I understand that this is supposed to be satire. But it’s really, really bad satire.
The recent bust of a brothel at 39 Eldridge St. on the Lower East Side has left many Pace High School students wondering whether or not they’ll ever find a comparable $35 lay.
Benjie Zheng, 47, and Ming Liuchang, 48, ran Robo-Pong Training Center, the Lower East Side game hall whose back rooms witnessed the deflowering of numerous teenage boys. Ping-Pong game cards, purchased for $35 to $60, were given to the immigrant prostitute of choice in exchange for sexual favors. After the deeds were done, the whores returned the cards to the brothel operators for $15 each. Needless to say, table tennis has never been so exciting.
However, angry Pace parents caught wind and the Robo-Pong brothel met its demise at the hands of a New York Police Department vice squad. Apparently the cards being handed to their sons outside of school – bearing the image of a topless woman, a phone number and the solitary word “good” – gave them the crazy idea that their kids were being targeted. A police officer corroborated their suspicions, saying that most brothels charge at least $100 and these lower prices were aimed at younger clients.
What both the NYPD and that uppity group of concerned parents failed to realize was that Zeng and Liuchang were promoting the sort of practicality and efficiency that their impressionable teenage boys would do well to learn. Why waste time getting a trashy girl in a miniskirt drunk enough to have sex with you when one can just walk across the street and have his way with someone who won’t ruin the moment with slurred protests?
The two prostitutes were recent immigrants, so odds are they wouldn’t have been able to say “stop” even if they’d wanted to. Awesome, another 10 minutes of fake comforting eliminated. Time is money, and Robo-Pong customers saved both.
Calling women whores? Entertaining. Raping slutty girls in miniskirts? Funny. Raping immigrant sex slaves? Hilarious.
Obviously I don’t know if the women were working voluntarily or not. The author of this piece presumes they weren’t. From this article, it sounds pretty questionable. And given that the women were “recruited” to work in the brothel, and that immigrant women are among the least socially powerful, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that at least some of them were working there at least under coercion.
Which makes it all the more telling that the outrage in news articles is directed at the fact that innocent teenage boys were being “seduced,” not that disempowered women were being sexually exploited. I think that point is buried somewhere in the op/ed, but the author never quite gets there between making rape and STD jokes.
I don’t have a problem with using sarcasm and satire to address serious and tragic issues. The General and Jon Swift do it all the time. I certainly employ a fair bit of sarcasm in my own writing. But this editorial is just… confused. It falls back on the cheap laughs at the expense of the victims (although to her credit, she didn’t go for the really obvious ping pong ball crack). It doesn’t really have a coherent voice — who, exactly, is she satirizing? Or if she’s simply being sarcastic, to whom is the sarcasm addressed? What, exactly, is her point, other than that it’s funny that teenage boys paid for sex on the LES and whores are dirty?
Although the thought of middle-aged men soliciting 17-year-olds is admittedly shifty, the blame does not rest entirely on Robo-Pong Training Center’s pervy, herpes-ridden shoulders.
Don’t worry folks, she’s here all night.
Thanks to Kate for the link.