The Test of the Market

Some "professor" has apparently been conducting "research" into sex toys, which just goes to show you how far academe has strayed from the path of Truth and Beauty. Instead of introducing new generations to cultural treasures like Plato's Phaedrus, Diderot's Les Bijoux Indiscrets, Swinburne's Whippingham Papers, and the Earl of Rochester's Signior Dildo, modern academics either bore them with nonsense about panoptic phallogocentrism, or distract them with subjects that are a bit too interesting, like the design and use of vibrating anal beads.

Luckily, George Leef has come up with a foolproof way to keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree.

We should put academic research to the test of the market: Will people voluntarily pay for it?

Will people voluntarily pay for research into sex toys and the sex-crazed sexoholics who love them? After a moment of communion with my soul, my answer is an emphatic yes. Will they pay as cheerfully for research into, say, Calvin's objections to mimetic Christology, or Jean Paul's influence on Herman Melville? Only time will tell.

Leef's pals 'n' gals at Phi Beta Cons tend to complain when academics discuss pop-culture phenomena like The Sopranos, despite the manifold blessings that program received from the Invisible Hand. And yet, we're now expected to believe that once the Free Market holds sway over academic research, American professors will be forced to stop fretting over the rhetoric of desire in lesbian vampire narratives, and apply themselves earnestly to the works of Hugo Grotius.

You don't have to be Karl Marx to understand that this isn't a reliable strategy for preserving the Classics. Which makes me wonder if Leef's goal is not to defend Western culture against the Hun, so much as to increase the power of redundantly wealthy ideologues over what is officially thinkable and knowable.

Incidentally, the stated purpose of the research in question is to assess the effectiveness of sex toys as an alternative to riskier sexual behaviors. Leef refers to this sarcastically as "vital academic research." I suppose that's what comes of living in an ivory tower.