — the original "Piss Christ." They are in awe, quietly expressing their amazement at the talent. And then the door opens and in steps the master. The students freeze, eyes bright, mouths agape. The curator announces, "the great, great Serrano!" One girl instinctively bows reverently.

Serrano explains his art. "Life, art, politics. It's all the same s—-.... People in general always think their s—- is the best. So if you really want to see some real s—-, check out my s—-." Six times he utters the expletive; the students giggle with glee.

It must be difficult to offend a company that makes its money off pictures of naked women (to be fair, there are also articles ... apparently). The folks at Playboy Portugal managed to do just that.

On Wednesday, news broke that the Portuguese edition of Playboy magazine published several photographs depicting Jesus Christ observing pornographic scenes.

On Thursday, the parent company, which licenses the Playboy name to international publishers, distanced itself from the controversy.

"We did not see or approve the cover and pictorial in the July issue of Playboy Portugal," Playboy's vice president of public relations, Theresa Hennessy, reportedly told the gossip blog Gawker in an email. "It is a shocking breach of our standards, and we would not have allowed it to be published if we had seen it in advance.

Marking the death of an atheist by depicting Jesus Christ in sex scenes might seem like a non-sequitur. Somehow, it made sense to the Portuguese edition of Playboy magazine.

The magazine features an actor portraying Jesus in at least four pornographic photos, including the cover, where he cradles an apparently dead - and bare-breasted - woman. Another photo depicts Jesus watching a lesbian kiss, while another shows him observing a topless woman reading a book.

The images are reportedly meant to commemorate the death of Portuguese author Jose Saramago. He wrote, among many other books, "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ," which "explored the psychological motivations that led Jesus to become a prophet." Saramago later wrote that the controversy around the book led him to move fromPortugal to the Canary Islands.

It's not the first time an international edition of the "men's magazine" has caused a stir by depicting a Christian figure. In its December 2008 issue, the Mexican edition featured a model dressed - barely - like the Virgin Mary

ABC has pulled its ads from gossip blogger Perez Hilton's Web site, PerezHilton.com, after he caught legal flack for posting upskirt photos of 17-year-old Disney star Miley Cyrus. However, several big-name companies still have ads running on the snarky blogger's site.

Amid speculation that Hilton may be slapped with kiddie-porn charges over the lurid photos, ABC has removed its ads for "The View" from the popular gossip site. But other advertisers appear to be sticking by Hilton. TV Land still had a full-page background promotion and two smaller ads on PerezHilton.com, and Apple iTunes and Microsoft's search engine Bing still had advertisements up as of Wednesday afternoon.

The drama started Monday, when Hilton posted a link to a photo of Cyrus getting out of a car in a tight white dress - and apparently, no underwear. Outrage erupted over the photo, with some calling the image "child pornography" since Cyrus is legally a minor. Hilton quickly removed the picture, but has brushed off the incident as a "fake" controversy.

It's odd that Microsoft, which owns Bing, would opt to keep advertising. It has recently been touting its own crusade against kiddie-porn.

Perez Hilton - he of Carrie Prejean bashing fame - may be staring in the face of child porn charges in the near future.  You may recall that Hilton served as judge in the 2009 Miss USA competition, and asked Prejean her view of same-sex marriage. When Prejean offered an honest answer voicing her belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, Hilton expressed his displeasure by taking to the internet and bashing Prejean as a ‘dumb b****'. 

Seems Perez has graduated from name-calling tantrums, and an accomplished career as a verminous outer of gay celebrities, and turned his attention to a developing career in child porn.

Ben Shapiro over at Big Hollywood reports:

"He (Hilton) linked via his Twitter account to a picture of rising Madonna wannabe Miley Cyrus climbing out of a car in a short skirt and no underwear.  In the picture, which has been removed, Cyrus' genitals are allegedly clearly visible."

Of course, now that the heat is on, Perez has taken to back-pedaling, claiming the photo was a fake.  In a statement on his blog, Hilton said, ""Do you think I'm stupid enough to post a photo of Miley if she's not wearing any underwear down there?"

