This is part two of a series detailing what is Prose Before Hos (see Alec’s entry for his conception):

The term “Prose Before Hos” embodies the post-modern concept that the website strives for. The wordplay upon the fraternal phrase “Bros Before Hos” mocks sound-bite culture, Modern and traditional social values and movements, and even our own pretension.

The social revolutions that occurred in the 60s, in particular the sexual revolution, were about rejecting all the values that came before and reevaluating them in a Modern way. Women questioned everything from their role in the workplace to their bras, and redefined their gender roles to be more on parity with men. As we begin the 21st century, we can see the effects of this redefinition. A working woman is the norm. Women delay marriage until later and have fewer children. More women attend college then men. A woman in power is not at all unusual.

This is part one of a two part series identifying what PBH is (read Kit’s piece for the second part in the series), in reference to the name, the logo, the politics, and the ideas behind our dynamic site. This particular piece is an email that asked about the background to the site and addresses the hesitance people may have towards our site name:

Alec,
I want to feature your blog, but its title and, especially, its logo of a woman being spanked make me hesitant. I’m sure I simply don’t understand their meaning. When you have time and nothing better to do, could you tell me your thinking about them?

Response: No problem. This is a question that I get randomly and probably need to address in the future for people confused when they come to the site, see progressive thoughts, and see our logo/page title (I think this reply may even became it’s own blog entry, if you don’t mind).

Or did it end up in the toilet bowl? It turns out that several high ups in the Bush White House were frequent customers of the DC ‘Madam’ (why is a female pimp called a Madam, by the way? When I think of Madam, I think of my French tutor), including this pedophilia-in-waiting Randall Tobias, a former U.S. AID director who partook in a wonderful loyalty oath, that, wait for it, made employees swear not to get prostitutes:

Former U.S. AID director Randall Tobias, who resigned yesterday upon admitting that he frequented a Washington escort service, oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.”

And want to know something even more sickening? Guess who got a Purple Heart. George Bush. I’m done. Seriously.

The Article: Rush to Judgment by James Wolcott of Vanity Fair details how Rush Limbaugh “attacking environmentalists as hippie-dip “wackos” who care more about spotted owls than people and use polar bears for propaganda, Rush Limbaugh has blinded millions of Americans to the climate crisis.”

The Text: Rush Limbaugh, he’s got the life. His days flick through the slot like postcards from paradise. Where most gab-show hosts report for duty at radio studios where candy bars get stuck in the vending machine and the carpeting is a certain industrial shade of indifference, Limbaugh—a man, a mission, a mighty wind—has carved out his own principality in Florida’s Palm Beach, a lion preserve where he can roam undisturbed. Drinking in the rays, puffing on those big-shot cigars, riding the range in a golf cart—he’s got the complete Jackie Gleason how-sweet-it-is package deal. But just as the Great One suffered from melancholia aggravated by alcohol, Limbaugh’s indulgence in his own creature comforts hasn’t been able to insulate him from the demons within. An addiction to painkillers reduced this human boom box of self-sufficiency and strict enforcement—”If people are violating the law by doing drugs,” he once lectured on his syndicated TV show, “they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up” (up the river, that is)—to the furtive, needy ploys of any other junkie who finds the medicine cabinet running dry. After he entered rehab, his third wife, Marta, reportedly vacated the luxury estate (they would later divorce), leaving Rush a Tarzan without his Jane in what the Palm Beach Post in 2004 called his “$24.2 million, 36,500-square-foot secluded monster at 1495 N. Ocean.” Secluded for now, but perhaps after this god of the airwaves shucks his mound of flesh so that his soul can meet Reagan’s in Republican Heaven (where all the angels look like June Allyson), his compound can be converted into a tourist attraction—a combination museum, shrine, gift shop, and spiritual mecca modeled on Elvis’s Graceland, Dolly Parton’s Dollywood. Aging dittoheads can make pilgrimages to pay their respects, rekindle fond memories, and gape reverently at the silenced TV where Rush watched the game he loved so much and understood so little, football.

when everything is far too bright
and everything that matters
is destroyed within sight
who has time or the patience
for whats right?
i work 9-5 and i watch
my fox news at night