Here is a snapshot showing Ms. Shrider with Mini Me. And here is a more sultry photograph of the would-be actress. It would be nice to think about the two finding the inner beauty in each other — she overlooking Mr. Troyer’s dwarfism, he overlooking her, um, well, maybe just looking her over. For it is clear that her outer beauty was no match for the inner ugliness that the relationship brought out in both of them. According to Ms. Shrider’s account, Mr. Troyer is a mean little son of a bitch. But it is difficult not to suspect the worst of her too. Her “romantic” feelings for the celebrity dwarf may well have been driven by her own ambitions. Even if they weren’t, it is not exactly a demonstration of noble character for her to be blabbing about his sex life, drinking habits, and chronic depression to the tabloids. How much did they pay her?

If there is a moral to the story, it’s that they both got pretty much what they should have expected from a mutually exploitative relationship. It’s a sordid, not a perverse, tale. However, you do have to wonder about Ms. Shrider’s assertion that she doesn’t “date normal people.” What does that mean? She prefers to date abnormal people? Does her dating history contain a parade of circus freaks — dwarves, fat ladies, sword swallowers, hirsute women?

If you google around, you’ll find other interviews in which Ms Shrider offers sensationalistic details of her relationship. (”For a small guy he’s quite well endowed. I had no complaints.”) You’ll also find plenty of pictures of the ill-matched couple. Viewing them, you may find it difficult not to agree with Ms. Shrider that there’s something “abnormal” about her former relationship. Doubtless there are happy, loving couples in which one suffers from dwarfism and the other doesn’t. But at the same time, you view these pictures with midget porn and pedophilia echoing in your head. If Ms. Shrider were pursuing the relationship for careerist reasons, it makes the story garish. If she were pursuing it because she fetishized dwarves, it would be perverse. Do you think that intention is what separates the lurid from the deviant?

(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)

The This is NOT Sarah Palin Inflatable Love Doll product page offers a few further details. Curiously, it doesn’t list a price. If TopCo weren’t such an established business — the place has 1500 employees making sex toys in California and China — you’d be tempted to think the whole thing is a hoax.

It’s no joke, however, to consider how Sarah Palin has tapped into the national libido in a way that Geraldine Ferraro never managed. There are any number of photoshopped Palin nudies floating around the net. The query “Sarah Palin naked” currently returns 32,300 results on Google. Compare that to the number of search results for “John McCain naked” (452) and “Barack Obama naked” (592) and that pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Once you think about the matter, it’s surprising that prominent political figures aren’t more commonly the focal point of libidinal energies. J.G. Ballard wrote a scandalizing text titled “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” but it had nothing obvious to do with the stated topic. Monica Lewinsky showed the world that there are starfuckers who dig the presidential sweet meats. But how come there aren’t more varieties of political and presidential erotica? George Washington dildos (perhaps emblazoned with “George Washington Slept Here”), Abraham Lincoln ben wa balls, Franklin D. Roosevelt butt plugs… Hell, Obama is a handsome guy. Aren’t there women and gay men who would get off on a NOT Barack Obama Inflatable Guy Doll?

(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)

A number of sites have run this story (or non-story, as the case may be), and commenters seem to be particularly outraged at the suggestion that breastfeeding can be pornographic. Here’s one at random: “What kind of perverted weirdy beardy sexualises something so pure and innocent? No wonder breastfeeding rates are so abysmally low.” There are two answers to that. First, a lot of “weird beardy” perverts get off at the sight of breastfeeding and pregnant women. Have a look around the internet and you’ll see that it forms a very popular genre of pornography. Second, lots of people lust after feet, but that doesn’t automatically mean that a picture of a woman wearing open-toed sandals is pornographic. The “pornographicalness” of a picture doesn’t come just from what it represents but from the use to which it is put. In practical terms, a photograph only becomes pornography when a viewer experiences the physiological symtpoms of arousal.

In that sense, a photograph of a woman breast-feeding isn’t pornographic in itself. Ms. Spears’ mother could view the picture in a perfectly benign, un-erotic light. But the photograph could become pornographic when it is plastered all over web sites serving the celebrity porn and “nipple slip” market. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the photograph is pornographic. It only means that the photograph is potentially pornographic, and you can’t indict it for that. Any photographic has the potential.

Even more interesting, however, is the question of whether the photograph somehow constitutes child pornography. Ms. Spears is currently seventeen years old. She became pregnant at age 16. State laws typically enable a person to consent to sexual relations at that age, but federal law still defines the individual as a minor — hence the paradox that the father of Ms. Spears’ baby has never been arrested for statutory rape, but a picture of her breast might qualify as kiddie porn. That’s clearly absurd and suggests that the definition of child pornography ought to coincide with the age of consent. If it’s legal to fuck at age sixteen, it ought to be legal to bare a tit to a camera.