That's what we in the business call a rhetorical question. 

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

Many -- too many -- red-blooded American boys grow up on Japanese video-game systems from Sony and Nintendo. Their cultural interests can extend into Japanese cartoons ("anime") and some even discover Japanese pornographic cartoons ("hentai"). How so? Boys play games and watch cartoons like the "Dragon Ball Z" series, but can quickly surf the Web and find related cartoon titles like "Dragonball X," only to learn they are hard-core porn.

But that isn't all video-gaming boys can discover. CNN reports that Japanese porn also extends to sick video games that center on raping girls and women. One such game is called "RapeLay." The game begins with a young teenage girl on a subway platform who asks the video player in a high and tiny voice, "Can I help you with something?" The player then chooses a method of sexual assault. Players can also follow the girl onto the train and assault her older sister and her mother. Rape is not an option on the menu; rape is the entire point of the game.

With the help of the MRC's talented Bob Parks, the Culture and Media Institute produced a video based on its report, "Sex, Violence and Hate: the Top 10 Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women."

From Playboy magazine's "hate f---" list to comparing Sarah Palin to a case of "herpes," the media took every opportunity to tear down conservative women, not based on what they had to say or the values they promoted, but by commenting on their looks and perceived sexual behavior in incredibly misogynic ways.

Be sure to visit the MRC's video sharing Web site, Eyeblast, for more examples of liberal bias.  

March is Women's History Month, in which we acknowledge the accomplishments and contributions of women in history and in society today.

But for a select group of women - conservative women - their accomplishments and contributions are rarely celebrated but often demeaned and mocked in sexist - and crassly sexual - ways.

The Culture & Media Insitute looked back at what the media had to say over the past year about some of today's most prominent conservative women, including Michelle Malkin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney, and compiled a list of the 10 worst attacks on these women who dare to speak out in favor of conservative values.

Much of the criticism was the worst sort of misogyny with a dose of violence and disgusting adolescent sex references thrown in for good measure. The media outlets in question ranged from Playboy magazine to MSNBC to Sirius XM radio and included comments from both men and women.

The message that rang through loud and clear was that perspectives from conservative women were not appreciated or welcomed, and if a woman stepped out of line, she deserved whatever treatment she received.

USA Today’s Jon Swartz reported March 1 that the porn industry is suffering financially. Swartz detailed all of the reasons that the porn industry is experiencing financial woes, as though it was just another suffering business.

Swartz lamented that, “The adult-entertainment industry is in a tailspin, shattering the notion that it is one of the few recession-proof industries. The slump is especially stinging because technology – which helped adult-entertainment enterprises reap riches through innovations such as video streaming, webcameras and online payments – is contributing to the misery.” The poor porn industry.

According to Joy Behar, monogamous marriages are a "life sentence."

Porn star Ron Jeremy, Craig Gross, founder of the anti-porn ministry xxxchurch.com, and psychiatrist Reef Karim appeared on Behar's Feb. 24 CNN Headline News program to discuss porn and sex addiction.

Behar compared monogamy to a "life sentence" after Jeremy noted that it's "a blessing" if a man is "sexually addicted to his wife" after "five or six years of marriage."

"If you're just sleeping with your wife, that doesn't sound like an addiction, that sounds like a life sentence," Behar quipped.

Got an idealized notion of Christmas? A cherished memory, or a favorite carol or story? The simple smell of pine needles in your living room? Do you insist on celebrating the birth of the savior?

If so, you’re at war, like it or not.

The main war on Christmas – we’ll call it the conventional war – has been well-documented, and it goes on, with victories and defeats for both sides. In Loudoun County, Va. on Dec. 1, the Board of Supervisors reversed a ban on religious holiday displays on the courthouse lawn. (The one supervisor who voted “no” said, “I am concerned that this motion would turn the courthouse grounds into a public circus.”) Meanwhile, in Arizona, public school children remain unable to use Christmas themes when decorating ornaments for the Capitol Christmas tree.

