Entertainment Topics

“Obscenity” is a legal term for a category of sexually explicit art and entertainment that the Supreme Court has said is without First Amendment protection. According to those nine wise jurists, obscenity is sexually explicit material that lacks any serious artistic or other value, is patently offensive, and appeals to “shameful or morbid” sexual appetites, as judged by the standards of a particular community. Because pornographic works may arouse only healthy sexual urges, may have serious artistic value, and may not be considered patently offensive in a particular community, most pornography is not legally obscene.
—Marjorie Heins. Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America’s Censorship Wars, ch. 7, New Press (1993)

It has become the custom in our country to expect all Chief Executives, from the President down, to conduct activities analogous to an entertainment bureau. No occasion is too trivial for its promoters to invite them to attend and deliver an address.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

Such reproductions may not interest the reader; but after all, this is my autobiography, not his; he is under no obligation to read further in it; he was under none to begin.... A modest or inhibited autobiography is written without entertainment to the writer and read with distrust by the reader.
—Neville Cardus (1889–1975)