Secondhand Smut

(Image Credit: Picked up here.)

We intended to break our unconscionably long blog silence with a detailed, trenchant analysis of the health insurance reform debate that would settle the burning question of how bad a bill has to be before you pronounce it Truly, Totally, Irredeemably Sucktastic and declare your opposition to it. (Fortunately, others have weighed in on this question. Bill Clinton urges the Senate to hold its nose and vote, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the better than nothing, etc., etc. Dr. Marcia Angell disagrees, arguing that the bill passed by the House is so flawed, so unlikely to control costs and offer anything like comprehensive coverage, that it might actually be worse than nothing.)

Or, we thought, perhaps we'd offer up one of our Deep Feelings about Big Events pieces on how Virginia's execution earlier this week of convicted DC-area sniper John Allen Muhammad had somehow failed to provide us with the sense of closure we had been led to expect by those who were in such a big hurry to prosecute, kill, and bury a man who was clearly insane at the time of his killing spree right here in our ridiculously large back yard in the fall of 2002. We remember that time vividly -- the walks we didn't take because our beautiful trail suddenly felt unsafe, the series of jokes Moose came up with as a way of coping with her anxiety. ("Why does the FBI think George W. Bush might be the sniper?" she quipped in an e-mail to friends. "Because they both work short hours, run really fast, and take weekends completely off." By the way, we believe this series of publicly broadcast tasteless jokes may have been what led some misguided souls to encourage Moose to start blogging.) In any case, John Allen Muhammad is dead, and we don't feel one bit better. In fact, we feel rather worse, implicated in the sickness of a culture that thinks an eye for an eye is the model of justice to which we should aspire. Really, kids? Is this the best we can do?

Or, in light of recent electoral setbacks (in, you know, Virginia, New Jersey, and Maine), we thought we might crank out another rant on how the Hopers and Changers in Obama's Washington are likely to go right on being the Waiters, Seers, and Thumb-Twiddlers when it comes to LGBT issues. Fortunately, law prof Nan Hunter beat us to that punch with a smart bit of blognostication suggesting that a likely upshot of those losses is that d. p. benefits for federal employees is likely to jump ahead of a trans-inclusive employment non-discrimination bill because it will be seen as safer (=less likely to arouse a storm of wing-nut controversy than anything involving the T-word). Way to go, Dems. You inspire us, as always, with your profiles in courage.

Or, Moose insisted, we could blog about the weather, which, thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ida, is miserably, apocalyptically, Their Eyes Were Watching God-ingly bad in the Washington area right now. This is particularly difficult for Moose, who keeps finding herself looking out the window at the endless, hideous rain and then clicking back to iPhoto, which has dozens of pictures of the epically gorgeous blue skies of her undisclosed location. She is glad to be home, but she wishes god would turn the lights back on.

Anyway, we might have blogged brilliantly and productively on any of those topics, but our plans were derailed by a story in this morning's Wa Po on a matter of great social and political import that had somehow totally escaped our notice. (You see? Newspapers still matter! Let's hear it for dead trees, even if, technically, we were alerted to this story by way of University Diaries.) The Style section story by Monica Hesse focuses on recent dramatic evidence suggesting that the handbasket to hell we are all riding in may be much closer to its destination than any of us who aren't members of the Westboro Baptist Church might have supposed. We refer, of course, to the shocking new phenomenon of pornography being consumed in public -- in places such as planes, trains, and sports arenas -- thanks to the miracles of wireless access and ever more portable communications devices.

The article is hilarious, full of funny/strange stories of innocent bystanders awkwardly encountering someone else's smut in unexpected places and often in confined quarters from which there is no immediate escape. (We also credit Hesse for the phrase "secondhand smut," by the way, which should have been the headline on the story but wasn't.) We were amazed by the tale of someone stuck in an interminable Beltway traffic jam behind someone watching porn on a TV in an SUV. We were amused by the woman who found herself stuck next to some guy on a crowded Metro car who started watching porn on his laptop. Glared at by fellow passengers who could hear the, um, sound effects coming from the guy's computer and assumed she was with him, the woman grappled with what to do but eventually just decided to go with the flow. "She leaned into her seatmate and started watching," Hesse writes, until he silently folded up his laptop and stepped off the train a stop before hers.

Hesse has some good advice about how to negotiate the increasingly blurred lines between public and private in the world of the always-on, wide open Interwebs. She suggests that some public service announcements might be in order to help folks decide when the time and place are right for a little porn. You know, like this:

ATTENTION: As similar as this basketball arena may appear to your apartment, they are not, in fact, the same place. For further evidence, please ask yourself the following question: Does my apartment typically contain 20,000 complete strangers? If the answer is "No," then you are in a public arena. You should not be watching porn.

That seems like a good rule of thumb, doesn't it? We are more than a little appalled that such etiquette tips are apparently necessary, but then again it's not as if there is a well-established link between consumption of porn and highly developed sensitivity to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of others, particularly if those others happen to be female. (Insert anti-porn rant here. That's not really the point of this post, but, hey, go for it.)

We are curious, actually: Have any of you had any close encounters of the type described in Hesse's story? Standing in the line at the grocery store and subjected to just a little bit more of Stagnetti's Revenge than you ever expected to see? Seated next to one of your colleagues who, you suddenly realize, is paying more attention to the action on his laptop than to the action at the budget meeting? How do you think you would handle such a situation? Would you try to ignore it? escape it? Would you be like the woman on the Metro train and decide to play along as a way of thumbing your nose at the undeserved opprobrium of your fellow passengers? Or would you go all church lady? Maybe channel your inner WAP crusader? Our male readers are not off the hook on this issue, by the way. We want to know how you would react, too, boys.

Porn in Public: Etiquette Challenges for the 21st Century. Discuss.