How many times a day do you think about sex? How many times a day do you think about the war in Iraq?
I asked a friend what she thought about the war in Iraq.
“It’s a mess,” she said.
When I asked how so, she said, “Well, Bush is stupid.”
Bush is stupid! That’s it?
So then we talked about sex.
What do I think about the war in Iraq? Well, between I’m From Rolling Stone, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii (I’m still trying to beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Sega Game Gear), where did the time go? Think.
How many times a day do you think about sex? Every 52 seconds. Do 20- to 30-year-olds have more sex than 30- to 40-year-olds? Yes. Do drinkers have more sex than non-drinkers? Yes. Do extreme liberals have more sex than extreme conservatives? Probably.
In the 2006 Phoenix first-annual sex survey, when asked, “How often do you think about sex?” nearly 1000 readers responded “many times” throughout the day. And nearly 200 of you added bondage to your sexual repertoires last year. Asked, “What would be your fantasy place to have sex?” one reader responded, “In a public restroom. But the fact that it was a dirty public restroom would probably stop me.” Okay.
In his book My War, Killing Time in Iraq, soldier-blogger Colby Buzzell describes a 5 am wake “the fuck up” call — a female soldier was raped outside a “port-a-shitter.” How’s that for “in a public restroom?”
In Abu Ghraib prison, Lynndie Rana England, a US Army Reserve private, was photographed holding a leash attached to the neck of an Iraqi prisoner who had collapsed on the floor. How’s that for “adding bondage?” Around the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, WorldNetDaily (WND) told us that at least 112 women in the military had reported being sexually assaulted by US service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. WND also broke the news that the Boston Globe had published fake photos — from a pornographic Web site called Sex and War — of US troops gang raping Iraqi women.
How many times a day do you think about sex?
On holidays, some troops eat rations; some drink alcohol-free Champagne or beer. Iraq is a dry zone. Colby Buzzell describes alcohol-free beer as being like “shitty, cheap beer.” And hangouts such as the Green Zone Café and the Green Zone Bazaar — where, Newsweek tells us, Iraqi kids once hawked pornographic DVDs to soldiers — have been lost to bombs in backpacks.
How many times a day do you think about the war?
Last week, Angelina Jolie topped the Yahoo popular-search list. Britney came in second — 179 days on the chart and counting.
The war in Iraq was not ranked.
The Phoenix’s article “The 100 Unsexiest Men in the World: Who Would Scarlett Least Like To Be With?” topped our “Top 20 of 2006” list, thePhoenix.com’s scorecard of the year’s most popular stories. The results of our sex survey came in third. “Code Yellow: Peeps Star in Porn, Snuff Films,” which is about online videos starring marshmallow Easter peeps, came in ninth. Aside from a Phoenix editorial about the Muslim-bashing Danish cartoons, in 19th place, articles on the Iraq War weren’t viewed enough to be ranked.
When asked by paparazzi to comment on the Britney Spears/Kevin Federline divorce, Justin Timberlake said, “Yeah, there’s a war going on in Iraq.”
Yeah, Justin. And what are you doing about it? (He’s probably doing something about it — I heart you, JT! — I just can’t think of what it is.)
The Web site icasualties.org estimates there have been more than 3000 US deaths in that “war going on in Iraq.” In 2005, President Bush, questioned during an address to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, estimated “30,000, more or less” Iraqi casualties. In 2006, a study by the British medical journal the Lancet estimated there have been 654,965 Iraqi casualties. But the exact number, like the civilian body count during the Vietnam War, remains uncertain.
In a December 29 Portland Phoenix article on the state of the anti-war movement called “Does Peace Have a Chance?” staff writer Sara Donnelly notes the disparities between the Vietnam and Iraq War protests: “We don’t see people clogging the streets . . . as happened during the anti-Vietnam protests in the late 1960s,” she writes.
No, we do not.
Four weeks after the Democrats gained control of the US House, Donnelly counted “only four protesters at the weekly Bridges for Peace demonstration on the Casco Bay Bridge.”
Opposition to the Vietnam War, in part, took the form of “free love” — which I note first because it has to do with sex. (It’s been at least 52 seconds.) The Chicago Seven went to trial after police riots turned street protests ugly during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In the 1960s, the peace symbol was a commonplace icon. Political radical Carl Oglesby, president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1965 and ’66, said, “It isn’t the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause the rebels.”
