I am perfectly willing to concede the possibility that there are more wretched, thankless jobs in the world than public editor of The Stranger—for instance, I would not want to be the poor, doomed peon in charge of planning Christine Gregoire's victory party this year. But this week, of all weeks, I humbly and firmly declare that my post here at the paper has to at least be one of the top three worst jobs in the world. To wit: How, exactly, is one supposed to judge and comment upon the moral and ethical content of a newspaper when said newspaper has officially become a pornographer?
This issue of The Stranger is the annual, execrable HUMP! issue, wherein DAN SAVAGE and his bottom-dwelling minions somehow manage to cajole innocent Seattleites into performing deviant acts on one another, filming the aforementioned sodomy (and worse), and then allowing The Stranger to show the films to paying audiences for nothing more than the possibility of a paltry $2,000 prize. A "noted" sadist, Mr. Savage naturally insisted that HUMP! fell within the public editor's purview and forced me—under threat of binding me with ropes if I did not consent willingly—to sit down and watch the entire program, from beginning to end.
Now, I'm no Bill Buckley, but do I take a small amount of pride in my deftness with quill and ink. My years of subscribing to the National Review have, if nothing else, taught me the importance of an expansive vocabulary. That said, I have no words to describe the horrors I have seen. That these individuals—no doubt high on the "angel dust"—would videotape their perversions is nearly unthinkable. That my videocassette recorder did not burst into flame at the sheer filth of it all is shocking. And it is remarkable, but no credit to the performers, that they managed to turn the only real act of sex intended for human beings by God—genital intercourse between one man and one woman, within the bounds of marriage—into something sacrilegious. I have never been more disgusted.
Finally, after nearly two hours of viewing this wanton disregard for gallons upon gallons of precious bodily fluids, the flagrant misuse of the public places of Seattle as some sort of carnal playground, and the tragic implication of house pets in the satanic proceedings, I ran to the bathroom and purged for three hours while Savage and others stood outside the door and mocked me for being a, quote-unquote, sissy.
Drop this copy of The Stranger right now. Burn it. There is nothing good or just or right about any of this week's edition. Or perhaps there is one potentially good thing: The dunderheads in charge decided to include, along with their pornographic self-promotion, an article seeking to soothe the fears of followers of the radical agenda of Barack Obama and his anti-American cronies. Once the right-minded citizens of Seattle see the Democratic candidate's name in such close proximity to this kind of filth, perhaps they'll realize the mistake they've made, in droves, and vote for the man who has never besmirched his moral character with such associations, my good friend and golf partner John McCain.
