I dunno why this set me off, but it did. Perhaps it's a straw/camel's back sort of thing. Anyways...
If you enter Manhattan from the West Side Highway, your welcome mat is Larry Flynt's in-your-face Hustler Club. If you enter from the Battery Tunnel (as I just did), it's ads (on the Brooklyn side, enticing those who would be enticed) for the Hustler and two other "Gentlemen's Clubs."
I know he's from Louisiana and they have their own problems, but if David Vittet were to fundraise or convince Disney to make find a way to wholesomely obstruct those views, I know he'd be making a worthwhile contribution to society. And he'd make more than a few New York City metropolitan area parents grateful
Source
Wait, wait, wait...Isn't this just the beauty of the free-market at work? Flynt made profits and thus can do whatever he wants to do to expand his business, regulations be damned. In fact, doesn't he have the sacred right to get his message out untrammeled, since he does in fact have money? How dare Disney impede this entrepenuer, whose only crime is responding to the tastes of the market, however ill-considered they may be!
I'm sorry. I just hate how NRO trumpets the free-market line while ignoring its manifestly pernicious effects, while throwing those principles out the window as soon as somebody makes money in a way that offends your Judeo-Christian sensibilities. For an example, peruse recent entries on the cigar tax and and replace each mention of "cigar" with "marijuana." Cigar enjoyment is a "simple pleasure" with nominal social ills (besides the effect on one's health), and therefore shouldn't be taxed. Marijuana enjoyment, on the other hand, is something that shouldn't even enter into the vaunted free market, let alone be prohibitively taxed by the legitimate forces of the state.
I'd get my knickers in a twist about similarly offensive right-leaning billboards or patterns of behavior that I see in rural America, except that I am enough of a grown up to realize that promoting things or banning them through legislation on the basis of whether or not they make me feel comfortable or "icky" is fundamentally misguided. Genuine standards, based on sound reason, thoughtful argumentation, and objective data are needed (It's funny that namby-pamby liberalism works with objective standards, rather than "feelings" like supposedly stern conservatism). Of course, this would be expecting some semblence of consistency in your arguments, which, after reading NRO these last few years, seems laughable.
In conclusion, I'd like you to honestly answer whether you would be okay with appeals to George Soros, Michael Moore, or some other boogeyman to fund ads to crowd out offensive right-wing ads. Would it be similarly okay with you if I raised money to overshadow that church billboard that told me I was going to hell for not believing in the divinity of Jesus? Would it be okay if I worked to obscure the neanderthal ravings that greet all who pass by Chehalis, WA on I-5? I suspect that you and your ilk would demonize me as some sour-grapes liberal who is trying to upset the free-speech rights of upstanding Americans. If I'm wrong in my assumption, I apologize. However, after reading NRO regularly, I strongly doubt that that is the case.
If I am wrong, please explain to me how free-market evangelism is consistent with selective legislation of morality. In other words, please explain how there's a genuine affinity between corporate conservatism and its the evangelical concerns of many on the right. Explain how non-obscene references to pornography should be legislated against, while right-wing hate speech advocating terrorism on American citizens ought not be curbed. Explain how enjoyment of clearly non-therapeutic, health damaging smokeables should be beyond regulation, while enjoyment of arguably therapeutic smokeables should be regulated into the black market. Explain to me why the sale of firearms ought not be restricted, while the sale of sex toys ought be. Explain how there shouldn't be fairness-doctrine imposition into flatly misleading statements by right-wing, ideologues is wrong, while stymying legitimate 1st amendment rights of protesting veterans, because you FEEL they're seditious, is right (as was recently asserted). Explain why straight marriage should be so free from government imposition, that any male-female pair of idiots can do so in Vegas while liquored up, while homosexual marriage ought to be denied without relying on the fact that you FEEL that gay sex is "icky."
To my mind, your writers do a poor job of trying argue on behalf of what is an untenable combination of guiding principles. Free market thinking is incoherent, unless its tied to a freedom of social values and practices. The legislation of morality is its practical limit. Your pundits are only able to make their points at the expense of consistency and intellectual rigor, often resorting conclusions in the form of "I don't like X, because it's icky" when free-market thinking fails them, as you do in this piece.
Signed,
A Calm-Headed Liberal Who You Will Ignore in Favor of Posting a Misrepresentative, Irrational Screed
(ACHLWYWIIFOPAMIS
)