I get the sense this is a role they reprise all the time.
Yeah, that sort of thing really bothers me. Worse is when you sense that this is the best bargain on the table for them: be the butt of everyone's jokes and have a social circle. It's the Howard Stern-Beetlejuice phenomenon.
And I think--sadly--I'm closer to Althouse than to the quoted bit of Hebert on prostitution, on grounds that feel similar my Beetlejuice issues: it just seems wrong to tell someone, "Hey, your life sucks," knowing that the next thing you're going to do is walk away.
...and other misshapen relatives....
Sure, when FL says it, it's gonzo and satirical, but when early 20th century eugenicists say it, it's "inhuman" and "murderous."
People paid her $200 to eat an egg sandwich?
You all should pay me $200 to eat an egg sandwich.
I find it almost physically painful to watch Idol for these reasons. On the other hand, I like to go to the State Fair in part so that I can mock the freaks. At least I keep it largely to myself when I do so.
The system in Navada is not a very good advertisement for legalized prostitution. In fact, it lets you know that for many prostitutes working conditions are better when sex work is illegal, because laws are frequently framed to favor management over labor.
Why exactly to the women need to be ready to service clients any time night or day? Why don't they set their own schedules? The dr. analogy is crappy. Doctors wear pagers because people have medical *emergencies*. Are there people out there who *need to get laid right now dammit* so badly that other people wear pagers?
5: You mean the few freaks in the tent show, or the far larger number ambling around outside with food on sticks?
7:
The people are always much more interesting that any of the things inside the tent.
But, I hope that m/tch isnt cracking on fried oreos or spaghetti on a stick. That is American ingenuity at the highest level. Forget all that crap about Michigan automotive skill that we heard during the Michigan primary. Food on a stick is where it is at.
Rob, I'm having a sexual emergency. I need sexual healing. Call me.
7: The latter. My great find year-before-last was the woman wearing an airbrushed t-shirt that featured a heart with the Rebel flag on it and the flowery-scripted words: MICHELLE & REDNECK.
I have watched American Idol only once, the season finale when the woman from North Carolina won it. I haven't felt the urge to see it again. I watched enough Star Search when I was a kid.
9: Again!? Why do you always have to bother me with these things.
The freak shows at the state fair are SO fucking sad. (I'm talking about the ones inside the tents.) I understand why those were still popular back before the 1950s or so when people had no televisions and were otherwise primitive barbarians, but why oh why are they still around today??
I think the Scots are second to none when it comes to thinking up new things to fry. But the putting it on a stick part seems to be a sterling example of American ingenuity. Although that said, the Chinese sure know how to make delicious fried things on sticks too. Maybe it's one of those "they invented gunpowder, but we figured out how to really fuck shit up with it".
I have watched American Idol only once, the season finale when the woman from North Carolina won it.
Clay Aiken came in second, apo.
12: Socrates was a philosophical midwife; you're a philosophical gigolo. With awesome paychecks come awesome responsibilities, helpy-chalk.
Or rather: Maybe it's one of those "they invented gunpowder, but we figured out how to really fuck shit up with it" things.
Yeah, I find the "hookers in legal brothels are on call 24-7" really mysterious. Leaving the downside of sex work qua sex work to one side, those are some impressively shitty working conditions.
The freak shows at the state fair are SO fucking sad. (I'm talking about the ones inside the tents.) I understand why those were still popular back before the 1950s or so when people had no televisions and were otherwise primitive barbarians, but why oh why are they still around today??
Tent freak shows are still around? Is this a southern thing? I went to the L.A. County fair a few times growing up, and I only remember freak shows of the non official type, like the little black kid sexually harassing a 900 lb. pig.
18: It's so mysterious I wonder whether it's true. I have no reason to think it's not, but I have no reason to think it is, either, or at least I didn't before reading this post. What possible factors could lead to that outcome? I mean, I'm no supply and dmeand fundamentalist, but this is a situation with a pretty significant imbalance that ought to tend toward better conditions, right? It's really weird.
I'm only really familiar with Southern state fairs, but they're definitely still around there, or at least were as of the last time I went, maybe 5 years ago. One would think the internet would have killed them off, if nothing else.
@18
Leaving the downside of sex work qua sex work to one side, those are some impressively shitty working conditions.
Customers can show up unannounced, but that's not usually how it works, of course. Cab and limo drivers have deals with the brothels to ferry customers there and will call an hour ahead of arrival. And those customers who show up in the middle of the night are there to drop thousands of dollars. Clients must use condoms. The hookers get weekly medical checkups, and legal protection from being arrested, abused or having their wages stolen by management because, after all, it's a legal job.
