Porn

Gotcha, didn't I? Now you wonder, where's this baby going? The answer lies in the variety of pornography and how the term applies to the serious, the mundane and finally, the humorous.

On the terminally unfunny side let me quote the fantastic writer and author Diane Ackerman from her non-fiction work entitled The Zookeeper's Wife wherein the protagonist, Antonina Zabinski, tried to maintain her sense of order and civility in a war-torn Warsaw in 1939:
The savagery didn't serve hunger or necessity, it wasn't a political gambit, the doomed animals weren't being culled because they'd become too abundant in the wild. Not only was the SS ignoring their value as notable creatures with unique personalities, the men didn't even credit animals with basic fear or pain. It was a kind of pornography, in which the brief frisson of killing outweighed the animals' lives. "How many humans will die like this in the coming months?" Antonina asked herself.

On to current events - the ever-thoughtful Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek, recently stated: To rehash the case against Cheney at this late hour in the Bush administration would be the rough equivalent of pornography - briefly engaging, perhaps, but utterly predictable and finally repetitive.

On the the lighter side, we have a senior editor of Atlantic magazine writing an article in the October 2008 edition asking "Is pornography adultery?" He cites, get this, Christie Brinkley's husband's addiction to internet pornography! Come on guy - you're married to Christie frickin' Brinkley for goodness sake!
He also references my favorite hypocritical pol, Elliott Spitzer, the ex-governor of New York - I remember the fawning cover story in Fortune not so long ago wherein they praised him for correcting so much of the "corruption" in many businesses and industries and projected him as a future presidential candidate. No thank you Mr Spitzer, your character comes up short.

Finally, if you search "pornography" in Google, among the first responses is "Librarians in Pornography" - a bibliography of racy books featuring librarians - there are 49 of them - now that's funny!!