French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters

. . A campaign to discourage young people from Smoking
shows male and female teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if being forced to have oral sex. A cigarette takes the place of the man’s sexual organ. The caption reads: “Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco.”

The advertising agency behind the posters says only a shock campaign can halt the rise in smoking amongst 13 to 15-year-olds in France . .

Townhall.com:

In Praise of Euphemism
by Bill Murchison

I got into it recently — in cordial fashion — with the editors of an editorial page for which I used to labor. One of their columnists had used a word … well, let’s say we wouldn’t have printed it in Ye Olden Tyme. The editors took exception to the exception I took to the word’s appearance on their page. I riposted: whatever happened to euphemism?

rrrRIPOSTE! Blood everywhere.

What did happen to it? The substitution of inoffensive for offensive words long performed a double function. First, it preserved the notion of good taste in writing. Second, it sometimes brought an appreciative smile to the reader’s face. It’s also, today, countercultural, which strikes me as possibly the best reason of all for recovering our lost attachment to euphemism.

Triple function, you mean? Why not . . oohhhh, I get it! Very ‘countercultural’ of you.

Modern culture, to give it that name, is just a little too brash, a little too bad-mannered, for many who inhabit it.

Not for others. Like Zulu warriors, or Eskimos, neither of which ever cuss. Xenophobes, shut-ins, the Amish have no problem with it because, well, hmm. Fundamentalists, it breezes right by them.

Okay, modern culture is too much for everybody on the planet except for the foul-mouthed, which is asshole me. And effing you, of course.

Euphemism invites playfulness because the euphemist is dancing. He wants to say what he wants to say, only without blunt instruments. So he dances around “hell,” which becomes “the place of eternal torment” or just “the hot place.”

This post wraps its lips around someone’s member and pleases it, tappity-tappity.

The phrase stands out instead of fading into the rhetorical woodwork.

It inhabits my feces bott-hole, fling gavort. I smite your ear-twats spockety-spockety with The River of Eternal Torment:

. . you’re wondering who I am
machine or mannequin
with parts made in Japan
I am the modren man!

This is a horrible story — a woman in Virginia gave birth to a child, then cold-bloodedly smothered it in blankets before calling 911. Ten hours later.

Around eleven Friday morning the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office got a call that a woman in her early 20′s was in labor. When deputies arrived at a home in the 12 hundred block of Lone Jack Road in Rustburg they discovered the baby had actually been born alive ten hours earlier, but was dead by the time they were called out there.

“I believe everyone was upset, except for the person who should have been upset, the mother” said Investigator Tracy Emerson.

Emerson says that’s because the mother suffocated the child under bedding. He can’t charge the mother, because of a loophole in state law.

This happened two weeks ago, and still it gets no notice by the national press. You could understand if it were only the godless liberal MSM, but even the values-oriented Fox News seems to have no interest in a story that looks like it should fire up their demographic of prudes and scolds far more than Kathy Griffin saying “fuck” on CNN.

I wouldn’t even be aware of this horror story if it weren’t burning up the tubes among the Christian Right, and I can’t understand why it isn’t getting any traction. There is enough juicy moral outrage to make Jerry Falwell come back from the dead:

“In the state of Virginia as long as the umbilical cord is attached and the placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive the mother can do whatever she wants to with that baby to kill it,” said Investigator Tracy Emerson. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”

But nobody cares about this wasted life:

If there were any way to charge this mother and put her in jail, investigators say they would. In fact, they work (sic) to try to get the state law changed after another similar incident in Campbell County. Talking to two delegates and one state senator, asking them to take this issue up with the General Assembly, but they say those three refused because it’s too close to the abortion issue.

Which is odd, seeing as how Virginia politicians normally seem to see little downside to pro-life electioneering. That’s even odder than a sheriff’s investigator acting as judge and jury to acquit a nameless and faceless murderer while making political accusations against the laws and lawmakers he’s on-duty working for.

