The Man Behind the Buzz

Perversion Watch

The chief spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration was none too pleased with the front-page USA Today story about the development of new X-ray machines that would show "a clear picture of what's under passengers' clothes -- whether weapons or just bare skin."

Mark Hatfield strongly disagrees with the story's assertion that the airport machines will "paint a revealing picture of a person's nude body." So he fired off an e-mail to reporter Thomas Frank with the subject line: "You should work for Larry Flynt."

Dispensing with dry, bureaucratic language, Hatfield wrote: "What a sensational piece of [excrement]." He said the machines had been delayed, "but you choose to mislead your readers with 'bare skin' and 'peer into undergarments.' Shame on you and your perverted editor."

Says Hatfield: "My colorful complaint to him was meant to be constructive." While partly "tongue-in-cheek," he says he was making the point that the agency is dealing with privacy concerns by demanding changes to the machines.

That Paris Ad

If we might digress from politics for a moment, there is lots of chatter about that Paris Hilton burger ad for Carl Jr.'s, which TV types keep denouncing while replaying it again and again. Here is the esteemed Tunku Varadarajan of OpinionJournal:

"Had it not been for Bill O'Reilly -- once a breath of bracing air on television, now just a gust of halitosis -- I would not have seen the ad in which a thong-suited Paris Hilton, overdressed by her own recent standards, touts a burger so brazen that it looks like the patties have had silicone implants.

"Paris writhes frontally for the camera, hoses herself down as she washes a car (burger in hand, naturally), and then assumes a horizontal position as she takes a climactic bite, rump arched skyward. Mr. O'Reilly's plaint was that the ad, put out by a fast-food chain called Carl's Jr., was inappropriate for a family restaurant: 'Mr. and Mrs. America, and four little kids screaming for a little burger and fries. Now, they're going to see this, and they're going to go, What?' Yet how does he manifest his disapproval? By airing the eye-catching spot on his show not once, but twice--all the while tut-tutting and huffing like some suburban Savonarola."

Brian Montopoli of Columbia Journalism Review decries the "grossly excessive, blatantly overblown and sniggeringly childish" coverage of Paris as peddler:

"What exactly, you might wonder, is the story? Well, the Parents Television Council . . . has condemned the Hilton burger ad as 'soft-core porn' and 'inappropriate for television.' The organization 'plans to mobilize its more than 1 million members to protest and is considering petitioning the Federal Communications Commission for a ruling on whether the advertisements are indecent,' according to the Los Angeles Times. Now, the PTC, which was founded by our friend Brent Bozell, complains about an awful lot -- according to a December 2004 Mediaweek report, they were responsible for 99.9 percent of all indecency complaints received by the FCC through October of that year. . . .

"People like looking at Paris. And though the commercial follows a straightforward plot -- Paris has to wash a Bentley, and due to all the activity, she gets hungry and eats a burger -- she goes at it as though she's auditioning for a role on a late-night Cinemax movie. Which explains why the Carl's Jr. website crashed after the ad came out from all the traffic. And why news organizations are using the 'story' as an excuse to post stills from the ad and get a little of that traffic themselves."