It’s good to see that the Seattle Times editorial board has its priorities straight.
YOU do not have to be a technical whiz to know Craigslist is not to blame for the recent murder in Pierce County, a heinous crime that claimed the life of a loving father in front of his family.
No, you don’t. But despite this admission, the “Craigslist Killing” still kinda trivializes the rest of the Times’ editorial:
But it also doesn’t take too much to recognize the site must do more to rid itself of numerous posts that seem to promote or involve prostitution.
The Times urges Attorney General Rob McKenna to “step up his involvement,” but I think if local law enforcement is going to crack down on prostitution, I’d rather them focus on the hookers trolling Rainier Avenue, who occasionally have their Johns drive up the hill and park on the corner in front of my house, where they inevitably dump their empty beer bottles, used condoms and soiled paper towels on the sidewalk for the neighborhood kids to walk by on their way to school the next morning.
I mean, don’t you think that’s a bit more of a public nuisance than the more discrete, home delivery kinda services pitched online?
Personally, I find the whole notion of sex-for-money both degrading and, well, unhygienic, and I’m sure in favor of attempting to address the broader swath of social ills that leads women to engage in the sex trade. But when the transaction occurs between two consenting adults in the privacy of one’s own home or place of business, well, I find that much less troublesome than when it occurs in the backseat of a car parked outside my bedroom window at one in the morning.
But then, I suppose my priorities are bit different than those of the editors at the Times, perhaps because, unlike me, none of them live two blocks up the hill from Rainier Avenue.
I don’t doubt that the ads in the adult-services section of Craigslist are degrading and offensive, so unlike the Times’ editors, I never read them. But if, as the Times implies, these ads are “among the main ways officers track down sexually exploited juveniles and adults,” it strikes me that there’s a certain karma at play here, if not a useful check and balance on the sex industry’s worst excesses. After all, it’s easier and more efficient to patrol the adult-services section on Craigslist than it is our city’s streets, and during these tough budgetary times, law enforcement needs to prioritize its resources.
The truth is, men are dicks, both literally and figuratively, so there will always be a market for prostitution; I mean, you just can’t change human nature. So my concern is that if you crack down on Craigslist, you won’t stop these illicit services, you’ll just force them offline, underground… and into a car parked on that dark corner outside my house.
“two blocks up the hill from Rainier Avenue”
Sorry, I couldn’t get past that. I always pictured your place as being SE of the intersection of Rainier and Graham. Instead you must be on the west side of Graham Hill.
“there will always be a market for prostitution”
That’s working out about as well as the drug laws.
Frank hates Craig because Craig sucks Frank. All that classified revenue, to which Blethen was indolently accustomed, being sucked away into the Craigslist ether.
Blethen’s Carry Nation crusade against Craig’s sex-work marketplace makes business sense, at least if Blethen can heat up a critical mass of indignation to shut his competition down, but Blethen’s belated trip into the moral arena is little and late. From Blethen, year after year, we’ve heard not a peep about the pimps at the Weekly and Stranger.
Last year the Weekly ran a state A-G’s solemn assertion that prostitution is not a victimless crime. Last year the Stranger ran, without apparent irony, a story about a Westlake rub emporium’s matron being busted for promoting prostitution. Meanwhile, way back in both tabloids, sexy workers were and are selling themselves in living color.
Sort of gives hypocrisy a bad name, but not as bad as being on the cusp of Year 8 of General Dan’s endless no-win war. Savage War was born on the 4th of July, 2002. Howling Commando Dan scraped a match across his stubble and lit a cheroot clamped in his teeth. Then he made the clear coherent case for holy war that Bush couldn’t or wouldn’t make. The rest is history and misery, but the hos play on.
Seems like Blethen always needs someone to blame for the Seattle Times’ economic problems. For a long time it was his major competitor, the P.I., and the “evil out-of-state money machine run by the Heast Corporation” which he claimed threatened local control of daily newspapers in town. At the same time, he also blamed the Unions, which he similarly hated with a passion and tried to break whenever he could. But with the demise of the P.I., and his own revenues plummeting, and no labor troubles in sight, he now has to find a new scapegoat/enemy for his troubles – currently Google and Craigslist.
I’ve never understood his ranting against Google – on a logical basis it doesn’t make sense. Google doesn’t compete with the Times, in fact it can even send traffic to it’s website. Blethen’s real complaint isn’t with Google, it’s with the internet in general. But he knows, somewhere in his fuzzy consciousness, that horse is already out of the barn. Looking wistfully at Google’s billions, he just wants to try to convince somebody that Google should be forced to share some of that money with Blethen.
