Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Sex and Consequences (Lisa McCormick)

So... it's about time we talked about sex - however, the information below might not be what you were expecting/anticipating (I'm planning to call the advertisers tomorrow to let my voice be heard... :-)


Ever wonder why anyone watches FOX? Well, film director Robert Greenwald has a new theory: FOX uses sex to sell right-wing news.

In a YouTube video called "Fox Attacks Decency," Greenwald reveals how nearly every major FOX "news" show uses gratuitous sexual images in its reporting.1 These images are used in segments that are supposedly hard news—and, hypocritically, are used over and over again in commentaries that criticize others for using these images!

BEST WESTERN PLANTATION-SAWGRASS and other businesses in Florida are some of FOX's local cable advertisers. They probably have no idea what FOX is putting on TV—we should let them know. Can you call BEST WESTERN PLANTATION-SAWGRASS and other local advertisers in Florida? Politely urge them to stop subsidizing FOX's hypocritical use of sex to sell their right-wing news?

Click here to view the video and local advertisers on Brave New Films' website (We should warn you: many clips in this video are sexually explicit). To the right of the video, under "Call FOX advertisers near you" click on "More local advertisers." Then, type your ZIP code.

Greenwald's previous online videos exposed FOX's attacks on minorities, Democratic politicians, the environment, bloggers, and others.2 Many people know that FOX is a Republican mouthpiece, but now we know that FOX hypocritically uses sex to sell its right-wing agenda.
FOX routinely trumpets that they espouse conservative family values, yet their exploitative and gratuitous use of sexual images show their hypocrisy.

After "Fox Attacks Decency" was viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, Brave New Films put a second version online—a parody sex video that used much of the same footage that actually aired on FOX. YouTube immediately restricted it to adults, and the news aggregator Digg banned it completely before reversing themselves.3

Many local advertisers buy bulk cable ads, not knowing what content their ads are adjoining. But they have the ability to tell the cable company, "I don't want my ads on FOX," and some advertisers who received phone calls have already promised to do that. Your call today can help hold FOX accountable.

Thanks for all you do.

–Adam Green and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team Wednesday, November 28th, 2007




"'Fox News Porn' Content Banned," AOL news blog, November 17, 2007

More articles on Digg banning "Fox News Porn"

SONG: Sex and Consequences by Lisa McCormick

BOOK: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman


POEM: Sex by Michael Ryan


After the earth finally touches the sun,
and the long explosion stops suddenly
like a heart run down,
the world might seem white and quiet
to something that watches it in the sky at night,
so something might feel small,
and feel nearly human pain.


But it won't happen again:
the long nights wasted alone, what's done
in doorways in the dark by the young,
and what could have been for some.
Think of all the lovers and the friends!
Who does not gather his portion of them
to himself. at least in his mind?


Sex eased through everyone,
even when slipping into death
as into a beloved's skin,
and prying out again to find
the body slumped, muscles slack.
and bones begun their turn to dust.
Then no one minds when one lover
holds another, like an unloaded sack.


But the truth enters at the end of life.
It enters like oxygen into every cell
and the madness it feeds there in some
is only a lucid metaphor
for something long burned to nothing,
like a star.


How do you get under your desire?
How do you peel away each desire
like ponderous clothes, one at a time,
until what's underneath is known?
We knew genitals as small things
and we were ashamed they led us around,
even if the hill where we'd lie down
was the same hill the universe unfolded upon
all night, as we watched the stars,
when for once our breathing seemed to blend.


Each time, from that sweet pressure
of hands, or the great relief of the mouth,
a person can be led out of himself
Isn't it lonely in the body?
The myth says we ooze about as spirits
until there's a body made to take us,
and only flesh is created by sex.
That's why we enter sex so relentlessly,
toward the pleasure that comes
when we push down far enough
to nudge the spirit rising to release,
and the pleasure is pleasure of pure spirit,
for a moment all together again.
So sex returns us to beginning, and we moan.


Pure sex becomes specific and concrete
in a caress of breast or slope of waist:
it flies through itself like light, it sails
on nothing like a wing, when someone's there
to be touched, when there's nothing wrong.


So the actual is touched in sex,
like a breast through cloth: the actual
rising plump and real, the mind
darting about it like a tongue.
This is where I wanted to be all along:
up in the world, in touch with myself. . .


Sex, invisible priestess of a good God,
I think without you I might just spin off.
I know there's no keeping you close,
as you flick by underneath a sentence
on a train, or transform the last thought
of an old nun, or withdraw for one moment alone.
Who tells you what to do or ties you down!


I'd give up the rest to suck your dark lips.
I'd give up the rest to fix you exact
in the universe, at the wildest edge
where there's no such thing as shape.


What a shame I am, if reaching the right person
in a dim room, sex holds itself apart
from us like an angel in an afterlife,
and, with the ideas no one has even dreamed,
it wails its odd music for pure mind.


After there's nothing,
after the big blow-up of the whole shebang,
what voice from what throat
will tell me who I am? Each throat
on which I would have quietly set my lips
will be ripped like a cheap sleeve
or blown apart like the stopped-up
barrel of a gun. What was inside them
all the time I wanted always
to rest my mouth upon?


I thought most everything
stuck dartlike in the half-dome of my brain,
and hung there like fake stars in a planetarium.
It's true that things there changed into names,
that even the people I loved were a bunch of signs,
so I felt most often alone.
This is a way to stay alive and nothing to bemoan.
We know the first time we extend an arm:
the body reaches so far for so long.
We grow and love to grow, then stop, then lie down.


I wanted to bear inside me this tender outcome.
I wanted to know if it made sex happen:
does it show up surely in touch and talk?
does it leak from the mind, as heat from the skin?
I wanted my touching intelligent, like a beautiful song.

QUOTE: "Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." ~ Butch Hancock

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