'Komen' to Porn?
Susan G. Komen for the Cure doesn't want to accept donations from porn websites.
Pornhub.com, the 68th-most-popular website in the world, recently announced a promotion wherein they would donate one cent to breast-cancer research for every 30 unique views given to, uh, breast-related videos.
The Komen folks, not wanting to sully the organization's name by taking money from a site whose main focus is posting videos of people engaging in acts that were still illegal between consenting, heterosexual adults in 14 states until 2003, has refused to accept money from these purveyors of smut—and honestly, that's understandable. I mean, this is an organization that got national attention for deciding to pull funding for breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood clinics as a result of investigations by politicians into Planned Parenthood's federal funding—and then pulled a whiplash-causing about-face when the public turned on them for it.
The people at Komen for the Cure don't want to rock the boat. They want to go on as the largest breast-cancer-related charity in the world, praised for taking in money from every business that's realized that offering powder-pink items is a brilliant business decision.
Partnering with a company within an industry that's accused (and rightfully so) of exploitive, occasionally shockingly violent practices isn't a great way to keep an image clean in a country where exposed breasts are more devastating to our collective moral fiber than live broadcasts of death.
But pornography is one of the world's largest industries—a 2006 estimate put the industry's worldwide revenue at $97 billion—and to reject what's bound to be an enormous amount of funding from the third-largest website in its market seems almost counter-intuitive to Komen's mission of protecting women's lives. After all, pornography's biggest stars are women—and who better to partner with than an industry whose business depends on the people you're trying to save?
The Week on Our Blogs
On The Range, we took a look at Paul Cunningham's desire for more medical-marijuana regulation; followed the circumstances behind the death of Border Patrol Agent Nicolas Ivie; snuck a peek at Komen of Southern Arizona's fun PSA "Mammo Time," which features an endless stream of flying brassieres; gave out tickets to the Vamos a Tucson Mexican Baseball Fiesta; marveled at what Tucson used to look like; hyped the hell out of Fall Club Crawl®; gave balding men a reason to shave their heads; wondered why people on Twitter were still touting a 7-month-old poll favoring Gabby Saucedo Mercer; and looked at an absurdly false TV ad from Ann Kirkpatrick.
We talked comics (as we do almost every week) with the good folks at Heroes and Villains; learned that we, as a city, apparently believe that "when the mountains are pink, it's time to drink" from a Canadian golfing column; checked on a new poll following the incredibly tight race between Richard Carmona and Jeff Flake; talked about the growing prevalence of Tucson's microbrewing community; looked into a 5k beer run in Rocky Point; and noted that there are good folks out there transforming the old Safehouse Espresso Bar into Black Crown Coffee Company.
On the debut week of We Got Cactus, our music blog, we gave a shout-out to the return of Hedwig and the Angry Inch; questioned music that promotes drug use; had a "kiki"; looked at weird books that get sent to Weekly World Central; wished Johnny Ramone a happy birthday; looked into news regarding hip-hop producer 9th Wonder and his final album with semi-local rapper Murs; and explained why we named our blog "We Got Cactus."
Comment of the Week
"What debate? I spent the evening with literate friends, eating and drinking and discussing interesting books. No political talk permitted. And I slept well, thankyouverymuch."
—TucsonWeekly.com user SonoranWinds describes what sounds like a far better way to spend an evening than listening to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama run over a 78-year-old moderator ("So, How About That Debate Last Night?" The Range, Oct. 4).
Best of WWW
Have you been to We Got Cactus, the Tucson Weekly's music blog that's so new, it still has that new-webpage smell to it? We've got a number of great things in the works, from regular columns, to music news, to concert and album reviews, to previews, to occasional straight-up silliness. If you've got anything else you'd like to see, feel free to send in your suggestions via email, comments, Twitter or Facebook. We're always listening.
