If you missed the bio of Taylor Marsh, the self-professed "talk radio" host, Huffington Post blogger, successful polisite operator and crazed hack for Hillary Clinton, you can read it here.Here's an update relating to the LA Weekly portion of the tall tale. Marsh claims to have written for the Weekly, but also admitted that her columns appeared with the word ADVERTISEMENT on top of them. That's not what one generally does with their paid columnists, of course. We knew that much already.
I'm still not sure why Taylor Marsh stories were considered advertising, but I have some interesting additional background about her "experience" with the LA Weekly.
A reader emailed me a few links to websites that date back to the Taylor Marsh era at the paper. Apparently, Ms. Marsh worked for LALoveseat.com, which was an "adult" and/or "personals" site operated by the free alt weekly. I'm wondering if the journalistic experience Taylor Marsh had at the paper was actually writing materials for LALoveseat. Just an idea, but it matches up with an iHollywood Forum update that describes Marsh like this:
Taylor Marsh, former editor-in-chief of Danni's Hard Drive, a popular adult site that brings in $6 million a year in revenue, now a featured columnist on LA Weekly's LALoveseat.com
Interestingly, if you search the LA Weekly archives for other articles under the name Taylor Marsh, you get nothing.
LALoveseat had detractors, which isn't a big surprise. Anything involving boobies, butts and genitals has detractors. Let it be know that John Brown is not an anti-porn crusader and that Marsh's experience in porn as an employee at Danni's Hard Drive and elsewhere shouldn't be held against her. If anything, I'm sneakily pro-porn.One may, however, question if that time with the adult site really qualifies as relevant experience for hackery, er, political punditry.
Anyway, now that the disclaimer is out there, here's how one dude characterized LALoveseat in a letter to the paper by someone named Bill Cody:
I long ago mourned the death of the progressive media in this country, but whenever I think I’ve finally found the subbasement and cannot possibly go any lower, you folks at the Weekly/Village Voice find another hidden stairwell.
“LALOVESEAT.COM,” the ad screams. “Adult Services — massage — escorts — dancers — clubs.” Why not tell it like it is? The Weekly is now pimping for prostitutes. I know none of you oh-so-talented writer types want to get day jobs, but really, how low can you go? ... You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I'm not arguing that LALoveseat was porn based on that letter, though. I'm making the assumption that we're talking about relatively "blue" material on the fact that Taylor Marsh took the time to appear with a collection of other porn website operators in the aforementioned panel discussion.All we really know about her comments at the discussion are that she didn't mention whether LALoveseat (a free site that probably sought to generate revenue via advertising) was profitable and that she thought porn studios could do a better job with their sites via increased interactivity. According to Taylor Marsh:
When you go to an adult site, you get to see people. With other sites, too often you feel like there is too much facade and no human interaction...Movie studios in particular are underutilizing the Internet...If I was the head of a studio, I would have all my hot, young stars online doing chats. Fan clubs are tremendously valuable on the Web.
Her observations about interactivity and websites makes sense, by the way, on a general level. It also seems to be one of the reasons her current site attracts a large group of regulars. It may seem weird to think about the pro-Hillary, Reagan Democrat member of a lunch-bucket family talking about getting young and hot talent to chat with porn fans to increase sales, though.I'd be happy to judge Ms. Marsh's efforts purely on the quality of her analysis and writing. If I did that, I'd come down on the side of "just another not-so-bright person with typing skills". However, Marsh consistently reminds the world of her "qualifications" in hopes of advancing her agenda and station in the world of punditry. The more we dig into that admittedly well-spun background... Well... I think she'd be better off without the tall tale backstory.
WONDERING ABOUT THE CARTOONS? READ THIS...
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