An American Lion

A Beer Pong table (will they ban the sale of these from Craigslist, too?)I suppose that there are people who are happy about this, but I don’t know any. I would also gather that there are people who are miserable about this, and I don’t know any of them, either. This is one of those things that doesn’t affect me. If I was the sort of man to go whoring around, I would simply blog about it and be done with it. I wouldn’t whine about it on television or waggle my finger at people who whored around more than myself. I don’t care if you’re offended by what is advertised on Craigslist; I don’t care which half-wit of a hotel whore you’re groping for hundreds of dollars near the airport. It has nothing to do with me, but I will say this—what a crock:

Craigslist closed the adult services section of its website Saturday, replacing it with a black bar that says “censored,” just over a week after a group of state attorneys general said there weren’t enough protections against blocking potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution.

The listings came under new scrutiny after the jailhouse suicide last month of a former medical student who was awaiting trial in the killing of a masseuse he met through Craigslist. Critics have likened the services to virtual pimping, while Craigslist maintained the site was carrying ads even tamer than those published by some newspapers.

Like many other free online forums, Craigslist typically does not review ads before they are posted by users. But in 2008, under pressure from 40 state attorneys general, Craigslist began requiring posters to provide a working phone number and pay a fee for placing an ad in what is now the adult services section. Several months later, Craigslist adopted a manual screening process in which postings are reviewed before publishing.

No one should blame Craigslist for what happened in the incidents where someone was attacked or killed. Men have been killing prostitutes for as long as anyone can remember. Did they shut down the want ads in the London Newspapers when Jack the Ripper was running around? Of course not.

This does nothing to help get people out of the cycle of behavior that creates the socially unacceptable results found in those airport hotels. Men want sex; men can’t get the sex they want. Men who are fat, bald, and gross want to have sex with thin, pretty girls. Thin, pretty girls are in short supply, so anyone and everything, with plumbing attached, detached, or taped down is trying to fit that bill. Thin, pretty girls have options, and they don’t have to have sex with disgusting toads in hotel rooms unless they are down on their luck and need to pay someone a lot of money to maintain their drug habit.

In short, this creates the situation we have in America right now. This creates the added horror of sexual slavery and underage prostitution. Why? Because the men will pay top dollar and the women need that money to either live on or buy drugs. If you legalized drugs, legalized prostitution, and made it so anyone who deviated from an acceptable level of enjoyment of both would be treated or incarcerated, you’d have a less messy situation. 

It’s impossible to make things perfect; otherwise, libertarians would be running things and that will never happen. The rights for people to whore around in America have always come into conflict with the rights of people (usually with blue hair and stuffed shirts) who want to whore around but can’t because they’re terrified of exposing their own shortcomings to the world. 

Craigslist did not create the problem, nor is the problem solved by this act. From now on, the only way to find a whore or get a whore or find a john is going to be through Twitter, Foursquare, or Facebook. Good luck shutting them down. Good luck trying to figure out how to stop “hooker reviews” on Foursquare. Or Yelp. Did you know that I am on Yelp?

Only a fundamental change in our attitudes towards sex, drugs, recreation, and permissiveness will do that. And, brother, I’m not going to live long enough to see us grow up that much.

Who the devil could help it if this bunny was out there, ready to be chased?I have always been a fan of the good old boy network. I've never been in it because I'm either too rich or too weird. Father was never in it. He always had a habit, right before being inducted into such an organization, of talking for too long about his love of potatoes and how the right application of technology could turn the potato into the nuclear weapon of tomorrow.

In Wisconsin, the good old boy network figured out how to get the taxpayers to subsidize their erection medication. Then, someone came to their senses, and cut the bastards off. Now, they're suing:

Breaking with his own supporters, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett asked the Milwaukee teachers union Tuesday to drop its lawsuit seeking taxpayer-funded erectile dysfunction drugs such as Viagra.

The Milwaukee mayor said he was "surprised and disappointed" to learn about the lawsuit at a time when Milwaukee Public Schools has laid off hundreds of teachers, including his own wife.

How much money are we talking about?

Barrett noted a consultant's estimate that reinstating the drug coverage would cost the district up to $786,000 per year, money he said could be better spent on other priorities.

As always, the unions are hell-bent on destroying what little we have that's good in this country:

In a deal with the union, the school district agreed in 2002 to cover up to six tablets per month for erectile dysfunction drugs in health plans that insure 10,000 employees, dependents and retirees. But after the pills became popular and expensive, the school board proposed eliminating the benefit in 2005 and an arbitrator agreed.

Did you hear that? Popular AND expensive. What a conundrum.

This isn't exactly the same sort of calamity as Fifty-Four Forty or Fight, but it does involve older men, money, health care, and rock hard penises. Yes, yes--I know. I'm disgusted as well. But what are you going to do? Are you going to ignore efforts to use public money to give men throbbing, eye-popping four hour long erections or are you going to make yourself ignore the facts of the case?

If the judge is a woman, well. I won't go there. I won't even speculate as to whether she will deny these union members their medication and their tent-pole-in-the-khaki-slacks version of happy fun time. That would be an unreasonable abuse of my analytical powers.

I will say this--how pathetic. Pay for your own Viagra, you swine.