Playboy filled with… Gasp… Adult Content!

What is wrong with people? Eight years ago, Al Franken wrote a satirical piece for Playboy entitled “Porn-O-Rama,” in which he describes visiting a fictional, virtual-reality sex laboratory.

Among the items that have folks all bent out of shape are graphic descriptions of sex and a reference to his 12 year old son using the internet to research a paper on bestiality. Again, the article is satirical in nature. None of this actually happened.

Now, all of this was brought to light, apparently, last week when local Republicans began circulating the article, or information about the article – or making wakes about the article – I am not sure what they did, really, as I haven’t been able to locate the actual article anywhere on line and everyone up in arms about the thing makes reference to it, but won’t actually make it available to the general public so we can make up our own minds about it. Anyway, the Republicans brought the issue up and a few of the local Democrats took the bait and have been publicly and breathlessly lamenting their chances in the congressional and senatorial elections this fall because of Al and his”indefensible” writing and won’t someone please think of the children….

Betty McCollum, Kieth Ellison, and Tim Walz have all apparently lost their minds:

“As a woman, a mother, a former teacher, and an elected official, I find this material completely unacceptable,” McCollum said of Franken’s piece. “I can tell you it’s not playing comfortably in St. Paul, and I can’t imagine this politically radioactive material is doing very well in suburban and rural districts.”

“Ellison said the Franken article made him “uncomfortable,” citing passages on oral sex and bestiality.

Walz called the piece “pretty inappropriate.”

Of course it’s inappropriate! And, in the wrong context or in the wrong venue, it may be unacceptable. But let’s not forget that this was in written for and published in Playboy Magazine. You remember, that adult magazine with the pictures of the nekkid womens and the frank sex talk and the boobs and the butts and whatnot? If you are uncomfortable with that sort of thing, don’t buy it and don’t read it. No one is forcing this on you.

McCollum said the piece, in which sex acts are explicitly described, is tantamount to pornography, noting that the Star Tribune would not publish it in its entirety.

Scandal! Porn in a porn magazine! But really, so what? The Star Tribune wouldn’t print most of what appears in Playboy. I can’t think of a daily news periodical that would. And Playboy, bless them, wouldn’t print most of what you find in your local paper. Context.

“I have to ask myself, can I explain it to my 11-year-old daughter? I’d have considerable difficulty,” Ellison said, adding that voters who have talked with him about it are “just sort of appalled.”

I would have to ask why would you bother discussing this with your 11 year old daughter? Do you regularly open the latest issue of Playboy and go over things with your kids? Who would do that? Do your hear dirty jokes at parties and repeat them to your children? Do you go make Powerpoint presentations of you and your spouse and run the slides past the kids? No! It would be inappropriate.

But Al Franken wrote an adult piece for an adult magazine. Eight years ago. Seems like the appropriate venue to me. It wasn’t news then, and it shouldn’t be news to anyone now. The only reason you might need to discuss this with your children is because some adults with their panties in a bunch dragged it out of its appropriate context and into the public sphere. So, let’s place the blame where it belongs, with those holier-than-thou, moralizing hypocrites or whom “family values” is a cheap political tool to further their own political agenda.

A. Whitney Brown pointed out years ago in his book “The Big Picture” that it’s the people who get all riled up about funny things being inappropriate, that make them inappropriate in the first place by taking them out of their proper context. He illustrated his point by referring to an incident in which Ronald Reagan, during a sound check prior to a radio interview, said, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” It was a private joke among the people in the room and their was laughter. It is important to remember that this was in the midst of the cold war, and there was a thick tension between US and Russia. Was the Joke inappropriate? Perhaps. But it was made among friends and in private. But, it was the folks who broadcast the thing and put it out there for all to hear – who took it out of it’s context – that made it into an incident.

For me it all comes down to it being OK to tell a dirty joke to people who like hearing dirty jokes.