Letters

Perverting the Porn Supply

Dear Alibi,

[RE: Festival Preview, “Pornotopia,” Nov. 29-Dec. 5] Well. It had to happen. With Pornotopia, the film school geeks and smarmy Women's Studies majors are trying to sociologyize, feministize and PC sanitize the last honest entertainment genre in America. I'm referring to hardcore sex porn, not ugly, dishonest porn like the Disney Channel, Lifetime For Women and Fox News, or to cheap smut like serial killer sagas, romantic comedies and insipid “chick flicks.”

Listen up, poseurs. Porn is good, dirty fun, obviously fantasy and serves only one purpose. Porn provides an opportunity to boink somebody who would never in a million years actually have sex with you. That includes cutting-edge cable crap like “The L Word” and If These Walls Could Talk. Lesbians played by beautiful Hollywood stars, no older, larger, “unattractive,” non-affluent “diesel dykes” need apply. I understand that both wymyn and straight men love both shows. Doesn't that mean that both lesbians and men are buying into hot sex faked by phony beauty stereotypes?! Holy hypocrisy, Batman! But with hardcore porn you usually get exactly what you pay for. Swappers in Heat, for example, ain't Citizen Kane and will not involve intricate plotlines, brilliant acting, groundbreaking cinematography—although I could be wrong about that—or sparkling dialogue. No true love or warm embraces, either, as they get in the way of the bouncing body shots. While we're on the hot topic of delusion and hypocrisy, anyone who claims that he/she watches porn for behavioral insights or from an ironically detached point of view is as pathetically transparent as the Southern Baptist who says he views Barely Legal DVDs so he can better understand how The Evil One blinds and entraps young women.

And, finally, we get to the Pornotopia bottom line—Self serve indeed! Seven bucks a pop to watch a Master's thesis on human sexuality or an entry in the South Pirtleville Film Competition, with pedantic talking heads or footage of your huffing, puffing neighbors. At the risk of sounding crass and tasteless—hey, why the hell not? In real porn, the heads never talk with their mouths full, although they provide some penetrating insights. The last thing I want to see is my neighbors bucking and sucking. Pornotopia sounds suspiciously like getting screwed without getting laid, right up there with getting busted for soliciting. I'll stick with “two for the price of one” DVD night at my local Wal-Porn. They give me way more bang for the buck.

Tahnks!

Dear Alibi,

[RE: Feature, “The Atheist and the Coconuts,” Nov. 29-Dec. 5] The spelling error in huge green letters at the top of page 22 was embarrassingly obvious: it's "atheist,” not "athiest"!

From Washington With Love

Dear Alibi,

I am a research scientist at an aerospace firm and have been watching the Plame case closely. On Oct. 11, I briefly met former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, former intelligence agent Valerie Plame. She was doing a signing at Bookworks in Albuquerque to talk about her book Fair Game—My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.

Valerie Plame was chief of operations on counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Cheney and Rove leaked her name to the press in order to punish Wilson for his report, which contradicted the Bush administration’s claims and showed that their justification for the invasion of Iraq was false. Her career was ruined. Their recent move to Santa Fe for privacy was due to death threats.

I asked if she could say anything about what has been compromised as a result of the leak. She said a report was done and the damage is serious. Years of work setting up her network were ruined and U.S. security is at greater risk. Her greater concern was that any future potential contacts will be reluctant to give any information if they cannot trust the U.S. government and fear for their own or their family’s safety.

The arrogance, incompetence, willful ignorance of scientific issues and disastrous policies of this administration are beyond comprehension. We must learn from this and refocus the energy of our anger to the positive changes that must be made so that we can return to a better America and a place of respect in the eyes of the world.