Fifty Shades of Stupid (Updated) 3
The internet is awash in porn. If you don’t find it, it will find you.
In most towns of any size, you can’t travel more than a few miles in any direction without passing “adult novelty” stores or their less classy cousins (which for some reason always have yellow windows).
Old people (like me) do it in bathtubs on television during Wheel of Fortune.
Even Publishers Clearing House markets “marital how-to” videos, or, as I like to describe them, porn for people who are against porn.
And now some bozo writes a series of racy novels (which I am sure are not in the same class as A Man with a Maid, which has been in and out of print for over a century and read mostly by not-women) that many women seem to like, thereby causing (mostly not-women) pundit heads to explode all over the place.
Women sometimes like to read about it too.
Oh, the horror.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
July 15, 2012 at 11:20 am
Less. They sell those books in the supermarket that I walk to. I regard them more as books for people who don’t like books, in this case — female. I suspect that those who buy them because of the news furor, or some idea that they’re bestseller, do not read them, indeed just want to have them so they can say they do at barbecue or on the ‘social network.’ However, I’m jaundiced, whenever I see the bestseller list I see books for people who don’t like books or who don’t read, which is perhaps the publishing industry’s biggest problem.
COWARDS, by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe. (Threshold Editions/Mercury Radio Arts, $28.) The radio host and founder of GBTV discusses 13 lies that politicians, academics and the media perpetuate. (†) 4 Buy 7 13 THE GREAT DESTROYER, by David Limbaugh. (Regnery, $29.95.) The talk show host’s brother, a lawyer and columnist, describes the president’s “war on the Republic.” (†)
You think the people who buy these actually read them cover to cover? Regnery’s biggest sellers are Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris. Glenn Beck doesn’t even write his books. I know one of his ghost-writers, believe it or not, a reader of my blog. I was astounded to find this. He would call me and say he was ghost-writing a techno-thriller and wanted to know what I thought about extremists and domestic terrorism trends, so we chatted for an hour and he told me I knew who the person was who he was doing it for but couldn’t tell me. I just shrugged it off. It turned out to be Glenn Beck’s techno-thriller, The Overton Window, which was also a best-seller. I read some of it in the supermarket, out of curiosity, just flabbergasted. When he e-mails me now I ignore him as small punishment.
But, anyway, I was told by a woman next door that these 50 Shades books were the best, that everyone had them.
July 15, 2012 at 2:47 pm
Three decades ago, it was Anne Rice’s Beauty trilogy, and it could indeed stand up to A Man with a Maid. If anything, it is much much darker.
I knew several women who read each book in one sitting, but it was written under a nom de porn, there was still some discretion in public discourse (no old folks doing it in bathtubs during Wheel of Fortune), so it didn’t get the press and male pundit heads didn’t explode at the idea that women might actually enjoy thinking and reading about sex.
July 16, 2012 at 10:40 am
“Old people (like me) do it in bathtubs on television during Wheel of Fortune”
Does Pat Sajak join in or just watch?