Salon sex columnist Tracy Clark-Flory clucks disapprovingly at what she deems excessive media coverage of that award-winning New Mexico state trooper busted on security cam having sex on duty and in uniform with a woman splayed across the hood of her Honda. Contrarian takes a different view. You cannot spend as much time in newsrooms as we have without developing a grudging admiration for the comic extremes of tabloid chutzpah. We particularly admire the Hispanic-oriented, Chicago-based website Hispanically Speaking News for shining a spotlight on the small but curious dog that wandered in for a closer look at the steamy curbside quickie,...

04 September, 2011

The youth wing of the Catalan Socialist Party has a vivid take on the pleasures of voting: Via Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory, who reports that other Spanish political parties were not amused, calling the get-out-the-vote spot "crude," "misleading," "filth," and "as attack on the dignity of women."...

21 November, 2010

Yale University has banned all sexual relationships between faculty and students. According to the Yale Alumni Magazine, the new rule extends a previous ban that applied only when the faculty member had "direct pedagogical or supervisory responsibilities" over the student. Now all undergrads are off limits. Yale is a bit slow clambering aboard the sex panic bandwagon. When Dean Henry Rosovsky sought to impose a similar rule at Harvard in 1983, Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith reacted with a confession: [caption id="attachment_4928" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Kitty and Ken Galbraith, wayward couple"][/caption] Just over forty-five years ago, already a well-fledged member of the...

08 April, 2010