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Attention Celebrity White Knights

Hi there, American Celebrity! As someone with a lot of money and influence, there are many causes to which you could dedicate your considerable resources: adopting children, having children, saving children—ah, that’s a good one. No one can ever dispute the value in saving children, particularly when those children are female because everyone knows females are more vulnerable than males. But what do girls most need saving from?

There’s the much-discussed issue of eating disorders, which your industry contributes to substantially, but that’s not very glamorous and sounds vaguely feminist so, moving on. There’s also the shameless, repeated attacks coming from the Republican party on all American girls‘ rights to medical care and, of corse, sex education, but that’s awfully political. You’re just trying to change the world, not ruffle a bunch of feathers. Let’s think bigger.

The Week in Stripper Links

Maryland 4th Circuit Court upholds ruling that new restrictions on strip clubs are unconstitutional

Could be as huge as Oregon’s ruling 30 years ago that declared nude dance protected free speech. MD is one of the few states in the U.S. where clubs can have fully nude dancers and fully stocked bars.

Harry Potter, dubstep, pole dancing, cats.

You can download the dubstep remix of the Harry Potter theme to use when you dress like Hermione at work next Halloween.

Man steals $314 from stripper’s garter

The use of “garter belt” for garter annoys me. A garter belt has straps and holds up stockings. A garter is a single circular leg strap that holds on to money.

A great 3000-word Super Bowl stripper blog report from the Lodge in Dallas

Seattle strip club, under siege from local LE, uses the old “we create jobs!” defense in Stranger ad

Anna Nicole: The Opera opens in London

The costumes!

The Pussycat Lounge: not going away after all?

CL ad seeks underemployed attorneys to give lapdances and legal advice.

What’s Trafficking Got To Do With It: The Media and the Cleveland Kidnappings

(Photo by the Edinburgh Eye)
(Photo by the Edinburgh Eye)

Last week in Cleveland, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, and Amanda Berry escaped from Ariel Castro’s “house of horrors”  where he imprisoned the women in a nightmare of rape and torture for almost a decade. Castro has been arraigned on four charges of kidnapping and three charges of rape. The courageous women escaped with the help of Charles Ramsey, a neighbor who broke into the home after hearing Berry’s screams. A charismatic man, Ramsey became an instant celebrity after declaring he knew “something was wrong” when he saw that a “pretty little white girl ran into the arms of a black man.”

Everything about the Cleveland kidnapping case—from Ramsey’s critique of race to the captive women’s histories of abuse—has stirred important conversations about domestic abuse, sexual abuse, police incompetence, and race. Unsurprisingly, for those of us who follow trafficking hysteria,  it’s also inspired a lot of talk about sex trafficking.

More things that Portland did first *

this post made me realize how much American Apparel is made for stripper wardrobes

Have you heard about this supposed “hipster strip joint,” the Westway, in New York? Stories about it usually are sprinkled with HI-larious commentary about how funny it is to mix hot nightlife spots with tits. SORRY NEW YORK, Portland, OR has been doing this for years. Mary’s Club, Union Jacks, and Devils Point are all strip clubs that draw crowds heavier on leather jackets than raincoats. This results in varying levels of profitability for the strippers (needless to say, Portland hipsters are not necessarily a cash-laden customer base). They might stare for free, or they might give you fifty bucks to play “Roadrunner.”

Will the Westway actually operate like a strip club, though? From the coverage, it seems like it might just have topless go-go dancers—on one night a week, at that—and people got hyperbolic in calling it a strip joint. Can you get a lapdance? Is there going to be a DJ announcing the names of the dancers? Will the dancers be paid or will they be paying the club to work there? And most importantly, who wants to go with me the first Monday in April?

Oh, New York, I hope you get some real hipster strip club fun, like maybe a chef brawl over local pork.

* (in addition to Stumptown, competitive facial hair growth, and urban farming)

The Daily Show on Megan Piper’s Thwarted Prom Night

Minnesota teen Mike Stone spammed adult performers on Twitter to find a prom date (if I’d gotten one of those messages, I would have blocked the kid, but it goes to show that spam works), and Megan Piper said yes. When his school heard about it, they forbid him from bringing her. What a buzzkill. Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams interviewed the pair and a concerned area mother—who had some great sex ed tips—for a segment that aired last week, and we love it.

“And we all know that if you do something for a living, that’s all you ever do. Like how pro football players tackle everyone they see, and therefore would never be allowed at prom.”