he·do·nism : the belief that pleasure or happiness is the most important goal in life.

I received an e-mail this morning. In the subject line: DATE REAL CHEATING WIVES IN YOUR AREA! 

The sender was: Married But Lonely. Against my better judgment, I opened the e-mail. Inside was a link: Search Married Women For Sex Dates!

I’m not blind to America’s self-destructive fixation on sex, but this is a new low. Unless this is a) a way to harvest some internet cookies, b) a lure to steer the lust-bound waif to porn sites or c) an online escort service (unlikely), it is what it claims to be, and somehow these married women have organized and fully intend to grab some hot sex with cyber-callers. 

I can’t imagine there isn’t an easier way to have sex. What about singles bars? What about the next-door neighbor? I wished for a way to punish the company that is distributing this ad, which is either helping married women commit adultery or capitalizing on people’s titillation at the idea of it. I was incensed that such a brashly depraved ad could be sent out on a public network. What’s next? Private lounges for the bestiality enthusiast? Necrophiliacs R Us? God help us.

Well, it’s all out in the open now. America has gone over the precipice. Individuals are no longer concealing even their most glaring perversions. This is popularly referred to as honesty, openness and self-actualization. And the commercial sector is doing what it always does — capitalizing on the social trend.

Because it is too painful to actually feel the impact of what is happening in the culture, I admit I enjoy the ready-made gallows humor of it all. I always have a good laugh when I see testosterone-enhancing products advertised on television. At the start of the ad, we see some down-at-the-heels thirty-something schmuck loafing miserably through the city, watching forlornly as happy couples go by arm in arm. By the end of the commercial (presumably after snacking on testosterone tablets for a month), this guy is dressed to the nines, looking ten years younger and bristling with confidence. He charges into a singles bar sporting a smug smile as half a dozen gorgeous young women fawn over him with more enthusiasm than a batch of working girls in a cat house. Then he strides into the sunset with a supermodel on his arm. In some of the ads, there is a brief follow-up scene in which the former schmuck’s hot new girlfriend turns to the camera with a big smile, winks and whispers something like, “Thank you, Testo-Max!”

Then, of course, magazine ads for penis-enlarging products are always good for a laugh. Of all the products in the bottom-feeder’s arsenal, this one could be the funniest. Does anyone really buy these products? Obviously, they do. Otherwise we wouldn’t keep running into the ads. Just like this ad says, the products are always 100% GUARANTEED. I wonder if companies ever have to make good on these guarantees.  

“Is this Maxman? Yes, I want a refund.” 

“Okay. What was the problem, sir?”

“My penis hasn’t grown at all.” 

Realistically speaking, men will generally forfeit their losses rather than endure that kind of humiliation.

And now we have the latest development ― advertisements for products called “intimate massagers.” You know, vibrators ― those things many single women used to keep in their nightstands but never discussed with anyone but their psychiatrists. Now they’re being presented in advertisements as a lonely woman’s best friend. On television. With footage of smiling, no-longer-lonely women holding up their new battery-powered best friends as exhibits to help close the sale.

No matter how deplorable the status quo might be, a person can’t help but marvel at how fast all this is happening. There has never been a more plentiful supply of fodder for satirical social commentary and trailer-trash talk shows. This is individualism at its finest. It’s a brave new world out there.