Gotcha! Florida GOP Lawmaker "Caught Looking at Porn During Floor Debate." But Since When Are Topless Ladies Considered "Porn"?

As shown above, republican State Senator Mike Bennett of Florida has been caught on tape looking at a photo of several topless ladies. The tape was shot was by a Florida news outfit (Sunshine State News) during a Florida Senate floor debate on controversial abortion bill late last week. In the links at bottom, Bennett claims he was bored by the debate and was just as surprised as anyone when the picture just happened to pop up on his laptop screen. He claims he was just opening an e-mail that he thought might be related to that pesky floor debate that had him so damned bored. "I opened it up and said holy shit! What's on my screen? And clicked away from it right away," Bennett said to the Sunshine State News. Adding to the weirdness of this story is the fact that Bennett also reportedly downloaded two videos during the "boring" debate, including one showing a dog shaking off after emerging from some water.

A few observations here: First, and as posited in my headline, when in the hell did we start calling photos of topless women "porn" (which is the word being used uniformly in the media coverage of this story). I'm sorry, but mere nudity (and not even full body nudity at that) is not even properly called "soft-core porn" for cryin' out loud. Instead, it is what it is: A nude photo. Here's an interesting question: Would the term "porn" be tossed about so lightly by the media and blogosphere if this dude was a democrat? Probably not (except, of course, by your Breitbarts and other right-wing bloggers of the world).

Second, methinks 'ol Mikey boy has just a little bitta 'splainin' to do, above and beyond the topless picture he pulled up. This was a floor debate on a "controversial abortion bill," and Bennett says he was "bored"? Of course he was, but still -- what a dumb thing to say politically. And what's with downloading the video of the dog shaking off? On that front, I can't put it any better than blogger Kyle Munzenrieder of MiamiNewTimes.com: "Either Bennett has some weird fetishes or was just really, really bored with all this talk about ladies' rights and what not."

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/sen-mike-bennett-caught-looking-porn-senate-floor
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/05/sen_mike_bennett_caught_lookin.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/04/mike-bennett-porn-florida_n_562365.html