Radio Sweethearts

It’s Friday, and you know what that means - Brooke, Bob, and German porn. You’ll wish I was joking by the end of the recap.

First up, a story on military analysts. These are retired members of the armed forces that were coached by the Pentagon and have all sorts of ties to the service that make it impossible to believe that they’re unbiased.

I’m not sure why they do this, but “On the Media” typically covers the most boring stories first. Maybe they want to get it out of the way. Maybe they want to weed out those of us who are looking for the media’s more salacious bits. Maybe they’ve just never considered story order.

Whatever it is, this story is pretty dull. Analysts aren’t unbiased, and when one brave one stands up to call bullshit, he gets called out. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. (I will say this, though - the analyst that Bob interviews calls the Pentagon’s media briefings “the Kool-Aid sessions”. Is it any coincidence that his name is also Bob? ) Also, you know it’s bad when big-name Fox news hosts are telling you that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Next up - a somewhat depressing (but aren’t they all) story on the economy that includes the phrase “currency gyrations.” I have no idea what that means, but it sounds kinda gross.

Bob follows with a story about the lowly cell phone, and how it’s helping developing countries do all sorts of things. It’s in this story that Bob mentions his recent trip to Estonia. I’m not sure what he was doing there, but I’m really curious. He then goes on to mention that his cell phone bills are “preposterous”. Maybe he should quit calling Brooke just to hang up as soon as it goes to voicemail.

The story is interesting, and Sara Corbett makes some very valid and interesting points about the difference between wants and needs. Listen up.

Proving my earlier boring-stories-first theory, this week ends with tales of comic books and Stalags.

Only, these aren’t Stalags like you think they’re going to be. They’re small pornographic books published in the 1960s that were a huge success in Israel. Kind of ironic, considering that they’re all set in concentration camps.

According to the extremely charming and adorably accented Ari Libsker, after the holocaust, Jews in Israel (understandably) didn’t want to talk about it. That is, until the Eichmann trial. Suddenly, people were willing to discuss one of the greatest atrocities ever committed.

Quoth Libsker: “First of all, in those time, we didn’t have no information about what’s happening. We have only read Anne Frank. And Anne Frank’s diary stops in the moment that the Nazis take her to the camp.”

Anyway, before Elie Wiesel and Primo Levy, there were these stalags.

Factual? Not at all. Popular? Very much so. Unfortunately, the censors didn’t agree, and they rounded up as many of the books as possible.

However, they continued to be hugely popular among teenagers, who had all sorts of uses for them. The dirty little novels were traded like baseball cards. They also served as sex ed for many an Israeli kid. And of course kids liked them -

Quoth Libsker, again:

“There was like sex education books. Stalag was hardcore, and it was connecting between pornography and violence, and sadistic and Holocaust, together.”

So, why Holocaust porn? Because in order to remember such a tragedy, people seem to repeat the horror over and over again, even today. They visit concentration camps, they sex up disaster so an increasingly bored younger generation will pay attention to it and find it relevant. I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Libsker - this can’t be doing anyone much good.

Other things were covered this week - a newspaper and some innocence were lost, but all is made right by an Ohio newspaper consortium appropriately named OHNO.

This week’s recap was written by Kerry, who is taking next week off. It was edited by Matthew, who should be congratulated, as he finished college this week!