18: It has such a strong aspect of, "Oh, you want to be a sex worker? Fine, we'll work you to death!" that I can only imagine it is in fact meant to be a deterrent. It smacks of a parent catching their child trying a cigarette and making them smoke a whole pack in one go to teach them a lesson.
21: In NC, the only official freak shows are of unusual animals ("world's" largest horse, etc.).
What was up with that tall, awkward black guy last night who sang so tunelessly and with odd consonants, but talked normally? Some kind of hearing impairment? The judges bursting out laughing when he sang was a really nasty moment.
Also, that skinny blonde veterinary student from Allentown was great -- such intense attitude. She'd be great in a band. But obviously way too working-class for American Idol, which last night was all about mocking poor people.
legal protection from being arrested
Don't they get this by the fact that what they're doing is, uh, actually legal?
The town I work in used to pride itself on have the Worlds Largest Pecan sitting on the courthouse steps. Here's the kicker: It's made of cement. It's gigantic.
Then some other little town built a bigger pecan.
Recently we commissioned $12,000 to build a new, biggest cement pecan. Victory will be ours.
@26
Yeah, read "legal protection" as just "protection". Change in thought mid-sentence.
I had the same reaction to the show as Labs. The final montage, cutting back and forth between the Princess Leia fan's complaints about the uniformity of the beautiful people and shots of those beautiful people was hard to take. And the judges were so nice to linebacker girl that it made you wonder whether her story had even more layers of tragedy.
But all of this distracts from the other angle: teh hotness. The country-music singin', horse-ridin', martial-arts-wieldin' blond girl? She's going to be making millions of dollars 18 months from now.
20: If it's true (and like you I have no reason beyond Bob Herbert's column, and having heard that sort of thing a couple times before, to think it is true), I'd figure that it's a data point supporting the idea that even when it's legal sex work isn't, largely, something people do because they're rationally weighing the attractiveness of it as a profession against their other available options, it's something they do because they don't think they have any other options. At which point most people who will do sex work under decent conditions will also do it under impressively shitty conditions -- they don't think they've got other choices.
I don't know this to be true, or know much about it at all, really, but this sort of argument sounds persuasive to me.
I seem to remember at least one of the girls on Cathouse saying how much she loved the flexible schedule and such.
I love that huge pecan! Didn't know it had been surpassed, but I'm glad the wise people of S____ are doing something to remedy that.
19: Wait, what? How do you mean "sexually harassing"?
And speaking of which, heebie, wasn't there talk back in say November about a January Central Texas meet-up?
19: Rfts and I went into an AMAZING DOLL WOMAN booth at the Maryland State Fair (it may have been a county fair, actually), expecting it to be some sort of Barnum-esque joke. Instead, it was a very small, bored, unhappy-looking West Indian dwarf. It was genuinely disconcerting.
it just seems wrong to tell someone, "Hey, your life sucks," knowing that the next thing you're going to do is walk away.
Better to say, "hey, your life looks fine to me" and walk away?
Wait, what? How do you mean "sexually harassing"?
Reaching over the walls of the pen to slap the pig's huge nuts.
And speaking of which, heebie, wasn't there talk back in say November about a January Central Texas meet-up?
I heard you were going to Houston this weekend.
I've never slapped my idol's nuts.
30: but they don't, or at least shouldn't, have to think they have any better options. Better options ought to materialize all on their own and be presented to them. I don't mean that to sound fanciful--extraordinarily high-demand people don't need to know their market power in advance to capitalize on it. I'm actually starting to wonder whether maybe I'm overestimating the supply/demand imbalance.
We were thinking about going to Houston, but I think we've decided to postpone that trip till Preznit's Day weekend.
AI is draining all the fun out of outsider art.
I'm actually starting to wonder whether maybe I'm overestimating the supply/demand imbalance.
The supply probably should include all of the people who work illegally. And I think that prostitution is only legal in some out of the places in Nevada. If there are lots of people working illegally in more convenient areas, perhaps demand is less.
32: but I'm glad the wise people of S____ are doing something to remedy that
It is sure to all end in tears. I see anthropologists of the future puzzling over the thousands of giant cement pecans (many of them vandalized or only half-completed) scattered across the American midwest.
41: Are you thinking of trying to do your part to change that imbalance, Brock?
Tom is right, that blonde woman with the martial arts is teh hot.
