The Indelible Bonobo Experience

The blowjob has fallen on hard times. Or, to put it in the form of a crude question, who can really get it up for fellatio these days? Back in the 1960s and ’70s, fellatio was all the rage. Its curative powers are powerfully conveyed by the moment in John Updike’s Bech when the protagonist’s mistress tries “to bring his weakling member to strength by wrapping it in the velvet bandages of her lips.” Abandoning the protective modesty of fiction in the poem “Fellatio,” Updike celebrated the way “that each of these clean secretaries / at night, to please her lover, takes / a fountain into her mouth.” (via Death of the Blowjob - Oral Sex in Pop Culture - Esquire)

Some of this enthusiasm lived on into the late twentieth century. In 1995’s To Die For, Nicole Kidman reacts with disingenuous astonishment to the story of how a famous broadcaster got her big break because a self-penned reference commended her ability to “suck your cock till your eyes pop out!” (Shouldn’t that read “cave in” or “implode”?) In the same year, there’s a fun exchange in Martin Amis’s The Information in which a male character proposes to a lady friend that they “do 68.” What’s that? she asks. “You do me and I owe you 1,” he shoots back. Later in the novel, the humiliation of failed writer Richard Tull is complete when his wife fellates his rival, the successful Gwyn Barry. If this all seems rather quaint, then Susan Minot’s 2002 novella, Rapture — about a single blowjob — was perhaps a last, jaw-aching hurrah. A genuinely twenty-first-century spokesman can be found in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, in the form of young Joey Berglund, whose sexual maturity — compared with the guys he’s at college with — is conveyed simply and vehemently. Their yearnings center on the blowjob, which Joey considers “little more than a glorified jerkoff.”

jayrosen:

Wolf Blitzer Contemplates a Lateral Move to the Greeting Card Industry

From his essay, A salute to politicians:

Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul and Rick Perry could have taken the easy path and relaxed and enjoyed life. Instead of playing golf and hanging out with their children and grandchildren, they are working hard trying to get the Republican presidential nomination. In the process, they are bitterly attacked - often for good reason.

Why do they do it?

I know what they say. They say they are interested in public service and want to help the American people. They say they believe in what they are trying to achieve.

The cynics say they have huge egos and are simply seeking power and glory.

That is certainly true of some politicians.

But having covered many of them over the years, I also know some are trying to do the right thing, and I salute them.

I think Erik Wemple of the Washington Post has it right. In this fourth-grade essay that Blitzer chose to share with us, the impression given is of fear. Fear of having an opinion, of offending anyone, of appearing to have any sharp thoughts of his own. 

Meanwhile, may I just say this about CNN anchors like Blitzer? They could be out there chasing stories, digging up dirt, verifying rumors, bearing witness to ugly truths. But instead they’re willing to endure the grind of well-paid air-conditioned studio-bound celebrity newsiness.

Why do they do it? I’ve asked myself that many times, and after years of criticizing them I have come to what is perhaps a surprising conclusion. The cynics will say they love the attention, the make-up girl, the swirl of activity around them, their name on the show. Being recognized in airports and all that.

Well, I disagree. They. Do. It. Be. Cause. They. Care.

(Photo credit: studio08denver, Creative Commons License.)

AWESOME. I’d say that not everybody was born with John Stewart chutzpah. Some are merely sheep in Wolf’s clothing. :)))

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