Thoughtless for the Day

We've got a great deal of ground to cover and not a whole lot of time to do it in, so let's start with the foul goop that's collected at the bottom of our cultural barrel: AKA the Lifetime Network.

When it comes to Guilty Pleasures (which really should be the title of a Lifetime movie), both Lifetime and the Lifetime Movie Network should be at the top of everybody's list (although in the case of Lifetime and LMN it's Guilty By Reason of Insanity). If you wake up at 3 AM with a burning desire to indulge your inner xenophobe with Not Without My Daughter, Lifetime has your back.

That said, there are plenty of reasons to despise Lifetime. Currently the Number Two spot on the list of Lifetime's Crimes Against Your Sanity is Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life. Here's a quick RATYHTL plot synopsis: Teenage boys finds titties on the intertubes - wants to see more. Mom goes fuckobazoo when informed that friend's marriage was destroyed by internet porn. There's so much wrong here, it's hard to figure out where to start but I'll do my best:

In the minor league there's the fact that this whole thing could've been delegated to the role of non-issue by moving junior's computer from his bedroom to the family room.

Moving up (or down?) the ladder, who the fuck was expecting a Nobel Prize nomination for the ground-breaking discovery that men (in particular teenage boys) like staring at pictures of nekkid women? Of course, like those PSA's in which two puffs marijuana turn little Billy into a drooling heroin addict, in the Lifetime universe merely catching a glimpse of a pair of bare breasts results in endless, sleepless nights spent cruising the web for donkey porn. Call me Captain Reality, but if you're the sort of sick fuck who has even the slightest interest in bestiality or kiddie porn, your problems go a whole lot deeper than the internet (and you'd better get your head straightened out pretty quickly before I end up with your blood all over my new Carolinas). Ad while we're at it, if your marriage wasn't "destroyed by internet porn"; it as destroyed by the fact that you should've checked to see if your sexual interests were in sync before you got to the alter.

"Addicts blur the lines between fiction and fantasy, creating devastating effects on relationships," - Executive producer Paul Goff (Who is no longer welcome in the World of Men).

Next up (and, admittedly, some may view this as a minor point), before I caught the ten or so minutes of Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life that I actually watched, I used to think that Kelly Lynch was kinda hot, but in CS:HSL she looks like she's getting ready to audition for the title role in The Ann Coulter Story

But the biggest sin committed by Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life is that it reinforces several negative stereotypes about women. You'd have to sit through an entire marathon of The Man Show in order to get the picture of the American women as sexually repressed porn-hating killjoys that CS:HSL manages to paint in under two hours.

This talk of stereotypes brings us to Lifetime's Greatest Crime Against Women: Lifetime promotes the belief in the collective stupidity that is astrology (Be sure to check out Lifetime's Astrologer's take on the debate on whether Pluto is a planet or not). Why I this a crime against women in particular? While polls show that 31% of the American public believes in the accuracy of Astrology, if you break that 31% down by gender it works out that 25% are men and 36% are women, which means that women are more likely to be taken advantage of by astrologers than men are. In fact, women are much more likely to be the victims of "psychic" hucksters than me are. Ether way, I'm letting the ladies at Skepchick know about Lifetime's Astrologer. The ball's in their court now.

April 16, 2003 - A Port Huron woman who claimed she was a psychic was sentenced to 23 months to 10 years in prison after admitting in January she defrauded at least one client of $45,000. Cathy Wilson, 44, will receive credit for 322 days already served in the St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron. She was sentenced Jan. 7 to 11 months in jail after being convicted of defrauding another client of $1,700. Wilson tearfully told St. Clair County Circuit Judge James Adair she had become a Christian in jail and wanted to go home to her family in Canada. "Please don't send me to prison...my family has a job set up for me, and I will repay these women," Wilson said. "I know I will never, ever do this sort of thing again." Wilson has admitted to taking money from victims by saying she needed to borrow it to increase her "psychic power."