The Wake

“Well I just think that it is so shocking that after all this time we thought we’d seen it all with Marilyn Monroe, and… here we go,” says Lara Spencer on CBS’s The Early Show.

The Marilyn Monroe sex tape has finally surfaced, thank God. The media was almost running out of living celebrity faux news fodder.

It is still a mystery why Spencer thinks this “news” is “so shocking.” In her lifetime Monroe made a name for herself as one of the most sensual and seductive stars on the planet, in addition to having rumored affairs with a number of celebrities and politicians. Further, wasn’t she on the cover of Playboy? Yeah, she was.

I’m personally glad that the person who bought the foreplay tape (no sex, just oral) has more integrity than the people reporting on it. The anonymous New York businessman spent $1.5 million with a vow to never release the tape.

Hopefully the businessman’s intentions are as true as 99% of sources are reporting; well except eFluxMedia (“an online newspaper that aims to offer a public service”), who ran an article titled “Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape Won’t Remain Secret for Long,” despite the fact that the assertion is completely unfounded.

One of the saddest angles on this story comes from 2Snaps.tv (“an online community dedicated to the senseless art of following, discussing, and obsessing over America’s greatest pastimes: Celebrities and Pop Culture”). Their article “Marilyn Monroe New Sex Tape Goddess?” brings up a depressingly true point: “Hopefully someone made a third copy of that film, because if Lindsay Lohan just posing as Monroe was as huge as it was imagine how big this would be if it hit the Internet!”

It is true. This tape would get gratuitous amounts of traffic on the Internet, which reminds me of a Savage Love column from last March (which came out in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith’s death.) In response to a question about whether it’s OK to masturbate to the late Smith, Dan Savage replies, “Masturbating to the dead inspires only feelings of hopelessness and despair. Which is why no one beats off to James Dean or River Phoenix or Marilyn Monroe or Mary Todd Lincoln without feeling a little creepy, a little hopeless and a little closer to the grave himself. Knock it off.”

Well said, Mr. Savage.

FURTHERMORE, an interesting twist to this story is that the tape came out of FBI archives. Apparently the tape had been studied frame by frame in order to determine whether the unidentified man was a Kennedy. (Note: this is where our tax dollars are going—investigating a possible sex scandal of an assassinated president.)

You’re all sick.

Tags: FBI, Marilyn Monroe, Media, Scandal, Sex Tape