There is plenty to report from the conventional front. But there are other fronts. There is the sexualization of the holiday, either in service to commercialism or out of the lefty arts community’s desire to be “transgressive” (read, vile and offensive). And there are the attempts squash the mysteries and magic that accompany even a traditional secular Christmas.

So from “living” lingerie mannequins to Frosty’s “porn collection,” and from the lies you tell about Santa to our president’s “non-religious” observance, here are some dispatches from the war on Christmas, 2009.

Some memories that still define the warmest moments of American television are the long-running animated Christmas specials. There’s "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (first aired in 1964), "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) and "Frosty the Snowman" (1969). Many grown-ups remember all of those shows once aired just on CBS.

So somehow it’s still shocking that the soulless, cynical people running CBS today would find a way to trash that memory. An online video has surfaced called "Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman," a mash-up of classic "Frosty" scenes (and clips from the less-than-classic 1992 cartoon "Frosty Returns") along with a collection of audio graffiti – smutty sex lines voiced over by actor Neil Patrick Harris, a star of the CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother."

At first, it might seem like other YouTube travesties where strangers crudely degrade Disney cartoons like "Aladdin" with dirty talk. But then sadly, it quickly becomes clear that this one was a corporate advertisement made by CBS itself in a cheap attempt to create a "viral video" sensation promoting its Monday night adult comedies.

Playboy model Joanna Krupa is playing up her Catholic roots in a typically provocative naked ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Krupa, fresh off a successful stint on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, is part of the left-wing lobby’s "Be An Angel For Animals" campaign. In the Christmas season, the latest ad features Krupa naked but hidden behind a  strategically placed holy cross. Paul Bedard of U.S. News & World Report noted the Catholic League went into "battle mode" on this one Said its leader Bill Donohue:

"PETA is a fraud. It also has a long and disgraceful record of exploiting Christian and Jewish themes to hawk its ugly services. Those who support this organization sorely need a reality check. They also need a course in Ethics 101."

Donahue said before Thanksgiving, Krupa was featured topless with a dog and a rosary. Bedard then sought out the other side:

"American Idol" runner-up Adam Lambert's vocals weren't top-notch at last night's American Music Awards, but nobody really noticed. How could they, given his over-the-top and in-your-face sexual choreography?

Lambert's act during the show, aired on ABC, featured male dancers on leashes, an open-mouth kiss between Lambert and his male keyboardist, and simulated oral sex, both male-on-male and female-on-male.

Naturally, boundary-pushing Hollywood writers hailed Lambert's performance.

"As a TV viewer, I thought Lambert's performance was a gas, a delight, a blast of brash vulgarity in the midst of ordinary vulgarity," wrote Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker.

How much do lefties dislike Glenn Beck? So much that the vitriol has bled over into low-rent, soon-to-be-obsolete publications like Playboy magazine.

In the December 2009 issue of Playboy, Thomas Frank "takes down" the Fox News Channel host by analyzing the conservative movement and how Beck rose to prominence. Frank, with an obvious need to meet a high-word count in mind, attempts to dismantles Beck by attacking his Christmas book, "The Christmas Sweater" and his other books, his admiration for Thomas Paine, his fear the U.S. Constitution is being trampled upon and his activist efforts to curb this intrusion by combating socialism, communism and other ideologies that could be deemed un-American.

Beck Response on his Nov. 12 program below

The Style section of the Washington Post isn’t exactly a repository of old-fashioned small town values, which made staff writer Monica Hesse’s Nov. 12 article that much more surprising.

Her piece: “Publicly, a whole new lewdness,” related the stories of commuters, airline passengers and others exposed to “secondhand smut” – that is, people in the uncomfortable position of having neighbors watching porn in public on laptops and BlackBerrys.

“But the increasing popularity of laptops and handheld devices, and the prevalence of wireless Internet access, means there’s a greater chance of becoming a bystander to a complete stranger's viewing proclivities,” Hesse wrote.

