With A Ten Foot Pole

I don't really want to touch this, even using the aforementioned titular object... but even in my hazy fog this post from Ezra Klein on the economics of pornography has been fascinating.  It started with this post, a passing diss of Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild, led to this post from Ross Douthat, and bloomed into this monstrous conversation in comments.

I'm really not going to get too far into this (heh heh, this is a post where everything feels like a double entendre), but just reiterate my main point from over there: I think liberals - especially liberal men - tend to have a "do what you like, I'm not judging" approach to issues like porn that misses the point.  I have it myself, to a considerable degree. But there's a moral question posed by pornography, and it's not separate from issues like the economic exploitation of sex workers. And until liberals can face up to the moral issues, they're not going to solve the other ones.

Comments

[jin baltimore]

(of course, I'd pick the porn one to comment on, right?)

Wow, that is quite a lively discussion you/they are having over there, and you seem to be holding your own quite well...but isn't all of it really just so much chicken-and-egg?Is the porn industry creating new desires or just responding to those already there?