Opinion: Mailbag: Sex and lies!

Young Amy Payne may have her opinions about pornography, viewing pornography, etc., but to characterize it as not normal betrays her naivete. Porn is a huge business -- a multi-billion dollar business, in fact. More people spend more on pornography than they do on conventional films. That says it’s conventional in and of itself (or ‘normal,’ to use Ms. Payne’s word). I don’t disagree that power in the business is largely with men over women, but there are plenty of powerful women in the business producing, directing, and distributing adult entertainment, so I don’t buy the argument anymore that porn degrades women. Women can choose to do other things to make money -- they are never left with no choice anymore, otherwise it’s rape and kidnapping. Further, while I certainly understand her moral conviction that the sexual act is sacred, Ms. Payne fails to understand that by porn’s very existence, it proves the opposite. The sex act is not sacred; it is the acting out of a biological impulse as basic as the need to eat. That humans have the ability to choose the sex act to entertain oneself supports the commonality of the sex act. It’s prudish and moralistic to reserve it for marriage or a committed relationship. Eric Potruch

Fine, thank you for the coverage of this criminal administration’s fatal machinations. I have only one question, one I presume you’ve been hearing ever since you posted it: ‘Where the hell was the mainstream media on this issue when these bald-faced lies were being told (and challenged elsewhere with researchable facts)?! What was in it for you and other newspapers to remain obediently silent and complicit while our sons and daughters were being sent off to kill and be killed by other people’s sons and daughters?’ The answer to those burning questions is yet another lie the rightwing hypocrites love to tell: that the mainstream media is all owned and operated by ‘gawd-d*mned leftwing liberals’ who love to publicize anti-governmental reports. IF that were true, then these long-established facts about this treacherous administration would have brought about the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney as mandated by the Constitution and the world would look a lot different today. The outrage expressed toward this traitorous administration’s words and deeds has been very much present this whole time ­ but only on the Internet, where other concerned patriots like myself have been passionately trying to get supposedly (!) independent, principled and neutral journals like the L.A. & N.Y. Times to finally report these known facts -- and trying and trying Š In fact, if the media had actually done its job (to investigate, not merely obediently repeat propaganda), this whole Iraqi nightmare might have remained on the neocons’ duplicitous drawing board. Instead we have all continued to be subjected to even more lies and excuses by charlatans of all political stripes and their media lapdogs ­ and watched the mounting death tolls of our ‘supported’ troops and innocent Iraqi civilians. The hypocritical war criminals on the right have been aided and abetted by the spineless, equally hypocritical wimps on the left who can’t be bothered to honor their oaths of office either. Beth Jones, expat fromMonticello IA

As a onetime media watcher, this reported forgery suggested to me that the Bush administration was intent on going to war against Saddam Hussain. Creating a forgery seemed to me a pretty big deal. This was a story! Few other media watchers in Washington seem to have noticed! Wasn’t this an obvious tip of the Bush hand, just as the Cheney August speech was? The answer to me was ‘yes,’ but those who agreed said, ‘Well, he obviously wanted to go to war. That’s obvious.’ But a connection between the White House and a commissioned forgery? That’s a big deal! An impeachable offense, a Pearl Harbor. This was not, as George Tenet remarked, ‘We got the intelligence wrong.’ This was cooking the books. Hey, George Bush took us for fools. Hey, he was right! Joel Rochow