That’s what a New York Post spokesperson, Howard Rubenstein, told Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio.com. Bercovici called the Post—and me—after the New York City tabloid ran a story in which they named the 67 year-old that almost choked to death in a bondage-scene-gone-wrong at the famous Nutcracker Suite last week. Not only did the Post name the man, a retired college professor, it also called his wife and told her the news. Says Bercovici:
Paying for erotic favors is okay, as long as your tastes are generic. That, in a nutshell, is the sexual ethic of the New York Post. How else do you explain a paper where the top editors hang out at strip clubs at night and spend their days shaming fetish-club patrons by name?
I refer to coverage of the 67-year-old man who had to be hospitalized after an accident at the hands of a dominatrix in a Manhattan establishment called the Nutcracker Suite. Today, the Post crossed into ethically murky territory with a story that named the man (citing “law-enforcement sourcesâ€), and described his professional history, hometown and family situation. For good measure, the Post’s reporters also took it upon themselves to phone the man’s wife and fill her in on the details.
Since the man is not a celebrity, politician or other public figure, it’s hard to understand what kind of news value the Post’s editors saw in printing his name, or what they accomplished beyond embarrassing him in front of his community and ensuring that the episode will forever be his top Google hit.
I tried to ask metro editor Michelle Gotthelf how she justified the decision, but she referred me to the paper’s spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, who offered this statement: “The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar.â€
Well, today the Post has another piece about this guy—and this time they’ve not only got the man’s picture, but an interview with him. The Post:
The kinky college professor who was almost strangled during an S&M session at a Midtown club told The Post yesterday he’s deeply ashamed and is finally through with the double life he’s lived since he was kid. “I don’t want this to spoil my marriage,†said Robert Benjamin, 67, still disoriented from the three days he spent in a coma but sitting upright in a chair in his room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
“I don’t want my wife to leave me, but I have to tell her the truth,†he said. “I’m going to share everything with her. I think my family will forgive me.â€
Where to begin? How about with the ethics of interviewing a man that’s still disoriented after three days in a coma? Or naming a man that isn’t a public figure, broke no laws, and hasn’t been charged with any crime?
It seems to me that if the Post is going to declare war on kinksters—they’ll “happily name every adult caught in a dog collar,†they’ll out you as a kinkster to your family, they’ll run triumphant pieces about how you’ve learned your lesson and you’re going to give up your kinks for good (as if it were that simple)—then kinksters ought to declare war on the Post. The Post is a large news operation in one of the most sexually liberated cities on the planet. Not only are there kinky people on the Post’s staff, but I’m thinking odds are good that more than one Post exec has has patronized the Nutcracker Suite. (Wealthy white men make up 99.9% of the Nutcracker Suite’s clientele, after all.) If a happy, healthy, pissed off kinkster out there has evidence that a Post exec or an exec at the News Corporation—Rupert Murdoch? one of his moderately hot sons?—has ever been “caught in a dog collar,†now would be a good time to share it with media.
Because, hey, if you’re kinky, then you deserve to be outed, shamed, humiliated, and bullied into pledging to give up your “addiction†to whatever your kinks might be—those are the Post’s standards. The people that run and own the Post ought to be held to ‘em.
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