The New York Times was full of depressing news on March 21. On the front page of the paper’s “Style” section was a long story entitled “The Mainstream Flirts With Pornography Chic.” It is easy to wonder whether “flirts” is really the right word. Anyone who has been subjected to the underwear advertisements emblazoned on city buses in New York, the fashion ads in women’s magazines, or indeed the stories trumpeted on the covers of those magazines might think that something far stronger than “flirts” is called for. It seems to be a rule of contemporary cultural life, however, that things are always worse than one thinks. No sooner have we gotten used to gender-bending pedophilic ads from Calvin Klein than the President of the United States gives the cigar industry a bad name. Now we learn from the Times that the sewers of hard-core pornography are eagerly being raided by mainstream tele ...

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