[lbo-talk] Hustling The Left

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
>  > ...What's the proportion of 500,000 Hustler readers who
>  > actually _read_ words on  its pages, as opposed to just
>  > looking at pix and masturbating?   Probably something
>  > like 1%, and only a small proportion of that 1% get to a
>  > particular article in the whole issue...
>
> I kinda doubt that you ever hung out with lots of ill-educated  
> young single construction-worker types who have copies of Hustler  
> and Playboy and Penthouse lying on the coffee-table in their  
> apartments.  I have; you happen to be incorrect.  Eight out of ten  
> these guys read _each and every article_ in those magazines, with  
> their pupils unnaturally dilated too.  I'm talking about guys who  
> have never once read a book, neither willingly nor under duress, in  
> their entire adult lives.
>
> Fact.  I'm sitting there drinking beer, buzzing, and suddenly they  
> start spouting off about the thermal efficiency of shale oil or the  
> CIA's involvement in the dirty war in El Salvador or some such  
> esoteric topic.  When I say, "You're kidding!" they reply, "No  
> shit, it's right here..." (leafing through Hustler past dismal  
> pictorials of faux-lesbians with rouge on their thingies) "...yeah  
> here it is, read it yourself, man."
>
> Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net

I'd be happy to be wrong about my speculation, but it's difficult for  
me to believe that the reading habit of "ill-educated young single  
construction-worker types" in your anecdote is typical, of readers in  
their occupation or all readers.  Usually, people -- regardless of  
their occupation, education, and so forth -- don't read "_each and  
every article_" of any periodical (a magazine or a newspaper), even  
the ones to which they pay their own money to subscribe.  That's why  
the corporate media can get away with a kind of double message:  
headlines and lead paragraphs suggest one thing; here and there, deep  
into back pages, they reveal another thing.  Periodicals are  
generally designed to be "scanned" for information (or titillation,  
as the case may be), rather than "read."

Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://montages.blogspot.com>
<http://monthlyreview.org>
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