Stardate 20030517.1733

(On Screen): Yet again, life imitates art. One of the hazards of being a comedian is that the joke you make today can become tomorrow's history. For instance, the movie Network was a brilliant satire of the rapacious and monomaniacal obsession of TV networks with ratings, and their willingness to go to any lengths to get them. At the time the examples given in the movie were thought to be preposterous, completely beyond any realm of possibility. However, watching the movie now it is clear that Chayefsky's satire was actually timid. In the era of "Survivor" and "Who wants to marry a Millionaire" and "Jackass" and "Fear Factor", it's hard to see just what kind of thing might ultimately be out of bounds. (Let alone the underground VHS hits "Faces of Death" and "Bumfights", or some of the more extreme Japanese shows where contestants are humiliated, terrified and sometimes outright tortured on camera.) Chayefsky stands revealed less as a satirist than as a prophet.

On the other side of the coin, there was a Monty Python sketch where government ministers met to talk about how they had run out of things to tax. Since they needed more revenue (and when has any government not thought it needed more revenue?) they started brainstorming about just what, if anything, remained. Finally, one of them suggested that they could tax, er, thingy. You know, thingy.

In other words, sex.

If there's anything more unscrupulous and rapacious than a network executive on a quest for ratings, it's a government bureaucrat looking for things to tax. New predictions are that Germany faces a €126 billion shortfall in revenue relative to anticipated spending over the next four years. So they've actually gone and done it. Germany is taxing sex.