The New York Post gave a few further details about the strange history of the film. Really, though, what do you need to know? Marilyn Monroe wasn’t exactly the most chaste of celebrities. She oozed more sex through a sweater than most porn stars can squeeze out of their overworked glands. Why should it be any surprise that she was no stranger to the casting couch or, it turns out, to the stag film? If anything, it’s surprising that more such footage hasn’t turned up. Probably it has less to do with her promiscuity than with the clunky technology required to make sex films in the 1950s.

Many commentators have saluted the purchaser’s desire not to make a spectacle of poor dead Marilyn. You have to wonder about his occultation of the film, though. In the first place, if he’s really a businessman, he must be aware that his refusal to screen the film — combined with the hype surrounding its sale — will only increase its value. He could double his money on it today. In the second place, while superficially it may seem lurid to want to see Marilyn give a blowjob, you can hardly blame people. Her radiant image has been teasing all of humanity for more than fifty years. To see her give a blowjob would bring people one step closer to a consummation which, of course, will never happen unless some stalker scientist figures out how to clone her. In the third place, a lewd interest in the sex lives of the famous may actually conceal a more profound truth. Does it not simply express the fact that sex belongs to the very essence of a person? And that you can never really understand a person without knowing something about her sex?

Even if you don’t give much of a hoot about Jay Leno, it’s hard not to be fascinated by some of the backlash against his homophobic comments (which you can watch here.) In particular, Violet Blue wrote a great piece at the San Francisco Chronicle titled “Hot Gay Sex is for Homophobes.” To turn the tables on Leno, Blue wittily draws on a scientific study that sought to explore the question “Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?” Here’s the abstract:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

One line is worth repeating: Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. However, once you get done saying “Take that, Leno” to yourself, you can’t help but wonder… Is it in fact common that someone should desire the thing that, at least publicly, they affect to hate? For example, California recently passed a law criminalizing necrophilia. Would every lawmaker who claimed to be disgusted by necrophilia be secretly aroused by snuff porn?

Sometimes it is easy to get discouraged about the state of the world. Pollution, global warming, overpopulation, war, famine, fire, flood — the world seems doomed. If you’re a religious person and you think that God is wreaking all this havoc on you, it’s hard not to conclude one of two things: on one hand, mankind must deserve some major wrath (but not me, God! I’m good!); on the other hand, God must be one mean motherfucker. If he wanted to annihilate mankind, he could always rain Demerol from the sky and put us gently to sleep. Instead he seems to delight in tossing crazy shit at us, like those plagues he inflicted on the Egyptians.

But then every once in a while you’re reminded of God’s goodness. You can no longer believe that God is such a jerk when you behold a rainbow, a baby’s smile, or Salma Hayek’s breasts. You know that bullshit about the “word made flesh?” Well, one day during Salma Hayek’s adolescence God woke up and thought, “That son of mine wasn’t much in the flesh department. I can do better than that.” Salma dipped her fingers in the holy water and shazam! Salma joined the ranks of those who have experienced a great miracle. Saint Paul was hit by a lightning bolt on the Road to Damascus. Salma Hayek was hit by a boob job from above.

What could be greater proof than Salma’s 36C chest that God listens to your prayers? Maybe famine, fire, and flood are just collateral damage in an otherwise wonderful universe, and God really is good after all? Or maybe God just pays especial attention when hot young things pray to him for improvements in their female parts. Beseech the man upstairs for world peace and maybe he’ll hear you, maybe he won’t. Plead for bigger boobs or a tighter vag? He’ll be all ears.

Though his Girls Gone Wild DVD series has been wildly popular, Mr. Francis is no stranger to controversy. He’s been sued, arrested, and even kidnapped at gunpoint. (See his Wikipedia entry for details.) Why would some of the most beautiful, wealthy, famous women in the world want to sleep with this character? Is he brilliant? Charming? Big-dicked? Now that he’s revealing his top 10 list on Howard Stern, you’d think that celeb chicks would avoid him like the plague. Who wants to sleep with a blabbermouth? Then again, perhaps that’s precisely why they do sleep with him: because they know he’ll talk about it. They know the value of word of mouth.

It’s often been said that Paris Hilton is famous for nothing, but at least we now know that that is not true. She can always count one thing among her accomplishments. She’s a Blowjob Queen — so says a Porn King, whom you’d expect to have some authority for making such a pronouncement. A new biography called The House of Hilton strives to debunk a lot of the myths about Paris, portraying her as a girl who’s been victimized by her family’s desire for her to be famous. The book even claims that Paris’ mother was not displeased by the sex-tape scandal that put her on the map. If true, it’s a disturbing claim, since it puts the desire for a famous daughter before the responsibility of being a good parent. It half makes you wonder if that could be where Paris learned to give such good head. Some parents tell their children about the birds and bees. Are there others who tell their children what to lick and when to squeeze?

