Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Rod Dreher Does Porn

OK, maybe that headline is misleading, but if it made you click the link, you should read Rod's column.

Despite all my disagreements with and criticism of Dreher, the problem of pornography is real. And it's spectacular.

Groan. I've got to stop using that joke so often. But I've been joking about sex since before I could spell "sex." Amidst all the tragedies (what heartbreaking stories a reporter hears) I try to keep my mind on the farce. Part of the problem is that people lack the perspective -- the objectivity about the absurdity of our sex-obsessed culture -- to admit how ridiculous their own desires really are.

My office TV won't get CNN or Fox News, so it's usually tuned to MSNBC. Sunday evening, they aired a couple of hours of re-runs of Chris Hansen's To Catch A Predator series and there was that tragedy/comedy reaction I always have to those shows.

"What were you thinking?" Hansen asks, after reciting some pathetic chat-room transcript where a 50-year-old teacher or clergyman was making ridiculous sex-talk with a 13-year-old "boy" or "girl" who was (of course) an undercover investigator. The perp shows up at the house with a pocketful of condoms and ruins his own life. Felony rap. Sex-offender registry. Etc.

How stupid do you have to be to think that a 13-year-old is going to go into a chat-room and arrange a rendezvous with a middle-aged man? Putting aside the moral repugnance, try to think about the vast chasm between the perv's fantasy and the reality of actual teenagers. (And leave the Jeff Goldblum-Tania Raymonde romance out of this.)

See? There I go again with the wisecracks. At any rate, read Rod Dreher's column. Seriously.

5 comments:

  1. Don't bother reading Dreher's article. He almost immediately jumps into a rant about how a serial rapist used porn.

    How old is this tripe? About as old as history itself. I'm pretty sure that philosophy 101 courses have a name for this kind of ninnery.

    Sigh. Show me the list of the men who read porn and did not turn into a serial rapist.

    Now try to understand that just because a serial rapist chose to enjoy porn does not mean that a man who enjoys porn is going to turn into a serial rapist.

    How many times do we have to point this out to the morons who keep making this (non)connection?

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  2. It's funny you should mention To Catch a Predator. Tuning into that is a guilty “watching a train wreck” sort of pleasure of mine.

    I’ve always wondered whether or not that show was pure entrapment though. As you say, it’s hard to believe there are any 13 year old girls or boys going out trying to arrange trysts with pervs 10 or 20 years their elder. What if the only people online tempting these chat room weirdos are undercover cops? And what if it’s only these cops that are goading the freaks into talking dirty and sending filthy pictures? These cradle robbers are pretty repulsive but if they’re only being drawn into attempting to commit a crime that they’d never be in a position to commit because teens wouldn’t give them the time of day then I have to wonder whether Chris Hansen and the boys are really accomplishing much of anything. My guess is that the crime these pervs are attempting to commit (going over to some strange kid's house for sex after trolling the internet) is extraordinarily rare.

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  3. I'm sorry, but anyone who would use that Dobson interview with Ted Bundy as evidence of ANYTHING is really a bit of a fool. Ted Bundy was good at two things: killing women and manipulating anyone he didn't kill. Dobson was a very silly man for publicizing his conversation with Bundy, and Dreher simply replicates the error by using anything Bundy said as evidence of anything at all.

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  4. Dude, I'm at the stage where I have a hard time dealing with the chasm between the fantary and 30-year-olds.

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  5. Boutique conservatives being boring again. Dreher should go back to attacking conservatives because they don't own craftman style homes or import coffee beans from the LOCAL organic co-op

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