“Simply because the mother was there, and the baby had not taken its own identity allegedly at this point, it makes the baby not its own person,” Emerson said.

According to a law – not according to Emerson who believes the little life deserves justice.

He believes the innocent babe deserves justice, but doesn’t bother to mention the killer’s name, much less bother to arrest her and everyone else in the house? In a state that six months ago won an appeals court battle to ban a legitimate medical procedure?

Virginia Abortion Restriction Is Upheld
U.S. Appeals Court Votes 6-5 to Back ‘Partial Birth’ Ban
Thursday, June 25, 2009

A sharply divided federal appeals court ruled constitutional yesterday a Virginia law banning “partial birth” abortion that was overturned four years ago, bringing the state in line with a federal ban on the controversial procedure.

Why don’t any of these low-lifes have names? As I said at the beginning, this is a truly horrible story, and I can’t understand the lack of interest in it by anyone but forced pregnancy networkers. I don’t pretend to have any journalistic training, but it seems obvious to me there is a story worth telling here. Does anybody have a rational explanation for why that isn’t happening?

Just forwarded to me:

Hey Hub

Robert set up my new laptop on Tuesday and all is good.  I also asked if I could keep my extra power cord – since I travel so much, and extra cord is so helpful.

Thanks so much

Kerry

Please send a formal request to me for an additional power cord we like to keep the cords with the original equipment for inventory purposes

Sure – what would a formal request look like?  Is there a form?

No just a e-mail to me requesting and additional power cord

May I have an extra power cord.

People who know him say he was not at all depressed. The fact that his genitals were bound and his hands were free sounds like he may have just made a mistake.

Carradine’s body to return home, while questions remain

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — David Carradine’s wife and his manager disputed suggestions that the actor’s death was a suicide, while rescue workers and police in Bangkok, Thailand, said the actor’s neck and genitals were found bound with rope.

David Carradine was the star of the 1970s TV series, “Kung Fu,” and appeared in more than 100 films.

After Carradine’s body arrives back to the United States this weekend, an autopsy ordered by Carradine’s family will be conducted, according to the actor’s co-manager.

“They’re doing everything possible to get to the bottom of what really happened,” said Carradine’s co-manager Tiffany Smith…

Bangkok police said Carradine was found hanging by a nylon rope in a Bangkok hotel room closet Thursday morning.

“Our preliminary assumption is that the cause of death was suffocation, because there was a rope tied to his neck,” said Bangkok police spokesman Somprasong Yenthuam…

A member of the emergency crew who was called to the hotel after a maid found Carradine told CNN that a yellow nylon rope was tied around the actor’s neck and a black rope was around his genitals. Police later confirmed that information.

The same emergency crew source said Carradine’s hands were not tied, contrary to some media reports. Smith, the co-manager, also said media reports quoting the actor’s management saying the hands were tied were untrue.

wiki: Deaths often occur when the loss of consciousness caused by partial asphyxia leads to loss of control over the means of strangulation, resulting in continued asphyxia and death. While often asphyxiophilia is incorporated into sex with a partner, others enjoy this behaviour by themselves, making it potentially more difficult to get out of dangerous situations[9]. Victims are often found to have rigged some sort of “rescue mechanism” that has not worked in the way they anticipated as they lost consciousness.

In some fatality cases, the body of the asphyxiophilic individual is discovered naked or with genitalia in hand, with pornographic magazines nearby, with dildos or other sex toys present, or with evidence of having orgasmed prior to death.[7] Bodies found at the scene of an accidental death often show evidence of other paraphilic activities,[10] such as fetishistic cross-dressing and masochism.[3] However, in many cases families of these victims may disturb these sites by “sanitizing” them, removing evidence of such paraphilic activities.[11]

It’s a dangerous practice, definitely. Though ruled a suicide, INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence’s death was almost surely by autoerotic asphyxiation.

All-around musician Kevin Gilbert died by it back in 1996. His manager came over to tell him he’d gotten an audition to replace Phil Collins in Genesis and found him dead.