By Myles Ludwig
The smut bomb has finally been dropped. And it turns out to be one of the most powerful cordless screwdrivers in the NSA’s Craftsman toolbox of surveillance techniques and useful dirty tricks.
Certainly, this latest revelation from the Snowden treasure chest of purloined documents has sent a chill up the collective spines of every man in the world with Internet access.
Of course, few of us would publicly admit taking a porno peek on any kind of regular basis, although, in the United States alone, four self-identified pornographic Websites are listed on Wikipedia’s list of top trafficked sites. Or in Japan, where the pleasures of porn date back to woodblock shunga and currently seem to favor a more pedophilic view — “loose socks” being the operative idiomatic expression for temptation — or in China, where undercover sex is becoming increasingly visible, and is largely associated with the revolution of rising expectations. Where would Mao be lurking, one wonders.
Nobody’s perfect.
One can hardly blame these jihadist Jimmy Swaggarts and so-called rabble rousers or what used to be called “outside agitators” during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, for trying to peek under the burqa skirts of hot Muslim babes. Certainly, if you were trying to decide whether or not to become a suicide bomber, especially one who has had a hard time getting a date, or even a reply on Match.com, you can’t be blamed for trying to get a quick glimpse, at least, of what kind of assorted virgins were impatiently waiting for you.
Even the 9/11 kamikazes were reportedly frequenting South Florida strip clubs right in our neighborhood to see what they were missing — or would be missing.
I suppose, if I were in the disinformation or discrediting business, the business of weaponizing “vulnerabilities” or human frailties, I’d want to know what differentiates jihadiporn from the norm. What’s the turn-on? There’s a lot of history that suggests the wanking business (to use the British idiom) takes a different turn in some areas of the Middle East, though I remember that when I worked in Bangkok, the sight of a flowing white jilaba and checkered headdress were hardly uncommon in the traditional underbelly of that city.
And I’d want to know if Iran or Pakistan were secretly enriching the special sauce of what could become a nuclear pornomissile.
Of course, Porn Ops has a history, too.
It takes a leaf out of the playbooks of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, not to mention the FBI’s hallowed former director, J. Edgar Hoover. That loveable old butterball commie-chaser, long rumored to favor shirtwaists and whose alter ego was named Mary, is said to have used the tool effectively to keep his job in perpetuity, blackmail the Kennedy boys, as well as to throw a puddle of mud on Martin Luther King Jr.
But is it fair?
All of us have some dark corners, some of which are darker than the nooks and crannies of Carlos Danger. Could they withstand the glare of the latest LED exposure?
And are you next?
As Amy Winehouse might’ve sung, “What kind of snoopery is this?”