FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Martha Davis, ladies and gentlemen.
•  I opened up the newsletter to non-subscribers today so you can all peek in at the President in conference with that guy who's raising money to build his wall. It'll all end in tears and lawsuits, no doubt, but I like my version better.

•  Maybe you've caught up with this headline from The Federalist--

You’re Not Allowed To Knock Trump For Stormy Daniels If You Watch Porn

-- but not bothered to read the story, and who could blame you? (The author bio says only "John Sweeney writes from New Jersey"; I like to think this is some kind of subtle editorial comment.) But if you're imagining a simple, knuckle-headed hypocrisy argument, you're missing the bigger picture; in fact Sweeney never actually gets around to arguing the Trump point.  He's more interested in defining looking at dirty pictures as adultery:

Presumably, thousands of men engage in adulterous behavior with pornographers and strippers every day.

Culturally we may not believe it, but each time a married man watches pornography, he commits an act of adultery.

Your "culture" may not let you admit it, but my God spits on your heathen culture!

...Although it may be difficult to admit, we cannot continue to ignore that watching pornography while in a relationship is tantamount to cheating. I realize that some will assume this is nothing more than a puritanical, prudish screed. But when considered honestly, my conclusion about porn is unavoidable.

If you guessed Sweeney's "if you're honest, you'll admit these scrawls on my cardboard sign are the revealed truth of the Lord" shtick presages some loony-logic, congratulations. (Sweeney does this kind of bullying throughout -- "I find it hard to believe that anyone would honestly justify this," "No issue can be honestly settled without first establishing some common ground," "let’s start with a common-sense assumption regarding infidelity," "I think most know, whether they want to admit it or not," etc. Well, he shares an audience with Mollie Hemingway, so maybe it works on them.)

The basis is, married men feel guilty about looking at porn ("we don’t wait for our wives to leave the house to watch baseball"), and they feel guilty about adultery, therefore porn is adultery. Similarly, if you surreptitiously turn up the heat when the wife's not around even though she asked you not to, it's basically fraud, so who are you to blame Trump for that, either? Sweeney goes up the ladder: Adultery is wrong, right? And so is "engaging in virtual sex with a woman [you] met online," right? Well, then so is simple porn because "the only real difference is that a typical pornographic video is pre-recorded. But adultery does not have to take place in real time."

I wonder: If you beat off without look at porn, are you cheating on your significant other with yourself? And if so, aren't you doubly sinful, because you are committing both adultery and the sin of homosexuality, since you are the same sex as yourself? You must admit my conclusion is unavoidable!