Bob Herbert is a little misleading in at least one sense; he doesn't mention that the prostitutes at legalized Nevada brothels work as independent contractors for limited stretches of time. Whether he's right that they're on-call 24-7 during that time I have no idea (if so that's indeed shitty) but he gives the impression that they're treated like "Natashas".
I can't read Althouse as I cannot believe someone whose reasoning skills are that poor is a law prof. It's like Goldberg having a career as a hack. It makes me hate the world.
Also, her commenters are funny. It's not like doctors being on call; doctors would have to do paperwork afterwards.
I read a book by some researcher on the Mustang Ranch brothel a while back. The things that struck me:
* How low Nevada managed to keep the STD/HIV infection rate among prostitutes through their policies.
* How messed up it is that most brothels have two types of alerts to let their prostitutes know there is a customer -- one for black customers and one for others, as some prostitutes refuse to service black customers and that's OK'd by management.
* That a sizeable number of prostitutes working in brothels have pimps not associated with the brothel. What's the point of a pimp if you work in a brothel? You're just handing him money. He's not providing protection or anything.
* How messed up it is that most brothels have two types of alerts to let their prostitutes know there is a customer -- one for black customers and one for others, as some prostitutes refuse to service black customers and that's OK'd by management.
I'm not crazy about unequal treatment, but I'm OK with that. Also, I read a that a similar thing happens in porn: white actresses don't want to work with black actors because it hurts their marketability.
Jesus. There are porn consumers who won't buy a movie with a white woman in it because she's had sex with a black man in another movie? If that's true, the amount of multileveled loathing it inspires is just mindboggling.
"it hurts their marketability"
So that's what they're calling it these days, huh?
53: Remember that porn star who fellated a cop, that Labs linked to a while back? I was, for a time, fascinated by her blog and read almost all of the archives. She pinpointed the first time she had sex with a black guy as being some sort of Big Deal. And that she was hated in her native state (can't remember.. Kentucky? Tennessee?) not because she was a porn star, but especially because she was in porn having sex with black men.
Note: shortly after her story broke, her blog disappeared and anyone going there was redirected to the "Blacks on Blondes" porn pay site. I was sad.
53: Remember the porn clerk who used to have a blog? They claimed the term "sex party" was coined because some customers didn't know what "orgy" meant.
55: Barbie Cummings.
56: Ali Davis.
53: I want to say it's not other movies, but bookings at strip clubs in various parts of the country. I can't really remember, though, so I could be making that up.
57: Yeah, that's it! I'm really sad her blog is gone. If anyone can find it, let me know. It was fascinating to read.
If anyone is surprised that people will hate white women for having sex with black men, just read the comments to this post (no pictures, so SFW, but, very upsetting).
In defense of the blog's proprietor, he called some of the commenters out. However, he did not simply delete their comments, which is what I think any responsible blogger should do. Fuckin' free speech nonsense.
Didn't Barbie Cumming's url switch over to a full-time porn site after the infamous trooper incident? I'm not going to verify this at work, but that's how I remember things.
56: I remember that! I read almost the entire thing as it existed at that point during an extremely boring job, along with not my desk and a few other such things.
Oops. I should read the thread before making redundant comments.
59: While I'm not clicking through, the comments on that thread purport to include a link to a new blog of hers. Check the last comment.
66: I clicked through. Not there. Sigh.
Ali Davis, that's right. Barbie Cummings' blog may be gone, but True Porn Clerk stories is still archived.
Ali "True Porn Clerk Stories" Davis moved to LA and is now a struggling actress, which she currently writes about on her LiveJournal.
laws are frequently framed to favor management over labor
impressively shitty working conditions
Which is why sex workers need, of course, a union.
There are other "unions" and associations of sex workers, but AFAIK, this is still the only one that has actually bargained a contract.
Interesting follow-up: The club is now owned by the workers and run as a co-op. There's been some in-fighting between the dancers and the support staff but it's still operating.
("Live Nude Girls Unite!," which documents the organizing drive, is a great documentary, BTW, should you have the chance to see it.)
15. "Clay Aiken came in second, apo."
Fantasia Barrino, 3rd season: High Point NC.
And speaking of which, heebie, wasn't there talk back in say November about a January Central Texas meet-up?
The current proposal is to do it on Super Tuesday.
(Which M/ and I have discussed. Have you noticed how men NEVER LISTEN to anything a woman says? Sheesh.)
