50 Shades of Night

The author’s story of a hotel chain removing Bibles and putting in copies of “50 shades” has me wondering what they’re smoking to think that is a good idea. OK, you tick off every person sympathetic to that Bible (a larger group than just evangelical Christians) while encouraging patrons to engage in behavior that is quite likely to get the local constabulary involved.

Does the company have no legal department or PR department to explain to these people just why this could be a really, really, really bad idea?

On a slightly different tack, I do think that the immense success of this book indicates to is that we ought to figure out a bit of what is appealing to people here. It is an escapist book where a “nobody” finds a “dreamboat”–well, at least he would have been if he hadn’t been a total…..um, words fail me, at least words that I can type with a clean conscience. OK, so just like men thrill to James Bond’s getting the affections of the dream girl (at least if she wasn’t trying to kill him, I guess), women can thrill to about the same thing.

In other words, I think people are flocking to this partially because they’re getting a picture of masculinity—deformed masculinity, but at least carob in comparison to real chocolate—in “50 Shades” that they’re not getting elsewhere. Or maybe it’s something else.