He fits in cromwellulently.
That’s almost as bad as Tibby or Not Tibby’s tongue-in-cheek rant. As mentioned, *Idol *is a British format. USA culture is sort of a mix of English and German culture (with bits of cuisine from Chicanos and southern Italy) anyway.
And while I know there’s a lot of internet porn made in the USA, that stereotype seems odd to me. It presumably has more to do with internet and credit-card tech development coming out of the USA than with porn, as such?
Amusing joke, though, I thought.
Srsly ?
America is widely respected as the world’s greatest ever producer of porn. It’s one of the USA’s major industries, generating around $13 billion a year some time ago. No other country can come close. 60% of pornographic webpages are hosted in America and over 90% of porn films made there, mainly in the San Fernando Valley.
Of course, this is a major export, people all over the world enjoy these productions ( particularly in China ).
Apart from aptitude there are doubtless many reasons for this predominance in porn-making. The beauty of your women; the unique freedom of speech ( fr’instance production of hardcore porn is, as one might expect, banned in Germany and Britain); technological excellence; endless experience, amounting to tradition; that good old-fashioned Can-Do spirit etc. etc…
They are facing hard times, one American 72-yr-old porn actor joins the stricken music makers in pointing out:
*
“The piracy has killed the industry,” Cummings told HuffPost. “I’d say 80 percent of the companies that were around five years ago either don’t exist or are hanging by a thread. The day a new video comes out, within 24 hours, someone has set up a tripod in front of their TV to copy it and then uploaded it illegally.”*
but this is an industry that will never die: being as American as Apple Pie.
Back when I was about 13, some friends of ours got into skeet shooting, and, on one occasion, pheasant shooting. In the end we decided shooting guns really wasn’t our cup of tea, but over the course of about a year we bought a 420 gauge shotgun and went along to the range several times. As startling as it is to remember now, that year we also joined the NRA, which at that time seemed to be nothing more than a sportsman/enthusiast association, and not the massively organized and powerful political lobbying force it is today.
How in the hell did that happen? When did it happen? I don’t know, but understanding this development is likely of central importance in understanding why we have the gun laws (or lack thereof) that we do.
(Emphasis mine)
Speaking for the generation of Americans that read Mad Magazine when we were children, graduated to National Lampoon, and hit our college years during the first five years of SNL, we beg to differ.
But what could be better than an eel? For jellying purposes, I mean.
Segregation? You do know that’s been against the law here for fifty-odd years, right? I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist, of course. But I see absolutely no indication that anybody over here sees overt racists of the KKK or old-time Southern segregationist type as anything like ‘quaint’. To the vast majority of us they are our national shame, because this image is being promoted as typical of Establishment America, both within and without our borders. Attica? Seriously? I was a thirteen year old kid living in California. What the fuck should I have done or left undone to prevent that uprising from happening?
Some people don’t approve of burning the Irish alive – especially right after they surrender. And who the fuck bans Christmas?
It’s 50 odd years since Enoch Powell warned against immigration; he was removed from major politics by his party, is dead, and barely known by younger generations. If anything is recalled it’s more likely to be his later career as an Ulster Unionist. [ Plus he loved India and Indians, whereas probably, Deep Southern segregationists didn’t really love the people they hurt. ]
The odious libertarians of Poujadist UKIP aren’t racist so much as xenophobic. Plus like all modern parties and voters they will forgive everything for wealth.
That’s so cringeworthy. In the NYT?
There are satire magazines dating back to the nineteenth century and no doubt plays before that. I wouldn’t like to say who or what “invented” satire, but those are very late examples.
Satire was one of the primary ways of avoiding a charge of seditious libel from at least the 1600s onwards.
Watch the England football team in the World Cup - half of them, at least, don’t even attempt to mouth along to the song. I find that weird, because if you’re going to represent your national team you really can’t claim to be anti-English, and you should at least learn enough to approximate sounds after the first verse.
WRT healthcare and guns, they are issues that have come up in the UK in recent years. Our current govt is working towards a US-style healthcare system, which is perhaps one of the reasons you’ve seen peope fighting against it.
You’re quite right. For jellying purposes, eels are the ne plus ultra. I stand by my statement regarding the chipalotas, though.
The NRA originally got started as with the goal of improving the general level of marksmanship. IIRC, the founders were Civil War officers who were unhappy with the overall ignorance of principles of shooting among draftees. For much of its history, it taught marksmanship and gun safety and offered instructor training. It didn’t really become a lobbying organization until after the Gun Control Act of 1968. Bill Clinton’s actively anti-gun administration and the growth of the internet supercharged the NRA as a lobbying organization. Clinton made it seem for real-real that the government wanted to take away gun rights. The internet made it easier for gun people to communicate with each other nationally and organize resistance to unfavorable legislation. Clinton and the internet galvanized gun people, the NRA was already there as a lobbying organization, so they accrued importance almost despite themselves.
I’ll see your wiki and raise you one more.
German law is very strict about hardcore pornography, especially when compared to very liberal laws about softcore pornography, prostitution and sex shops. Supplying hardcore pornography to a person under 18 is an offense, and shops selling it must keep people under the age of 18 from entering their premises. If only a part of the shop is dedicated to pornography, it must be completely closed off from the rest of the premises. Alternatively, shops may choose not to display their goods or advertise that they sell them, in which case minors may be admitted. Websites hosting pornographic material within Germany must comply with very strict rules about verifying that viewers are over 18
In England and Wales, the main legislation on pornographic materials is the Obscene Publications Act 1959, the Obscene Publications Act 1964, and the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981. Video-oriented depictions of hardcore material (with certain exceptions for works considered primarily ‘artistic’ rather than pornographic) were banned until 1999, when the removal of trade barriers with other European Union member states allowed for the relatively free movement of such goods for personal use. R18-rated videos are only available in licensed sex shops, but hardcore pornographic magazines are available in shops selling newspapers and magazines. In 2008, the Crown Prosecution Service unsuccessfully prosecuted a man under the Obscene Publications Act (the R v Walker trial) for a textual story on a pornography website involving Girls Aloud. Also that year, the Home Office introduced legislation to criminalize possession of what it has labelled extreme pornography; these laws are now contained in sections 63 to 68 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
Wikipedia - Pornography by Region
And of course, many parts of Europe have stricter societal controls because of that Old Time Religion lingering. La France Profonde, Scotland, and Bavaria come to mind.
Whereas in America the state that consumes the most porn is Utah, where they don’t mix their sincere religious beliefs with how they act.
It wasn’t a natural disaster so you don’t. I wonder what you imagine it was.
I’ve been to England. Once. And if I had to eat English food the rest of my life I’d shoot myself except I wouldn’t be able to obtain a gun so I’d have to settle for drinking myself to death. Biscuits! Eccch.
I won’t even discuss Canada. Peaches and cream, forsooth. Can they even grow peaches? And the Canadian cream pipeline from their northern cream fields is a disaster waiting to happen.
Yep, beat the Greeks and Romans to it fair and square.