Hotel rooms, particularly in their more reasonably priced iterations, have long been considered rarified spaces suitable only for quiet contemplation and deep, dreamless sleep. That is, until Hilton Hotels & Resorts decided to muck it all up by introducing pornography into its pay-per-view offerings. And if we’ve learned anything from the most recent stop on Josh Duggar’s hypocrisy whistle-stop tour, it’s that pornography is a (age-restricted, totally voluntary) menace with the power to transform clean-living, God-fearing Americans into depraved sex addicts overnight.
Thus, a group has set out to remind the hotel chain that watching naked people on a small television set is roughly akin to punching God in the throat. Salon reports that a group calling itself National Center on Sexual Exploitation (recently changed from the notably less concern-troll-friendly Morality in Media) recently succeeded in its campaign to remove all pornography from the pay-per-view at Hilton hotels, adding several frustrating seconds of typing on your phone before you can sexually exploit yourself on a Hilton property. “We have listened carefully to our customers and have determined that adult video-on-demand entertainment is not in keeping with our company’s vision and goals moving forward,” Hilton says in a statement.
This is the same group, by the way, that rallied for Cosmopolitan magazine to be covered up ala Playboy or Penthouse at supermarkets, suggesting that the group’s definition of “sexual exploitation” is less about rape culture and more about making the baby Jesus cry by consensually touching yourself or others in a no-no zone. The logical next step, eliminating all the pornography shot in Hilton hotels, is going to be more difficult. But we’re sure there are several upstanding volunteers willing to pollute their eyes in order to identify the hotel chain by the pattern on the bedspread.
As of this writing, you can still whack it all you want at the Marriott.