The fact that sex sells is not news. I am, however, gratified that sex still sells newspapers.
Two weeks ago, this column was headlined “Dirty books, holy men, false prophets and sex profits.”
By noontime on Sunday, it far outstripped the number of page views for other Tribune commentators.
Last Sunday’s “When money owns you” concerned that thing closest to your heart: your wallet.
Who won, sex or money? Dumb question. The hot and sweaty smoked filthy lucre by an almost four-to-one margin by mid-day.
Both pieces were filled with the usual outrages but apparently the old advertising axiom remains true: It’s all in the packaging. The piece with the sexy headline still leads by more than three to one.
Not that I couldn’t have figured that out without the modern innovation of page counters. I’ve even tried cloaking my favorite consumer outrage in suggestive language.
“Spend your Memorial Day weekend working to make gasoline sexy” I implored in 1997. Zzzz.
Last March, I tried hooking it up with the sexiest man in America: “Charley Sheen and the price of gasoline.”
Alas, not even sex can create widespread interest in the pernicious petrol prices perpetrated by BigOil’s domestic cartel.
Sex sells even better during bad economic times. Great Depression One coincided with the fabled golden age of Hollywood. Then, as now, real unemployment hovered around 25 percent. People sought escape in movie theaters. Hollywood pushed the envelope so far that it caused a backlash.
Jean Harlow firmed up her nipples with ice before going on camera in a sheer blouse. Dolores del Rio’s gorgeous tush was on display for all the world to see as she swam naked underwater with Joel McCrea in 1932’s “Bird of Paradise.”
The motion picture code was imposed in 1934 to stop all that foolishness, which is why Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in twin beds but somehow managed to produce the first prime time pregnancy.
Which leads me to the point of this column: hungry children. Sorry for the misleading packaging.
A few days ago, I was sickened by a Food Bank of Northern Nevada press release forwarded by the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.
“A free nutritious dinner is now being served for all children and youth ages 1-18,” it announced.
“Dinners are served at 27 locations. All children/youth are welcome and do not need to be enrolled in an after-school program to eat at Kids Cafe. For more information, call 775-331-3663 or visit www. fbnn.org,” the release stated.
Zounds.
So many local children can’t get enough to eat at home that free meals are being served Monday through Friday at 27 local schools. It should come as no surprise that none of them are in the upper class neighborhoods of the southern parts of the Truckee Meadows.
The food is available Monday through Friday, which makes me wonder what these kids do for proper nutrition on weekends and holidays like Columbus Day.
I think it’s great that commie-liberal Big Government is using some of its bloated deficit-spending budget to feed hungry youngsters. Better to cook meals for children than build bombs to burn brown people on the sands of Araby and central Asia.
Here in the biggest, baddest, fattest, richest nation in the history of the world, more than one in five children live in poverty.
Token black Republican presidential candidate Pizzaman Cain spewed his solution a few days ago: If you’re not rich, it’s your fault. Work.
But how can you work your way up to the millionaire mark of Cain if there are no jobs?
Some yahoo on my Facebook page advised youthful anti-Wall Street marchers to give up demonstrating and start a business instead. How freaking conservative.
These bastards perpetuate the fiction that you can win against a stacked deck and a cheating dealer. Nonetheless, sucker bets offering impossible odds are the most popular with the poor. Travesties like lotteries represent the only shot they’ve got to make it to Cain country.
Meanwhile, a growing number of families can’t afford a Godfather’s Pizza on their best day.
I keep hearing criticism from right-wing moonhowlers that the burgeoning movement stands for nothing.
When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.
I was particularly impressed by a young man camped out on Wall Street. He is homeless but has a master’s degree that cost him $80,000 in student loans, a debt that not even bankruptcy can discharge.
As I noted last week, control of the debt is everything. Control debt and you control nations and lives.
I hope organized labor is successful in assisting the kids who are taking it to the streets.
Unions can help organize a national strike, one of three remaining things that can right this listing ship. The other two are far scarier: armed revolution or the slow breakup of the United States into regions organized out of necessity when the national government has totally failed.
That rumbling you hear is far more widespread and ominous than the stomachs of hungry children.
I’ll see you at the movies and on the picket lines, you sexy things.
Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew Barbano is a 43-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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