Dear Editor,
It is dumbfounding to me that the media has almost uniformly reported that Stormy Daniels related “lurid” details in court about her sexual encounter with Trump. Lurid means “gruesome, horrible, revolting,” according to the dictionary.
I rummaged through a spate of articles in national media sources and could find only these not particularly graphic details: When she came out of the bathroom, Trump was reclining on the bed in his boxers and a T-shirt; Trump asked her if she had been tested for STDs; Daniels was reluctant to have sex, but did it anyway after spanking him with a magazine; Trump did not wear a condom; Daniels stared at the ceiling during missionary position sex; her hands were shaking when she gathered up her things afterward.
Wow, some half century after pornography was first legalized in America, media decided to call this sort of description “lurid”? Maybe at a Puritan church service in 1640, but today?
Was this reflexive exaggeration necessary to satisfy the supposed ethical or religious gentility of male media executives? I can just hear them chirping, “We would never speak of such vivid things in a public setting.” Yeah, sure.