Being on call 24/7 is not unique to prostitutes. In my tiny exurban township, my neighbor the tow truck operator lives that life (he does take vacations, as I expect the prostitutes do). Like a prostitute, he's an independent contractor and only makes money wehn he gets work. It makes sense economically because there isn't enough odd hour business to justify a shift worker, but there's very high profit from the occasional interstate pile up.
From the HBO series, when the bell rings at least 10 professionals come out for the lineupt. It couldn't happen if they had customers. One works for the next hour or so and the rest return to non working. It looks like almost all the time the prostitutes are just hanging out between calls.
The current proposal is to do it on Super Tuesday.
Well, this sounds like fun.
sure, you austin types have all the meetups.
You've got an even better Tuesday in mind?
laws are frequently framed to favor management over labor
Isn't this always how it is?
71: I'm pretty sure that was a joke about Clay Aiken's less-than-macho persona.
Not always. The Wagner Act, which was later amended by the current Taft-Hartley Act, was actually pretty pro-worker and pro-union. (And why it was amended, of course, but there have been a few good historical moments.)
soup, it's only 3 1/2 hours from Houston to Austin. Get your ass over here.
San Marcos Meet-up! Everybody drives 'cept me!
80: Hey, I've done that before.... probably will again. Midweek is harder, of course.
73: Being on call 24/7 is not unique to prostitutes.
Being on call to fuck other people is, though.
Tow truck drivers can spend a lot of time fucking other people over, though.
This seems like as good a place as any to note, for people who are curious about how it all turned out in the end, that I met a nice man who fell in love with me, and I quit my job. I currently have savings to live for quite a while in case things don't work out or I want to quit, and I'm happy with my decision.
1. I know someone who works at the Bunny Ranch. And her husband. She likes it, and has, basically, a nice suburban mom life.
2. While waiting for CA to pick me up at the Cleveland airport once, a man pulled up in front of me, got an excited look, and asked, hopefully, "Natasha?!" You wish, dude!
88.2: Which "Natasha" did he mistake you for?
read almost the entire thing as it existed at that point during an extremely boring job, along with not my desk and a few other such things.
I somehow managed to read this on first glance as "during an extremely boring blow job".
89: Natasha Fatal Its an easy mistake to make.
Speaking of Boris and Natasha, I recommend watching the movie The Great McGinty. You'll be amazed at the voice of one of the characters.
For reasons that have been explained elsewhere, I have spent a number of hours cooling my heels outside the Cottontail Ranch, waiting for a ride. (In a van.) On a few occasions, arrangements weren't made properly, and I had to go in to use the phone or wait out a storm. The madam would bring out the lineup and have them make conversation with me -- sort of "practice talking to the college boy."
For reasons that have been explained elsewhere,
Link, or retell? "That was the summer I had the job working as the groundskeeper at the brothel..."
89: Well, when I dine out on the story, and I do, the implication is that he thinks I am his prostitute or mail-order bride. For all I know, however, he was picking up someone for his church mission.
91: No, I cut my hair and gave up smoking.
Was it awkward? fun? horrifying? all of the above?
While waiting for CA to pick me up at the Cleveland airport once, a man pulled up in front of me, got an excited look, and asked, hopefully, "Natasha?!" You wish, dude!
Fishnets cannot be good travel attire.
Wrongshore, why?
"That was the summer I had the job working as the groundskeeperfluffer at the brothel..."
No, I cut my hair and gave up smoking.
Aw, Oudemia, I am sure that you are still smoking.
(yes, I always go for the low hanging fruit.)
Awkward and fun. Not quite horrifying.
The last time I explained in detail, I had some indiscretion issues, so I'll leave it at this: I spent some time in the desert; the brothel was incidental, never patronized by me or, I'm fairly certain, anyone I know. Email me if you must know more.
I spent some time in the desert
And that prostitute's name turned out to be: Mary Magdalene. Now you know... the rest of the story.
And that menial brothel laborer grew up to be: Richard Pryor. And once he retired from show business, Richard Pryor commented on blogs as: Wrongshore. And now you know the rest of the story.
Except for the lost weeking in '93. We don't talk about that, though.
weekend. weekend. see? even the near-memory gives me the jitters.
Can't be a mail-order bride because according to the law you have to have met once in person in the previous two years in order to bring someone here! But, could have been an Internet date in-country.
brought to you by the part of my brain that holds all the immigration knowledge and has no self-control
I am tired of the American Idol freakshow as well. I would like to see more of the people who can sing, but for whatever reason aren't chosen, as opposed to the clueless, deluded and talentless that take up most of the airtime at this point of the proceedings.