Kathryn Jean Lopez
You are likely well aware that last week, Sarah Palin was on the cover of Newsweek, out of context and in running shorts (in a photo taken for Runner’s World magazine). But do you have any idea how tame that was? Do you know about Newsweek’s seedier side, online? Newsweek is clearly not afraid to hype the sexier side of the news — and its online presence is even worse.
“Ideally, we should all openly have something extra on the side.” So writes “adult film star” Sasha Grey in a lecture-rant on Newsweek’s website on Jenny Sanford, the wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. Sanford famously had an affair, on company time, as it were. That, as you might imagine, is not what bothers Grey. “We create our own morals,” after all. The problem is that it’s treated as a problem, as a surprise. “I have to believe that many women who are married to men with power are aware of affairs, and accept it. Don’t ask, don’t tell; as long as they receive something in exchange from their husband — whether that exchange be children, money, material items, or sex.”
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Grey complains: “The wife feels shame and humiliation because of public awareness, yet felt no desire to speak out prior. She allowed this affair to go on, or allowed herself to stay in the relationship. She probably was more ashamed that her husband was such a moron, and thought he could get away with flying to Argentina on a commercial flight and claim he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.”
That Grey is not a fan of Mrs. Sanford, of course, is not shocking. What’s shocking is that I even know her opinion on the woman, on the situation, on politicians and their wives, and that she thinks we should all openly have something extra on the side.
Grey isn’t the only color Newsweek has on its website. In a feature on sex scandals, the president of an adult-entertainment studio blasts Christie Brinkley’s now ex-husband for spending more than $150 a month on porn (that, he says, is the most anyone should ever have to pay). He explains: “Three thousand dollars a month is a lot to spend on pornography by any measure and in any era, but it’s a particularly egregious sum in the Internet Age, when there’s . . . no shortage of free porn readily available online, and even premium-quality new releases are available on the cheap. That Christie Brinkley was this man’s wife makes it triply insane.”
The list also includes convicted madam Heidi Fleiss insulting the “low-level escort service” former New York governor (and now MSNBC commentator) Eliot Spitzer paid (her shop had better nicknames than “Client No. 9”). She calls Spitzer “creepy” for some of his preferences, complaining, “Let’s think of a perfectly easy way to have an albeit illegal, but a nice evening and a wild fun time, and do everything we can to ruin it and make it a miserable night.”
The top item of the Newsweek list is on Larry Craig’s arrest in a Minnesota airport men’s room. It’s by Dan Savage, a crude sex columnist who once wrote a piece titled “Stalking Gary Bauer,” about his attempts to infect Republican presidential primary candidate Gary Bauer with the flu by doing things like licking doorknobs. On Newsweek’s website, Savage works to restore the reputation of homosexual men after it has been tarnished by the likes of Craig. He writes: “It annoys people like me — openly gay men — when the Craig incident is described as a ‘gay sex scandal,’ as if his actions in the toilet that day tell you something about gay men. Openly gay people — gay men with integrity — have boyfriends and husbands. When I want a b*** j**, I don’t have to fly to Minnesota and lurk in a toilet. I just have to go home.”
In response to the Palin cover, Newsweek was accused of “sexism.” Its scandalous sex-scandal complication suggests something simpler: It’s all about sex — perverse and paid for — just as long as it doesn’t cost anyone more than $150 a month. A once-respected newsmagazine’s reputation evidently isn’t too high a price to pay.
