Radosh.net

More trendspotting silliness. Guess what? Porn is going mainstream. Again. Expect many more articles like this when Skin debuts. You'll know it's actually true, of course, only when you stop seeing claims that it is. After all, nobody's writing stories about the mainstreaming of, say, action movies or memoirs. (The only sign that this day is approaching was this New York Times article, a look at adult DVDs that doesn't try to justify itself.)

Meanwhile, I've just written a talking point for The Week off the flurry of articles about another trendspotting staple, the premature sexualizing of youth. Best evidence that this is simply another generation of parents who don't get their kids? Betsy Hart's attempt to deny that: "I was in high school in the early eighties. I liked to dress FUN. I liked to go to parties and date. I liked to look good. And for the record, I was not a nerd. But I never, ever wanted to look like a slut."

But, oops, old man Stanley Crouch undermines Hart by tracing the trend back too far: "When Madonna began rising to prominence nearly 20 years ago, one man wrote of having arrived in a town in the late afternoon. On the ride to his hotel, he assumed he had entered the most highly populated red-light district he had ever seen. The truth was that junior and high school girls in Madonna garb had just gotten out of class and were walking home!"

Oh come on, obviously they were just dressed FUN!

6:53 PM