Month: April 2012

A reader writes:

This post brought back an amazing memory for me.  Eleven years ago, I stumbled across an email address for my favorite porn star in a chat room.  I probably shouldn't name him, but he was a hot bottom back around the year 2000.  Back then, my inexperienced self was a bit shocked to learn that many of these guys escort.  I thought, what a fantastic 30th birthday present to give myself!  So I emailed him.  He replied and told me he'd retired from that but because it was my birthday, he'd make an exception.  I told him I wanted an overnight thing and drove down to LA, rented a nice suite, and met him.  It wasn't cheap.

I can't begin to describe how star struck I was in his presence. 

I didn't trip over myself or anything, but I really did feel intimidated.  He was (and some would argue still is) a legend.  He had a stunning body and gorgeous blue eyes.  He bleached his hair blonde for the movies, so when I met him his hair was a bit darker. He was one of the sweetest guys I've ever met!  We ended up talking until 2 or 3 in the morning before he finally said, "Well, maybe we should have sex, yes?"  I nodded, feeling much more at ease because of all the conversation.  He then asked me what my favorite scene was from one of his movies.  Without a doubt, I had such a favorite and described it to him.  He remembered the scene well and proceeded to re-enact it with me.  It was honestly a thrill I don't think I will ever forget.

As the years have worn on (I just turned 41), I'm still surprised at how clear the memory is and how I've never had a single regret about it.  Tracy Clark-Flory described her experience as "like nearly every casual hookup I've ever had […] two strangers connected only by their fantasies of who each other are."  I think that reduces the experience quite a bit.  My fantasy version of him made the actual sex electric almost beyond description.  But because we preceded that experience with hours of conversation, I learned that he was a fantastic, caring human being.  So I got to have sex with my fantasy guy who happened to be someone I genuinely liked.  Both my big and little heads got off at the same time.  It was one of the most amazing sexual experiences I've ever had.  I now realize how lucky I really was.  It was just as likely that he could have turned out to be a shallow asshole that I couldn't stand.

That evening, he shared with me that he had a dream to write children's books some day.  I don't know where he is now, but I hope he's accomplished that dream.  He certainly made mine come true.

It's crossed the pop culture threshhold:

A television show, a recent Hollywood movie and two novels are set at community colleges. Even better, they all include a healthy dollop of satire. So instead of just mocking the sector as an academic backwater of last resort – long a tactic of comedians – these satirical looks laugh along with community colleges, saying in essence: "we kid, because we love."

Wisconsin, Maryland and DC vote today. Blumenthal expects a Romney sweep. Silver does some delegate math:

Mr. Romney could gain about 50 delegates on Tuesday night before even factoring in the tally in Wisconsin.

Weigel goes through a couple scenarios:

[L]et's imagine Santorum pulling off a squeaker in Wisconsin and winning five of eight districts. He wins the big contest of the day! Romney wins the day anyway, with 60 delegates to Santorum's 39. You see the problem.

Today on the Dish, Andrew explored his Newsweek cover-story on reclaiming Christianity (which he defended here and found a meme for here), speculated that Obama already knows that the Court has killed the mandate, felt jaw drop to floor after hearing about Sarah Palin's hosting gig (follow-up here), blasted Santorum's "pick-and-choose" Christianism, and noted the candidate's escalating attacks on Romney. Mitt acted recklessly in Wisconsin, women abandoned Romney for Obama in crucial states, Obama looked capable of winning while losing a majority of all Christians, Rob Portman seemed like a plausible veep, Santorum was cyber-bullied, and the GOP turned against science. We brought out the popcorn as Obama took on the Court over the mandate, thought more about whether SCOTUS faced a "crisis of legitimacy," attempted a defense of judicial activism, discussed more elements of Hillary Clinton's feminism, adjudicated an argument TNC and Juan Williams about black-on-black crime strongly in the former's favor, and pondered what the filibuster has done to our democracy. Ad War Update here.

Andrew also took on the WaPo review of Peter Beinart's book, compared Poland's prosecution of torture to America's, debuted the readership stats from our first year at the Beast, and introduced the new "Ask Anything" series (the first installment, featuring Jonah Lehrer on pot, is here.) We tracked the least-bad month in Iraq since the invasion – which we were irrelevant to, worried that Iran's most powerful weapon was its control over oil prices, ran down the historic election in Burma, and delved into the "strange persistence of Islamophobia." The feds raided a pot school, prohibiton's absurdities amazed, police search dogs often failed, and doctors replaced treatment with drugs. Marriage hysterics incorrectly predicted the future (in 1986), humans reached peak IQ, the web became its own universe, and a blind man drove. Readers discussed the drivers-vs.-bikers debate and the football as big tobacco analogy, the penny had uses, it was possible to be overgenerous, Coco Chanel created tanning, Lena Dunham got described as the 25 year old female Louis CK, and a plastic skull sold for $50k. Hathos Alert here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

– Z.B.

Marina Adshade revisits a 1986 Newsweek cover-story:

Accompanying this eye-catching headline was a graph that illustrated the bad news for women who had spent their youth in a classroom when they should have been busy finding themselves a husband – their chance of now marrying was shockingly low.  The report warned that a college-educated woman who was still single when she turned 30 had an only 20% chance that she would ever marry. If she hadn’t married her Prince Charming by the age of 35, the chance she ever would fell to 5%. If, heaven forbid, a woman was still single at age 40, well the probability was incredibly small (although probably significantly more likely than being killed by a terrorist). 

