Birds Do It, Bees Do It, Everybody's Doing It In TimesWorld

Ann Althouse goes off on Judith Warner and the Times coverage of the latest survey of teen sexuality, which reported that more than half of high school students have remained virgins.

But what caught our eye was the Times lead to their review of Liam Neeson's action-adventure movie, "Taken":

“Taken” stars a dour Liam Neeson as a big bad papa bear on the rampaging hunt for his baby cub, a virginal Los Angeles teenager — the first of many dubious plot points — who has been snatched while vacationing in Paris by hairy and scary Albanians who put her on the auction block.

Well, wait - how dubius a plot point are we talking about?  WIth no adjustment for age, gender, race, or geography we might think there was a better-than-even chance of this plot point holding up, based on the survey noted above.  But let's have a dog's breakfast - the daughter is 17 and lives in Los Angeles.  Clicking through to the detailed data breakdown behind the survey results I see that 52% of the senior girls in LA are reporting no lifetime sexual intercourse.  So 50/50 is maybe not so improbable.

[END OF THREAD]

Comments

[bgates]

Finally TM joins the rest of the internet and has a post about teen virgins.

[clarice]

well it DOES say the daughter is a teenager--so, we can deduce she's 13-19, can't we?

But Althouse' point is a good one. It's a paper increasingly written for neurotics.

[matt]

The Times just keeps falling apart as it goes out of control....the political slant is in every section of the paper, and they really can't be trusted even in their movie reviews...I loved reading Elvis Mitchell, but he's now long gone....you just couldn't trust his predecessor's and successors reviews....

They all seem to have a gay rights, anti business, anti religious, pro communist slant, which is very hard to express when reviewing the Little Mermaid, but they do their best.....

[bad]

A new teen spirit--I like it.

[herditherfirst]

Awe, Don't like seeing and pain? Obama is having a meeting with his boss. Yes, it's called China black and it's drug.

Accidents...............

Repubs died under clintoon.

[Soylent Red]

Finally TM joins the rest of the internet and has a post about teen virgins.

I thought I was at AoS for a second...

A new teen spirit--I like it.

That's what it smells like to me, bad.

[Barry Dauphin]

Considering the target audience, the Times should have let Warner write the review of "Taken", so she could work in the rumor that Neeson has an enormous schlong.

[Barry Dauphin]

OT
It looks like Daschle has tax problems too. Democrats don't want tax cuts cuz they've already figured out ways to not pay them.

[peter]

An obituary at LUN

[bgates]

Barry - it's not that the Democrats are opposed to paying taxes entirely. They just defer until a Cabinet appointment comes along.

[matt]

Obama
Richardson
Daschle
Geithner
Jefferson
Blagojevich
Dodd
Clinton

Crooks you can believe in!

[sbwaters]

What about Pelosi and Reid family land deals? If not corruption, then the appearance of it.

[Stephanie]

In Kentucky's Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees. He said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need.

"We've got people out in some areas we haven't even visited yet," Smith said. "We don't even know that they're alive."

Smith said FEMA was still a no-show days after the storm.

Obama's got a problem... Where's Shep? Where's Sean Penn???

This storm hit last Mon/Tues and the MaObama declared a state of emergency on Thursday. It took him 2 days to declare an emergency on a storm you could see coming for days - Bush got smart and had FEMA prepositioning the relief efforts and pre-declaring the emergencies to expedite things.

The republicans in the states hardest hit should be pounding the airwaves demanding action on this.

Maybe this is payback since they didn't vote for him. Or maybe his priorities aren't on people but ideology and vote counts.

LUN

[sbwaters]

Move along, people. ... New thread.

[Neo]

This whole "stimulus" package seems to have odd overtones.

First, it's supposed to "stimulate". Apparently so much so that it had to contain measures for contraceptives (now removed) and STDs.

Worse, is that now that zero Republican votes won't work in the Senate, they have the group "Americans Coming Together" putting up ads in key states.

Is this a pattern ?

[coffee]

Taken is a cross between Kiss of the Dragon (Jet Li), Bourne Identity (Matt Damon) and Ransom (Mel Gibson)

[Brad K]

When 52% of high schoolers report being virgins (start of the year, or end of the year? Before turning 18, or after?) - I have to recall, we are now living in an age defined by Bill Clinton.

In Congress and in mainstream media, we learned that sexual contact isn't sex. We can be virgins if we haven't actually participated in procreative intercourse - or we didn't enjoy it.

When we can read of a pregnant teen, and not see the accompanying arrest report (statutory rape), when we can read of a failed drug test and neither the employer nor employee face criminal charges, when married men can be arrested for soliciting a prostitute - but not for adultery, I wonder why in the world, is anyone surveying teens about their sexual activity. Unless they are looking for titillation, prurient content to pimp their publication.

And we keep buying it.