Liberation

Maybe I am just a prude, but for the last week the daily edition of Liberation newspaper has been putting me off my breakfast. A week ago the front page bore a big colour box informing readers that in a special summer "cahier" inside we could learn all that there is to know about fellatio. Except they didn't actually say "fellatio", but the b-j word which in French is "La pipe." There was a picture of a woman's face with her mouth wide open in obvious imitation of the act. Since then there have been several other features in the series: bondage for example, the clitoris, and a profile of two Norwegian rock band members who have sex on stage in order -- they say -- to raise money for the rain forest. Is this cutting edge journalism, or is it a load of old cobblers? I incline strongly to the latter view. One has always been aware that Liberation is written by an aging left-wing intellectual coterie for an aging left-wing coterie, and this merely confirms the impression that attracting a new market is not their top priority. Of course you may retort that sex sells. But surely not this sort of sex. How many people want to see pictures of two Norwegians at it on stage while they sip their morning coffee -- and how many would want their children to see it? Or how about grainy photographs of female genitalia? It is of a piece with one of the paper's most spectacularly awful weekly columns, which is an explicit account on Monday of a gay man's sexual antics over the weekend. There may be a place for that somewhere in the newsagents -- but surely not in a national daily. They may find it all very daring, I think it is utterly puerile. And then they wonder why sales are falling through the floor!
Renfrogné of Les Puits de Tunbridge