10/28 18:25

Can Porn, 3G and `Business-as-Usual' Work Now

By Patrick Smith

Norfolk, Connecticut, Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Marvelous item in the Financial Times the other day. Did you see it? It seems that Hutchison 3G, the mobile phone operator jointly owned by Hong Kong, Japanese, and Dutch interests, has just named an exec to figure out how to offer soft-core porn through its handsets. ``Online pornography could prove to be a vital way of boosting revenues for struggling mobile telephone operators,'' the FT noted with a perfectly straight face.

Very patriotic -- pro-American, really. Young George tells us that the best thing to do is go about our ordinary business, and that is precisely what the good people at Hutchison 3G are doing. No American toughing it out over those stony slopes in Afghanistan will have to wonder now what it is he or she is fighting to preserve.

It focuses the mind brilliantly, in fact. Think about it for a moment, and you are forced to recognize how utterly trivial one's pursuits become when the only logic applied is the logic of the market. And if pornography is trivial, the trivial, in our present circumstances, is pornographic.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is simple: Going about our ordinary business now that Sept. 11 is part of our history is the last thing we ought to be doing. If that is our way triumphing over terrorism, it is a victory of the hollowest kind.

-- It's (come@to.this), October 30, 2001

Answers

yup, just another''sign of the TIME'S''

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), October 30, 2001.