The Daily Newds

• I've said it before on this blog that the reason young American males are reluctant to bare all in the locker room is due to homophobia. ESPN confronts the issue with Scott Goslin, an openly gay college football player.

  "That's one of the things that cracks me up when people talk about gay teammates," Guthrie says. "How is it that the straight guys are the ones who feel threatened? I mean, what do they think is going to happen, the guy is going to rape them or something? If anything I think it's the gay guy who would feel awkward in that situation."

• A fashion show in Canada featured female models with bare breasts. Nobody died.
• A reminder that Nude Night is this weekend in Orlando.

  The show was started clandestinely about a decade ago because there weren't (and still aren't) many venues that would let an artist show nude figures, not to mention law-enforcement harassment. Even the Sentinel won't print photos of many nude paintings, for fear they could offend someone. I've lived and worked in Europe, and they just laugh at the irony and hypocrisy of our leftover-from-the-Puritans attitudes toward anything the least bit sexual. I can't count the number of people there who told me various versions of, "You Americans produce film after film of blood and devastation, yet you perceive nudity to be more offensive. Bombs and carnage is OK, but the natural human form is deemed 'offensive'?"

• A Bolivian soccer player has been fired for appearing completely nude at a press conference.
• A New York cop is in hot water for taking a nude photo of himself and sharing it with others. Officials are trying very hard make this some sort of crime.

  A police spokesman said "no complainants" have come forward, but Internal Affairs investigators would like to hear from any members of the public who received the picture and found it offensive.

• A columnist recounts a visit to the "nekked house".

  There was plenty to see. Right off the bat I spied a woman with a Mickey Mouse tattoo in a location that probably jumped Uncle Walt right out of his grave. Another gentlemen strutted about dressed as a gunfighter in a cowboy hat, boots and gun belt. That was all. Once the band tuned up, the naturalists began dancing. I’m here to tell you, dancing in the raw puts a whole new swing on the Texas two-step.

• A Rice University student has an odd attitude towards nudity, especially when it comes to Daniel Radcliffe baring all on stage.

  I cannot accept Radcliffe’s “expanding acting roles” explanation is the only motive behind choosing this part. Fortunately for Radcliffe, society’s double standard on public nudity favors the denuding of men. Unfortunately, female nudity does not garner the same acceptance: A nude woman is considered a whore, while a nude man is perceived as an artist...Perhaps Radcliffe chose the play, not only because it reflects the suffocating industry that governs him, but also because it gives him an excuse to run around in his nuddy-pants.

• The Arizona house rejected an amendment proposed by democrat Theresa Ulmer that would have banned the naked lady silhouettes seen on many truck mud flaps.

  "I personally am tired of explaining to my 11-year-old son why they (women) are depicted on mud flaps, but not all women are 36Ds. He's very confused by that," Ulmer said. "But seriously, this is about family values - what are we going to send out as a message to our children."

• A British writer analyzes the uses of nudity on stage.

  What we need to put an end to is the smirking voyeurism of a commercial theatre that whets our appetite with nudity and then swathes it in shadows. By all means, let's have nudity on stage. But at the same time, let us ensure that it is guiltless, open and unashamed rather than constantly going off, as it were, at half-cock.

• A San Luis Obispo writer laments upon the sterilization of an old tradition.

  I'm just a tad paranoid about the nudity ordinance that lurks under the city's surface for most of the year, popping up right before any Mardi Gras parties like a big, red zit on the smooth, white butt that is San Luis Obispo. It's organic clockwork. A biological imperative or at least it has been since the San Luis Obispo City Council, the SLOPD, and other decision-making leader types decided to threaten any public boob bouncing or wiener waving during the week with particular punishment a few years back.

• In Brisbane, people are divided over the World Naked Bike Ride event scheduled for March 10. One councillor is on record as saying:

  “First of all, it’s breaking the law – that’s a police matter. It’s wilful exposure, so he is breaking the law. And some people in the community might just laugh it off and think it’s a bit of a joke, but certainly some people might be offended by it. He has a right to protest, of course, but other people also have a right to enjoy public places without being offended.”

  But the general public seems to have a more tolerant attitude.

  “We always need extremists to get us to the centre ground, and if these guys are capable of riding naked, and are happy to, then let them do it! Our kids have got a thousand other things to be terrified of rather than nude people on a bike!”

• A naked man was spotted sledding in Kansas.
• A UK software company used topless models to promote its cell-phone technology at a conference.
• A woman in New York writes to an advice columnist about a breastfeeding mother on the subway.

  She then proceeded to expose her breast and feed the child - right there in front of everyone in the full car. I glanced around and saw men gawking at her, which really made me uncomfortable. I couldn't decide who was out of line, though: The mother or the men. Is it acceptable for her to have done this in such a public place?

  So who was to "blame" for this outrage? Why, everybody, of course. The answer:

  Discretion was missing. In this case, it was absent on both sides - with the mother who exposed her breast in public AND the men who didn't avert their eyes to allow the mother and her child needed privacy.

• The executive director of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin made the following idiotic statement in opposition of a bill protecting nursing mothers.

  "Breast-feeding is very natural. However, I don't think that we need to have legislation that gives special sanction to it," Appling told the Herald. "Just because something is normal and natural, it doesn't mean we have to condone (it)."

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