LA Times Visits Club Voyeur

As I suggested, it's not a strip club. There's no nudity and no actual sex or even seriously-simulated sex.

There is alleged "high art" of chicks in naughty outfits striking poses and doing sexual-but-arty dances.

Basically, it seems like an upscale mock-gothic cerebralized Hooters.

"It's high art that people have to conceptualize to get," said a masked performer named Mia, who also manages the performers.

I was trying to do some conceptualizing but found Mia too distracting. She was falling out of an outfit she called "a bit of 'Clockwork Orange,' " with a top hat and cane, and she was soon slithering around on a stage.

"It's meant to stimulate and shock, to get you a little nervous," said Art, and I was in fact a bit nervous as I wondered what exactly to write on my expense report. Art said he wasn't even aware the Young Eagles had been in his club until the news broke later on. "Maybe we lightened up their spirits a little bit."

...

On stage, Mia was doing neat tricks with the cane.

"She's moving art," said Art. "You don't even notice that she's there."

I noticed.

"This must be the lesbian bondage," Prang said as we moved into another room and watched the two women work the rope as if they were trying to invent an R-rated Olympic event.

[A female patron said she] and her colleagues had to check out the place after reading about the GOP faux pas.

"It's actually pretty tame," she said.

And in a way, it was. No nudity, no lap dances and no lesbian canoodling to speak of. I felt sorry for the Young Eagles, who probably wished they'd gone to an old-fashioned strip club.

Two weeks ago, the club -- which is just a racy-themed nightclub -- was described by the media as an "S&M-themed club" or a "lesbian-bondage-themed-club."

The media was always counting on people to read "themed" right out of those descriptions, to bleep over it, to ignore it. That is --there are no actual knights at Medieval Times. A "theme" is a mode of decor.

Last week, liberal hack Margaret Carlson decided to do ignoring on behalf of her readers and described it as an "S&M club." No "themed" this time -- now it's an actual S&M club, like you see on CSI every ten episodes.

People may still resent the RNC spending so much on a group of donors (but again -- that's how big-money donors are induced to part with their cash), but let's not allow the media to lie about what this club is.

I feel bad for the woman who was fired over this, in this sense. I'm sure that as the young donor outreach person, she was instructed to sell the idea that the GOP is hip and stuff. The thing is, that's a lie. It's not hip. Stuff like this continues to cause bouts of shrieking agita. So she was instructed, like HAL from 2001, to lie to reconcile two incompatible directives.

One on hand, show the GOP is hip and not necessarily straight-laced and not easily provoked into shrieks over risque-but-still-tame fare.

On the other hand, what was really expected of her is that she should take the dudes to the same old places. Cigar bars and stuff.

posted by Ace at 03:09 PM

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