It’s Only Porn If It Involves A Conservative

The Stiletto Blog ^ | June 20, 2008 | The Stiletto

[theothercheek]

Comedian Al Franken, who is looking to unseat incumbent senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), has a problem with porn. Not ribald humor created by someone else that he downloaded to his computer in the privacy of his home, but material he created for public consumption.

A former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, Franken wrote a 1,478-word article titled “Porn-O-Rama!” for the Y2K issue Playboy. Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson gives a pithy summary:

[H]e enthuses that it is an "exciting time for pornographers and for us, the consumers of pornography." The Internet, he explains, is a "terrific learning tool. For example, a couple of years ago, when he was 12, my son used the Internet for a sixth-grade report on bestiality. Joe was able to download some effective visual aids, which the other students in his class just loved." Franken goes on to relate a soft-core fantasy about women providing him with sex who were trained at the "Minnesota Institute of Titology."

[Note: The article is not easily obtainable online, but you can read huge chunks of it for yourself here (warning: do not click on this link if you are easily offended). Franken’s fantasy of “virtual reality” sex acts and carnal relations with robots (“Sexbots”) is every 13-year old nerdy boy’s ultimate wet dream, which says a lot about his maturity and fitness for office.]

Gerson wonders whether Coleman should make a campaign issue out of Franken’s puerile fixation with technosex, and with good reason: “Remember that when Ken Starr detailed Bill Clinton’s most repulsive antics - stained dresses and such - it was Starr who was accused of sexual obssessiveness.”

For his part, Franken says his material is “provocative, touching and funny” and both he and his defenders call him a “political satirist.” Gerson’s column offers additional examples of what passes for satire amongst libs:

He once proposed a television sketch about a female CBS reporter being drugged and raped [Note: This is a reference to a 1995 skit for SNL that never aired in which Andy Rooney is the rapist and Lesley Stahl is the victim.] He has suggested that his next book title might be "I F -- -- -- Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf -- -- -- !" At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: "Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers." …

The objects of Franken's humor - including political opponents and women - are not merely mocked but dehumanized. His trashiness is also nastiness. Rather than lampooning the emptiness and viciousness of our political discourse - a proper role for satire - Franken has powerfully reinforced those failures.

Well dehumanizing “humor” is exactly what you would expect from a man whose utopian ideal is a world in which all emotional intimacy is stripped from lovemaking, reducing sex to mechanics (literally). The Orgasmatron in “Sleeper” is funny, “Porn-O-Rama!” ain’t.

If you don’t want to take The Stiletto’s word for it, here’s a column by Tom Hauser for Politics In Minnesota:

While Porn-O-Rama! is sexist, crass and vulgar, the one thing it is not is funny. Which raises the most important question of all: What kind of judgment does a man have who makes jokes about bestiality and 12-year-olds in the same sentence?

A man who, at the age of 49 in 2000, writes, "The moment Playboy told me I could tackle any subject for its millennium issue, I immediately chose pornography" ...?

And Steven Schier, a political science professor at Minnesota’s Carleton College tells Politico’s Josh Kraushaar: “The thing I don’t understand about Al Franken is how he thought those jokes were funny. The biggest failing of any comedian is failing to be funny.”

So Franken’s supporters defend his soft-core porn fantasy as being funny, while Judge Alex Kozinski’s joke collection is slammed as being pornographic. Guess some people just don’t know funny when they see it.

Note: The Stiletto writes about politics and other stuff at The Stiletto Blog, chosen an Official Honoree in the Political Blogs category by the judges of the 12^th Annual Webby Awards (the Oscars of the online universe) along with CNN Political Ticker, Swampland (Time magazine) and The Caucus (The New York Times).

[Southerngl]

This is only because there is a misconception that all Conseratives dislike porn. hehe

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