Local newspapers are publishing explicit sex columns and praising them as "clever" — the same papers that then turn around and tell you democracy needs saving by establishment-backed nonprofit campaigns.
The Baton Rouge Advocate ran a reader letter celebrating columnist Will Sutton's piece titled "You might be surprised who is having the most enjoyable sex." An 81-year-old letter writer called it "clever" and praised its "joyous acknowledgement" of "deep physical, mutually satisfying, sexual intimacy." The Advocate gave it the platform. No editor thought twice about putting explicit sexual content in a family newspaper — because the editors agree with it.
Meanwhile, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot published a column insisting "America's democracy needs a renewal movement" — managed, naturally, by the right kind of people. Project HALO, led by an outfit called The Chamberlain Network, wants to create a "welcoming, celebratory, nonpartisan presence" around elections in five swing states: Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Same media ecosystem. Two faces. One pushes sexual content into your morning paper and calls it enlightened. The other tells you your dread about elections is real — but that the solution comes from veterans, faith leaders, and legal professionals organized by a nonprofit you've never heard of, funded by sources nobody will name.
The Virginian-Pilot column references January 6, "election deniers," ICE raids, and National Guard deployments as sources of public unease — framing all concern about election integrity as a threat to democracy rather than a response to real failures. The column never addresses why trust in institutions has collapsed. It simply offers a managed, nonprofit-curated alternative to that distrust. Show up, volunteer, feel welcomed. Don't ask questions.
Who funds The Chamberlain Network? The column doesn't say. Who decided that "existential dread" should be countered by organized nonprofit operations rather than, say, elections that people can actually trust? Also unsaid.
The Advocate framed Sutton's sex column as thoughtful commentary worth celebrating in the opinion pages. The Virginian-Pilot framed election anxiety as a problem requiring organized intervention by civil society groups. Neither paper frames the ordinary American family — the actual foundation of self-government — as anything worth defending.
This isn't an accident. Papers that celebrate sexual liberation as clever and position themselves as guardians of democracy have made a clear choice about what they platform and what they bury. Explicit content gets praise. Traditional values get silence or scorn. And when the public pushes back, the answer is always another managed movement — never just letting people live and govern themselves.
The question isn't whether newspapers can publish what they want. It's why they always publish this and never that — and who's paying for the "renewal" they offer instead.