When did it become legal to persecute the employees of a law-abiding business? Suppose you don’t like the Burger King or the daycare center across the street. You set up a Baldwin-style protest that includes harassment and intimidation. You publish the license plates of people eating hamburgers or shout slogans at parents dropping off their kids. Wouldn’t the police intervene and tell you to leave the place alone? Why should it be any different for an adult bookstore? So long as they both obey the law, the law should not discriminate in its treatment of them. Besides which, if you do want to protest, it’s ignoble to target the employees and not the ownership.

Then again, that’s the sort of dirty tactic typical of Jesus freaks. Certainly it is not property values but rather religious ones that motivate Mr. Baldwin in his crusade against that great scourge of free society, pornography. Evidently he is a born-again Christian — “we’re just a bunch of Christian guys making a video,” he once told some folks on a shoot. Maybe with God on his side Mr. Baldwin will be more successful in his crusade against pornography than he has been in his acting career, which has been a busy but undistinguished one.

In fact, maybe local pornophiles should set up a new protest. Suppose they hate Mr. Baldwin’s crappy movies. Why not stand outside his house, take pictures of him and his license plate, then publish it in the local newspaper with the headline, “No More Bad Movies!” The protesters should steel themselves to fight until Mr. Baldwin retires from the entertainment business — or at least until he leaves the adult entertainment business to itself.

You may want to read the original tabloid article detailing all of Kate Moss’s alleged threesomes and lesbian flings — or you may not, since it’s basically just trash. Apparently the British tabloids are hell-bent to wreak havoc on Ms. Moss since she just won a costly libel suit against them, and so they’ve trumped up their efforts to portray her as decadent, drug-addled, and polymorphously perverse.

It’s a ridiculous smear campaign. On one hand, as a friend of Ms. Moss points out, the people trashing her aren’t exactly saints themselves: “I’ve seen plenty of writers, television executives and newspaper hacks snorting coke during my party-going years, yet no one is getting concerned that a large part of the media and PR industry in the UK is fuelled by class A drugs; it’s just not newsworthy.” And on the other hand, even if every allegation is true, so freakin’ what? Since when is a fashion model expected to be a role model? She’s not a schoolmarm or a member of the royal family. She’s a person who makes her living looking like a sexed-up adolescent girl. Why should anyone be surprised when her actions synchronize with her appearance?

About the only legitimate criticism you can throw at Ms. Moss is that she is now the parent of a young daughter. Can she reconcile her hedonistic lifestyle with her parenting responsibilities? Well, having a lesbian fling or a threesome with glamorous movie stars doesn’t necessarily make somebody a bad parent. More worrisome, to anyone in a position to worry about Ms. Moss, might be her drug habits, since substance abuse poses a more genuine threat to the stability of a home than the occasional girl-on-girl snog. Ms. Moss may well need rehab, or she may well want to exchange her long lines of coke for the simpler pleasures of motherhood. (Then again, maybe a little coke helps when she has to get up at night to change a diaper or solace a colicky baby?)

Beyond that — beyond her responsibility to her child and, perhaps, to her family and friends — is it really anybody’s business if she’s banging her glamorous pals? To the contrary, it’s hard not to suspect that the real perversion lies not with Kate for her romps but with the public for its voyeurism.

No doubt the public fascination with Lindsay Lohan has much to do with the fact that the really cute little girl in the Parent Trap sprouted an enormous set of breasts. If she had seemed like an intelligent little girl in the movie — craftily managing two characters and a fake British accent — her bodacious boobs now seem to have deprived her of any but the most visceral and lewd fascination. She didn’t grow up in the public eye to be smart or shrewd, like Jodie Foster. Instead she’s just fodder for tabloids and connoisseurs of celebrity nipple slips. (Certainly the Lindsay Lohan Boob Squeeze Video is the best of these.)

If anything, the digital breast reduction that Disney has performed on Ms. Lohan’s character only reinforces the point. Isn’t Disney trying to turn back the clock on her, reverse puberty, recover the cute little girl who seems to have been hidden beneath a costume of big boobs? Maybe for her next movie Disney will just dispense with the real Ms. Lohan and use special effects to recreate the adolescent version of her, which clearly they’d prefer. And meanwhile the real Ms. Lohan can follow the dismal career path of so many other child stars — though at least she’ll never have to resort to working in gas stations, since with boobs like hers she could always turn to porn. And isn’t that what everyone would really like her to do anyway? Screw Disney. Let’s see her on Ass Traffic.