So how did they do?

By 2010, 75% of college-educated women who were exactly 30 years old and single in 1986 had married at some point in the intervening 24 years. 69% of women who were exactly 35 and single in 1986 married their Prince Charming and even the old maids, the women who were 40 at the time that Newsweek made these dire predictions, were more likely than not to marry before their 65th birthdays – 68% married. 

If you are a woman over 40 and single I am willing to bet you have heard the line "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" over and over again. And I wonder how many women’s lives were affected by willingness of society to accept these ridiculous predictions.  

Marc Lynch thinks the relative calm in Baghdad provides further evidence that America was right to leave:

The real story of America's withdrawal from Iraq is how little impact it has really had on either Iraq or the region.  There are even signs that the withdrawal has helped to nudge Iraqis onto the right path, though not as quickly or directly as I might have hoped.

This month's death toll was the lowest on record since the 2003 invasion, while Iraqi oil exports are at their highest level since 1980. Baghdad successfully hosted an Arab Summit meeting, which may have done little for Syria but did go further to bring Iraq back into the Arab fold than anything since 2003.  Maliki's jousting with his domestic foes and efforts to balance Iraq's ties with Tehran with improved Arab relations are what needs to happen for Iraq to regain a semblance of normality.   It isn't pretty, and probably won't be any time soon, but there's absolutely no reason to believe that it would look any better with American troops still encamped in the country.  Thus far, Obama's risky but smart gamble to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq is paying off.

A trader monitors his computer screen on the floor of the Egyptian stock exchange in Cairo on Monday, April 2, 2012. Egypt aims to sell 10-year bonds for the first time since the start of its revolution more than a year ago, as borrowing costs level off and the nation moves closer to securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund. By Shawn Baldwin/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

A review of two new books on the fledgling medical marijuana industry – one with the fantastic title The Heart Of Dankness – notes how rhetoric and reality are now careening further and further apart:

The mentality that fuels our War on Drugs grows more out of touch and overreactive with each passing year, especially when compared to the actual experience of using marijuana, which both writers convey perfectly. A calm, quiet majority of pot users will continue to enjoy moments just like Smith’s and Frank’s, while state and federal governments will continue a blistering campaign to keep people from experiencing a dried plant that stopped being “countercultural” decades ago. In the gulley between the two sides, we have a multibillion-dollar industry full of unrecognized talent, countless pain-wracked patients taking pills by the dozen, and the periodic destruction of innocent lives like Jose Guerena’s.

It's almost a test of whether modern America is capable of governing itself rationally.

How K-9 searches go wrong:

The problem isn't that the dogs aren't capable of picking up the scent, it's that dogs have been bred to please and interact with humans. A dog can easily be manipulated to alert whenever needed. But even with conscientious cops, a dog without the proper training may pick up on its handler's body language and alert whenever it detects its handler is suspicious.

In one study published last year in the journal Animal Cognition, researchers rigged some tests designed to fool dogs into falsely alerting and others designed to trick handlers into thinking a package contained narcotics (it didn't). Of the 144 total searches performed, the dogs falsely alerted 123 times. More interesting, the dogs were twice as likely to falsely alert to packages designed to trick their handlers than those designed to trick the dogs.

Campaign ad of the day – where Santorum morphs Obama's face into Romney's – here. Reid Wilson breaks down overall spending, which now totals $87 million: 

More than half that total — $50 million — has been spent on Mitt Romney's behalf. Romney's campaign has dropped $16.7 million on television ads, while the pro-Romney Restore Our Future has spent nearly $33.3 million pounding away at Romney's rivals, the figures show. Romney's allies have outspent his rivals in every state that has held contests so far. This week alone, Romney is spending $540,000 in Wisconsin, while Restore Our Future is up with a total of $2.2 million in advertising spread over seven states with upcoming contests.

Romney's online ad strategy is to tell people what they want to hear, literally:

In the past campaign speeches often tried to include one line or two to satisfy each type of voter. But increasingly campaigns are figuring out exactly what people like you would need to hear to vote for them, and then giving exactly that message to people exactly like you. Another group of people will hear another message directed explicitly at their concerns. 

Meanwhile, in the below ad, Obama addresses a core demographic ("women are not an interest group"):

Obama's Super PAC turns the tables on high gas prices: 

The progressive group Americans United for Change and the AFSCME take aim at the Ryan plan: 

And the RNC dwells on the scariness of Russia:

Previous Ad War Updates: Mar 30, Mar 27, Mar 26, Mar 23, Mar 22, Mar 21, Mar 20, Mar 19, Mar 16, Mar 15, Mar 14, Mar 13, Mar 12, Mar 9, Mar 8, Mar 7, Mar 6, Mar 5, Mar 2, Mar 1, Feb 29, Feb 28, Feb 27, Feb 23, Feb 22, Feb 21, Feb 17, Feb 16, Feb 15, Feb 14, Feb 13, Feb 9, Feb 8, Feb 7, Feb 6, Feb 3, Feb 2, Feb 1, Jan 30, Jan 29, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, Jan 24, Jan 22, Jan 20, Jan 19, Jan 18, Jan 17, Jan 16 and Jan 12.