Sexualization sells, dominates headlines daily

This morning, as I conducted my daily perusal of CNN.com, I noticed that the fourth… This morning, as I conducted my daily perusal of CNN.com, I noticed that the fourth most-watched video clip was the story “Female sex patch.” As I looked through the other headlines of the day – “Fired teacher indicted in sex scandal,” “Husband kills wife’s lover, wife charged,” “Party mom pleads guilty to sex with minors” – I wondered if I had accidentally stumbled onto a XXX Web site and not “the most trusted name in news.”

As I sat there, trying to figure out which of these steamy headlines was the most exciting, I remembered that I saw a television ad for a news program about a priest addicted to sex a few days earlier. I recalled waiting patiently for some mention in the ad of the corresponding story of an imam addicted to alcohol or an orthodox rabbi who just couldn’t get enough pork, but unfortunately those stories were not news.

Sex, however, was news. In fact, it seems as if sex is news every day. A recent USA Today editors’ list of the top 25 trends of the past 25 years featured “sexualization” at number 23. Yet, even though there were 22 other trends before it on the page-8B list, guess which trend made the front-page teaser?

And you thought a war would sell newspapers.

Apparently, having a war is not enough. U.S. news media feels the need to report on the crazy things people do in their bedrooms. Well, I guess it’s not all in their bedrooms – but you get the point. The media is always competing for viewers’ time and attention. In the process, they’ve put aside the time-honored tradition of serious reporting and instead embarked on a mission to assure us that some teenage boy or desperate housewife did indeed get to live out his or her fantasy.

Of course, in America, using sex to sell a product is a tradition. Life magazine ran lingerie ads in the 1950s, and a really attractive French woman walked up to me yesterday and asked if I use Old Spice deodorant. However, as much as I am willing to accept the Pussycat Dolls’ repeated question: “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?” (For the record: No. My girl is much hotter.) I would prefer that Anderson Cooper doesn’t ask the same question.

It may take a minute for the large media outlets to figure this out, but they really don’t need sex to sell their products The Pitt News got rid of the “Sex N’At” column years ago. I’m pretty sure that there wasn’t see a huge drop-off in circulation. There are some of us who would like to read actual news. You know