One anecdote involved a woman who was on a long flight with her young children, when “her friendly seatmate cued up a cartoon on his laptop. Her four children were enthralled; she hoped listening in might keep them occupied. Then the cartoon characters started doing things that cartoon characters should not be doing. Naked things …”

If we’ve learned anything in recent months, it’s that if you’re a racist, a Marxist, a Maoist, a domestic terrorist or any other variety of anti-American nut, the safest place to be is in the company of Barack Obama. If you can stay off the radar of Fox News and don’t get caught on tape giving advice on running a brothel for fun and profit, you get to influence the most powerful executive in the world.

Case in point: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings. While nobody’s yet found out exactly what he knows about safe schools, we do know he’s an expert at pushing a gay agenda in public grammar schools. We know he’s praised the founder of the North American Man-Boy Love Association. And thanks to “the pro-family action center for Massachusetts,” Mass Resistance, now we know he’s an art maven. (Warning: site contains many offensive images from the installation. The site’s blog has also been flagged by Google as objectionable – which, given Google’s political leanings, may be a badge of honor.)

The programming gurus at MTV are basing their profit-making strategy on the viewer demographic of 12 to 34 – as if there’s no difference in maturity level between 12 and 34. MTV’s brand of sensationalistic "reality TV" was easily demonstrated on the night of October 5, when they aired a prime-time marathon (from 7 pm Eastern to 1 am) of their hour-long documentary series called "True Life." Just the episode titles were jaw-dropping.

1. "I’m Out."

2. "I’m Polyamorous."

3. "I’m Bisexual."

4. "I’m Changing My Sex." (This ran twice in a row.)

5. "I Work In The Sex Industry."

To the Washington Post editorial board, restrictive campaign finance measures are perfectly valid, constitutional exercises in protecting the public, but heaven forbid a state lawmaker would want to prevent the taxpayer-subsidized screening of porn on public college campuses.

In "Rated XXX," the Post's editorial board today declared obscene a mild measure aimed at preventing -- but not banning -- porn on campus.

You may recall that earlier this year, a student committee that selects films for screening at the University of Maryland's Hoff Theater picked a XXX skin flick as part of its repertoire. Following scrutiny by legislators, University of Maryland administrators forbade the ticketed screening of the entire film, although a student group was permitted to screen a small portion of the film as part of a panel discussion on obscenity and free speech.

"Can skimpy bikinis raise awareness about breast cancer?" asked 'Good Morning America's Robin Roberts.

On September 22, Roberts and Andrea Canning discussed a new public service announcement campaign called "Save the Boobs" that uses a "less-is-more approach" to call attention to breast cancer.

Roberts tsked at the "provocative footage," quoting critics that say the ads are "distracting from the message." Canning agreed, adding, "One PSA even looks more like a beer commercial than a breast cancer awareness spot."

What is up with the media pitying the pornography industry?

On July 15, CNBC aired a special highlighting the industry’s financial woes. Then the Los Angeles Times did the same Aug. 10, in the article: “Tough Times in the Porn Industry.” Ben Fritz's article described the same economic problems the industry is facing, a weak economy, online porn and piracy, but failed to include any industry critics or point out negative aspects of porn.

Instead, Fritz focused on a porn actress who is struggling financially. He said Savannah Stern used to earn $150,000 a year, but now only makes a $50,000. Stern used to drive a Mercedes, but Fritz wrote, “She’s replacing it with a used Chevy Trailblazer-from her parents.”

Stern lamented that, “The opportunities in this industry really are disappearing. It’s extremely stressful.”

Here’s a dilemma: You come to find out that Cilla, the sister who’s been generously contributing thousands of dollars to your three kids’ college funds, is actually a porn star. The college cash turns out to be the ill-gotten gains of immoral exploitation. You’re horrified and consider returning the money. Your husband disagrees. What do you do?

“G-Rated Sister in San Diego” wrote to the syndicated advice column “Dear Abby” for advice. Understandably, she wrote, “Abby, I don't want my sister's sexual exploits paying for our kids' education … Should we return the money? And if we do, is it possible to do it without causing a rift between my sister and me?”