# A Criticism Of the Adverstisements in the Time Edition of February 22nd, 2010 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 14, 2010, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915 "2010-02-14T01:50:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/81 "2010-02-16T17:16:17Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > My recommendation of **transgressive literature** to him was to make a point about words and their power. You couldn’t think of a _single other_ example of transgressive literature? Really? Because if you’ve only ever read that one book (and one is frankly left with the impression that’s the case), you’re not the best person to recommend literature of any kind to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Myrnalene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Myrnalene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrnalene)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/82 "2010-02-16T17:26:41Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > My recommendation of **transgressive literature** to him was to make a point about words and their power. Words are just words. This is a crucial concept for people to understand. Especially in a world where thousands of people are being _murdered_ in the name of a book - and in previous decades and centuries, _millions_ of people have been murdered in the name of various books. And to do this you thought Curtis, a _child,_ had to read about ( **WARNING POSSIBLE TRIGGERS** ) and eleven-year-old who “assumes the “bottom” role in these sex acts, either fellating the men, licking their anuses, or stroking their testicles”, who joins in the organized rape of women, and probably all kinds of other stuff that I don’t know about because I can’t make myself read any more of the Wiki page? You used the Dope to push this stuff on a kid. And a mod knew about it and did nothing. Christ on a cracker. What a den of sexual predators this board is turning into. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/83 "2010-02-16T17:27:25Z")
You know, some time ago I literally said that I would make no further references on this board to “that book,” and I haven’t. _You_ all are the ones who have been talking about it (including helpfully linking to a graphic, detailed description of it)! All I said was that I had a book to recommend him and that he could PM me for more info. He did, and we had an interesting and abstract discussion about the concept of transgressive literature and the power of words. And I gained a little more respect for the guy instead of just thinking of him as an immature kid. Anyway, I read all sorts of literature - Harlan Ellison, Vonnegut, Ballard, Tom Wolfe, Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and _many_ other kinds of poetry as well - but I think there is a value in **transgressive literature** because it challenges the reader and offers us important questions about what words and ideas are and how they can affect us. I stand by that. I think it’s important to keep your mind open even to things that are shocking and upsetting. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/84 "2010-02-16T17:30:25Z")
I think there is value in knowing your place in the world, and your place is most assuredly not to recommend Hogg to 13 year old boys on the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/85 "2010-02-16T17:36:46Z")
AHEM. This thread will be locked if there is any further discussion of the book in question or **Argent Towers**. If you have a personal problem with his suggestion, take it to the Pit, or a new thread about transgressive literature. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/86 "2010-02-16T17:48:37Z")
I will eighth (or whatever) **The Economist**. But if that’s a little too heavy, **Newsweek** ’s new format seems more geared toward serious content and analysis than before. It is at least a better option than **Time**. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/87 "2010-02-16T17:52:48Z")
Since we’re not discussing Curtis anymore, I’ll add another vote for The Economist. I’ve read various accusations of bias (in both directions) and it does take positions on a variety of political and economic issues, but AFAICT it doesn’t go for strict partisanship down the line. And it publishes dissenting opinions in the Letters pages (indeed, they’re pretty much _all_ dissenting opinions). Plus you get actual world news coverage, not just dumb animal stories from Romania. TIME is news pablum - tasteless mush to be spoonfed to the critically toothless. Newsweek - pretty much the same. Try the Economist, CSM, or even Foreign Affairs, as recommended by everyone else. Ironically, considering the OP, I remember the days when your best bet for insightful, mature social and political commentary was \*Playboy \* (see? I really did read the articles). ---
**Author:** ![MarkF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@MarkF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarkF)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/88 "2010-02-16T17:56:33Z")
> [@](#): > > You will also have to take my word that many kinds of understanding can only be possible through time, I think he knows that, he just doesn’t want to look at boobs when he’s reading it… ---
**Author:** ![manila](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@manila](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manila)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/89 "2010-02-16T18:35:58Z")
Did somebody here not so long back give a link to google book’s archive of all published Time magazines? I found it fascinating to look at the adverts throughout the last century. Unfortunately updating Opera this time has wiped all my bookmarks including that link. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/90 "2010-02-16T20:15:29Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > **Curtis** , I want to be sure we’re talking about the same thing. Page 130, with a photo that looks pretty much like [this?](http://jerseychaser.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/09_brooklyn-decker_23.jpg) > > If so, personally I think you need to set your offend-o-meter a little higher. Hmmm…that’s actually a pretty cute bathing suit – I like the little star clips. 😉 (If I were still in high school, I’d probably wear it without hesitation) (Speaking of being a teen, when I was **Curtis** ’s age, “naughty lit” was V. C. Andrews. How quickly times change! I’ve never even HEARD of “Hogg”, until recently. Now, I wish I hadn’t.) ---