As for Craigslist, they certainly ARE in direct competition. But the Seattle Times can’t come close to competing with them. Craigslist doesn’t charge a dime for most of the advertising, and it doesn’t have to pay for paper, ink, distribution, printing labor, etc. Moreover, it’s more efficient – people get to post their own ads (rather than having to call them in to a copywriter), it’s posted immediatly (not a day or two later), and people can respond directly by pushing a button. In the world of survival of the fittest, Craigslist wins hands-down. The Times could have competed on the same basis, but I’m sure if someone suggested that they give away a lot of their advertising for free over the internet, the howls from corporate offices would have been nerve-rattling.
So Blethen’s last card in this hand – and it isn’t a very good one – is to attack Craigslist on moral grounds. Since he can’t (or won’t) print escort ads, he points and accusing finger at Craigslist, which doesn’t police the self-posted ads very well.
But as Goldy mentioned, from a law-enforcement basis I don’t see much value to cutting off the ads. They seem to me to be pretty much an invitation to get arrested. If the police were really willing to dedicate the resources to stop this type of trade, they would simply arrange a visit to each of these advertisors over a period of several weeks, and make enough arrests that no one would dare use Craigslist to post such ads again.
If the illicit sex is run out of the prostitute’s home, there is a chance that a SWAT team acting on a tip might bust down her door and shoot her pussy.
and Frank’s paper in Yakima has printed the alternative papers on it’s presses.
That is how he makes his money from porn.
Oops, @1 I meant to write “SW” of Graham and Rainier.
@#$^%$ Craig’s list! They’ve stolen all the ad money we used to get from stolen goods, hand job huts, and hookers!
–Frank B.
ooops. meant Carrie Nation @2.
heh-
The Seattle Times editorial board are idiots. Do as I say, not as I do.
Then perhaps the solution is to legalize and regulate it. The legal brothels here in Nevada (I’m gigging in Carson City for the next two weeks) demonstrate as reasonable a solution as you’re going to find anywhere in North America.
The scary part about Dan Savage’s clear cogent case for elective preemptive undeclared war in 2002 is that it totally won me over. Was straddling the fence on Iraq until Dan tipped me into the mud.
His easy familiarity with people I admire (Orwell, Mike Kelly) had a lot to do with it, but even more important was this: Dan Savage and I have the hots for same woman … Florence King. Wonder if she’s into 3-ways.
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
@12….ole Florence looks like Joe Pesci with a wig…
just keeping it real for all my homies…
If anybody doesn’t remember Carrie Nation, here she is. She’s straight outta the other Steve who rocks & rules, Steve King. Who isn’t Florence King.
Why would the Times be against prostitution? Aren’t all Republicans prostitutes? Metaphorically speaking, of course (and some, perhaps, literally).
Yeah, but was he clean and articulate?
@17,
“Yeah, but was he clean and articulate?”
The person who plays Puddy was, indeed, articulate. Based on his character, I wouldn’t have thought so.
Was he clean? I don’t really remember. He had a big friendly smile, though.
How ’bout you? Are you clean and articulate? How come you never stop by my office? And when are we going to meet up for a beer at the CI?
rhp
Puddy read last week where the Seattle Times thought Kagan was a great pick for “Change”. You didn’t say anything against them when they were sucking the kook-aid? So why the attack now?
Puddy @ 19: I never accused the Seattle Times of consistency. Their editorial opinions go all over the board, perhaps indicating that they all aren’t written by the Blethens. Sometimes the editorials have good reasoning behind their positions, sometimes they don’t.
But the one area where the Times is consistent is in editorializing to protect it’s own self-interests, as they do when they attacked the P.I. as threatening “local newspapers”; Google for – well, existing; and Craigslist for supposedly promoting nefarioius deeds. I wouldn’t mind it so much if they would just be honest and admit that they are just engaging in self-defense. But when they try to wrap their attacks into some ill-reasoned “public interest” argument, I feel obliged to join Goldy in calling them on it.
As for Kagan, lots of people have been saying that the Republicans aren’t going to block her nomination. They may do a bit of posturing for the benefit of the Tea Party folks back home, but in the end they figure that despite the rhetoric from A.M. radio talk-show hosts, she’s really not that much of an idealouge and is reasonalby acceptable to them (barring the apeparance of any smoking guns in the interim). I wouldn’t expect the Seattle Times to come to any different of a conclusion.
LOL! This thread coming from a guy that couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse with a hundred dollar bill. Poor little sexually frustrated Goldy. :)