So I never got around to reading the Sunday New York Times last week. So today I was catching up, and I found it rather bizarre that in two consecutive Sundays, the times provided me with links to XXX sites.
[Note: Dragonchasers is normally a reasonable family-friendly site, but this post is intended for adult readers only. If you’re under 18, please refrain from clicking the following link.]

In the May 1st “SundayStyles” section was an article titled Wearing Nothing But Attitude (you’ll have to pay to read it now) that was about the founders of burningangel.com [adult site alert!] which, we are told, is about porn as art, much like poetry or sculpture. Un-huh.

“Some people make music, others paint, I make porn.” she [founder Joanna Angel] said. … Ms. Angel is in no way a pioneer in her field; there seem to be plenty of women who, rather than struggle to get published in The Paris Review or written up in ArtNews, have instead channelled their creative ambitions into erotica.

Comparisons are then made to sites like SuicideGirls but I’m not buying it. SuicideGirls features nude photos of their girls, yes, but its a lot easier to see the ‘art’ in nude photography (Missy Suicide of SG is quoted in the same article as considering herself and her girls ‘pinups’ rather than porn.) than it is in a movie called THE JIZZSPERIMENT!.

Now lest you think me a prude, I have absolutely no problem with porn. But its porn! It ain’t art! And it has no place in the NYTimes SundayStyles section!

OK, whatever. I moved on…to today’s paper. And today, in the business section, is an article entitled A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip. It’s about Gawker Media, an ‘umbrella company’ put together to kind of gather up a bunch of blogs for advertising purposes. Its a fairly tame, business-like article, except one of the blogs mentioned a few times is Fleshbot which is a blog about porn/sex/erotica.

It isn’t that I’m upset with the Times for providing me with these links. Quite the contrary, in fact. Its more that I’m startled and surprised that I don’t need to click the links on my “Hello, my name is Julie, I’m kind of shy but you can see me screwing a goat on my web cam.” spams anymore. I can just turn to The Gray Lady to keep me titillated.

What a strange world we’re living in.