**Author:** ![SmellMyWort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SmellMyWort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmellMyWort)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/91 "2010-02-16T21:19:27Z")
I don’t know about you, **Curtis** , but I really hate all the Cialis and Viagra ads during the evening news. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/92 "2010-02-16T22:51:57Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Words are just words. This is a crucial concept for people to understand. Just to have this in words. Words are never just words. Pictures are never just pictures. Symbols are never just symbols. Images are never just images. I understand the argument that you think you’re making. Just as I’ve spent a lot more time studying history than Curtis LeMay, I’m going to make what is almost certainly the equally valid assumption I’ve spent a lot more time studying transgressive literature than you. (And I’ve been reading Delany for over 40 years. I know his work very well.) George Carlin used to make the same argument in his Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television routine. [“(There are) no bad words- bad thoughts, bad intentions…and words.”] And yet, he made his living on the power of words. He wasn’t a hypocrite. You can look at words from a meta perspective and rob them of their immediate power. Dictionaries do that every day. Carlin was smart enough to know the lines between words and meta-words, and he was neither the first nor the last to do so. He would never have said something as sheerly stupid as “words are just words.” The plain simple fact is that they’re not. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/93 "2010-02-17T00:53:48Z")
> [@Myrnalene](#): > > Oh, but I will. It’s obvious from your description and your recent obsession with it that you mean _Hogg_, a pornographic novel about an 11-year-old boy named “Cocksucker” and the men he happily services in graphic detail. Someone has been reverting the Wikipedia article, but here is a link to history page that shows a long and brutal synopsis. Reading it turned my stomach. > > [Hogg (novel) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hogg_%28novel%29&oldid=344287978) > > The fact that, even after the recent kerfluffle, you would use this board to recommend that book to a 13 year old boy is astounding. At best, you are profoundly stupid and socially maladjusted. At worst…well, maybe there’s a reason you were so ardent in your defense of Cesario. Oh GOD. Where’s the fucking brain bleach? Gah! I think I need to go and read _Anne of Green Gables_ just to get over that. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/94 "2010-02-17T00:57:58Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > I subscribe to _Time_ and when I got the new issue yesterday I read through it. Than near the end I saw an advertisement for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Now I usually roll my eyes when people speak of the moral or cultural degneracy of America and/or the West. But this is really telling. The fact that such an ad that shows a woman in revealing costume (obviously to appeal to sexual desire) should be in a periodical ostenibly for the educated (or those who aspire to be educated) portion of the populace is beyond me. Did _Time_’s founder the great Henry Luce want that or is he rolling in the grave that his great news periodical should have that sort of advertisement fit for a billboard in a slum district or an automotive magazine? Of course the content of books, periodicals, and television programs (outside of PBS) has generally been dumbing down over the years-even school textbooks. It’s just a swimsuit, dude. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/95 "2010-02-17T04:10:41Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > Curtis, I went home and opened that issue of Time to find the ad that had you all worked up. I’m not kidding, I had to flip through the magazine page by page twice before I saw it (and this was after I had already read the magazine once). > > Yep! It was a girl in a bikini all right. Did you notice the naked lady on the first page of the Health section, about longevity? What did you think of that? It was related to the article. > [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > In any case, I think his disapproval of the ad was on the grounds that it was cheap and tawdry, in his opinion, not simply that it contained images of the female body. This view I will not begrudge him. Yes exactly. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/96 "2010-02-17T04:47:07Z")
Time is a popular publication that, practically by definition, trafficks in the cheap and tawdry. I read it when I was your age and, though they didn’t advertise SI’s swimsuit edition in it 47 years ago, there was plenty that was cheap and tawdry within it, though it was usually covered by a modest hand or pie plate. You will probably be less disturbed, morally, by _The Economist._ Politically? At your age I kept a well-worn copy of “The Communist Manifesto” in the back of my Boy Scout pants, both because it was what I was reading and to jerk the chain of my scoutmaster, the FBI’s bureau chief. Yeah, it might’ve earned me a file in the home office, though in retrospect I know that revolutionaries believe themselves far more interesting than anybody else does, but I was either Sticking It To The Man or just Pissing Off Special Agent In Charge Ray S., and I lean toward the latter. And I liked him, even as he pissed me off. Cranky and conservative, but his heart was in the right place. ---
**Author:** ![raindog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@raindog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raindog)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/97 "2010-02-17T20:00:46Z")
[QUOTE=Curtis LeMay] Haw haw very funny. But I consider Jehovah’s Witnesses to be heretics. [/QUOTE] And why is that? ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/98 "2010-02-17T21:31:59Z")
I don’t understand why bikini-clad women are antithetical to the idea of an educated, “highbrow” look at things. Do wise people not like to look at (presumably) attractive, unclothed people? Are we to assume that only uneducated dullards are that shallow? Honestly, I consider the OP to be either holding “educated” people, or education, it too high esteem, or be committing something of a slight on those who aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2010, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/99 "2010-02-18T02:11:01Z")
There’s a reason 90% of Nobel laureates are eunuchs, you know. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2010, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915/100 "2010-02-18T02:21:46Z")
> [@raindog](#): > > And why is that? Anti-Trinitarianism and Annihilationism-both heretical doctrines rejected by Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox churches. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-criticism-of-the-adverstisements-in-the-time-edition-of-february-22nd-2010/528915.md?page=6)