Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Salon's "Hysterical" Quote of Day

According to Politico.com, there was a Congressional hearing on sexting. While some of the testimony report is truly touching and points to the need to address this issue constructively, some speakers were more prone to dramatics, as was the case with Kayla Barclay, Miss Utah 2008.

As quoted on Salon.com's Broadsheet:

"Barclay recalled an early experience in her life, when she tried to log on to her Hotmail e-mail account but accidentally typed 'hotmale' instead. She said that the explicit photo that appeared on her screen sent her screaming away from the computer.

'A picture of a naked man showed up on screen and, at that time, I was so appalled and I ran downstairs in tears to my mother thinking I was going to be in trouble,' she said. 'I did not go onto the Internet for six months after that.'"

Thoughts on this quote? Helpful for Congress to hear it? An overreaction or an understandable feeling?

PS While I am not sure when Barclay committed this typo, I replicated it just now in Google. While indeed there is reference to gay porn and other forms of sexuality, I was not barraged by any images whatsoever. Hmmmmm.

3 comments:

Jeff Valliant said...

While Barclay may have been repulsed by the image, how would she react to the local news channel, showing a horrific crime or accident scene, as is so often repeated in our daily lives? It sounds as if she was very young at the time.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, that sounds nasty! I think I'd rather surf the Web for cheaper Jet-A fuel prices than see for myself. So I'll take your word on it.

Dr. Kris said...

Good question, Jeff! In so many cases censoring is based on sexual, not violent content. An interesting phenomenon in our country...