(1:35 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Comics are for kids

This story, courtesy of Tom Tomorrow, illustrates the profound idiocy of obscenity laws as they are applied. Essentially, someone is going to jail for being on the clock at a comic book store when an undercover cop voluntarily purchased an adult-oriented comic book, from a section of the store labled "Adults Only."

For a publication to be deemed obscene, it has to have no outside redeeming value. It just occurred to me: is that why Playboy always (reportedly) had such good articles in it? Was John Updike all that was standing between Hugh Hefner and some heavy jail time? There was a Salon article a while ago about Playboy (I don't like linking to Salon, because of their annoying "day pass" system), in which the author quoted the table of contents of a random issue and made it sound like the Magazine of the Gods. The only contemporary magazine that I know of that consistently reaches the level of that random issue is Harper's -- neither the New Yorker nor Atlantic Monthly is nearly as good.

This brings me to the main point of this post: in order to increase its circulation and elevate the cultural level of our great nation, Harper's must begin including nude photos, effective immediately. Lewis Lapham must act quickly, before the American mind is completely and irrevocably closed.

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