Outbreak of Brazilian virgins has imaginary bidders lining up

When Justin Sisely announced that he planned to film a “Virgin Sells Virginity” porn, the media went wild, endlessly repeating a story based on nothing.

Now, that’s not a big surprise. What is a surprise is that after the announcement - heck, even before it - random dudes with lots of walking-around money started hurling incredible bids at Sisely, asking to be the male lead in said porno.

A little look back: As the story was repeated, Sisely had planned on making a “documentary” about the life and devirginizing of a virgin. He planned to do this by flying the virgin - Catarina Migliorini - away from her friends and family so they wouldn’t talk her out o it. Then, because what he planned to do was legally prostitution everywhere, he said he’d put the couple on the airplane, film the sex scene and then everyone would be impressed what a nifty little pornographer pimp filmmaker he is and then - money.

Anyway, Migliorini has never seen the money or done the act, as far as can be verified, but she has appeared on the cover of Brazilian Playboy, and she most definitely got paid.

Now comes the latest virgin sale (I hope they realize this racket market could get saturated soon). One Rebbeca Bernardo - shenned by the mega-popular reality show “Big Brother Brasil” - has put her virginity to the highest bidder.

 

Bernardo said she looked for jobs and tried selling cosmetics and working as a waitress, but without a high school degree, the pay was minimal.

“I would get 150 reais ($75) for working all day, which would just pay the salary of someone to stay with my mother,” she said, after patiently feeding her mother a plate of reheated spaghetti.

Ok, hit the breaks. The R$150 amount she tosses out is five times the Brazilian minimum wage. I’m going to guess I could round up quite a few Americans that’d take $75 a day right about now. How exactly is this 18-year-old without a high school degree able to make this amount? Waitressing?

As for her mother’s care, one important point must be brought up - This is Brazil. The national motto is “We’ve Got a Social Program For That.”

Doesn’t add up, not at all. Probably because it’s yet another attention-seking hoax:

There are questions surrounding the authenticity of Bernardo’s altruism. A Brazilian TV network offered to pay for her mother’s medical expenses if Bernardo called off the auction. While she initially accepted the offer during a television interview, she later rejected it because the network would not pay for a house in a different town where she could “start a new life.”

So here’s the thing - there are no bids. Right now, the burden of proof is on Sisely and Bern. Show us the money. Because let’s think about this so-called billing for a moment.
For Sisely, somehow, a magical, out of nowhere, based on nothing $170,000 bid appeared from one “Jack Miller,” and it luckily came before anyone even knew Sisely was in the virgin-sales business. Now, news organizations like CNN are reporting it as $780,000. Just because no money has changed hands and likely never will is no reason to doubt this figure.

Now here’s something: If I was the type of guy who had $780,000, or even $170k, to toss away on one night of sex, I would probably be the type of guy who had a lawyer. A lawyer who would say “Gee, Bill, this is the worst idea ever. Really, ever. I can’t express how terrible this is morally, financially, and really, as a human it’s just heinous.”

Or words to that effect.

Seriously, this doesn’t require too large a dose of skeptical thinking - $780,000. For one night. With someone who may or may not be a virgin. In an airplane. Being filmed. Try this, tho - there is no money, no bidder, no nothing. It’s all been a PR stunt.

I’d say going with the latter seems the correct call right now.

Anyway, I expect this virgin prostituting idea to pop up again. Why not? The first one worked out so well. Getting in Playboy is a big deal down here. Just know that this trend was not created by Sisely - it was created by a media that finds critical thinking takes way too much time when you can just copy and paste. Plus, you can then have people write stories about the decline of the world’s morality.

But right now, none of this is actually a story. It’s all just a rumor.

 -WKW

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Brazilian girl to auction her virginity for “documentary,” but apparently not for charity

This is an update to my original post “Brazilian girl auctioning off virginity for a documentary? I doubt it.”  Since that original post, I have heard back via e-mail from Justin Sisley - the young man who is claiming to be making a documentary about a male and female virgin who are auctioning off their virginity.

While Sisely was none too thrilled about about my thought that the whole project could be a hoax, he answered few of the questions I had asked. The questions he did answer just created more questions, however.

For instance, in regard to why the female “star” of his documentary - Catarina Migliorini - was in Indonesia now, Sisely had this to say:

“Catarina is in Indonesia because we could not get her into Australia, she has had three visa refusals and been turned away from New Zealand, twice!,” wrote Sisely. “Bali was the next closest place to Australia, where my contacts and crew were. For the auction to be legal and in Nevada (USA) the virgins would have to get working visas. Catarina can not even get a tourist visa to Australia, what chance does she have of getting a working visa to America?”

The visa issue does jibe with reality, as it is common for Brazilians to struggle getting visas to other countries, at times. This, however, creates questions of how Sisely plans on having the sexual encounter occur on an airplane (it was originally reported that Sisely was to have a private plane take Migliorini and her winning bidder from Australia to the U.S. so they could consummate in the air, where apparently he believes prostitution is legal.

A comment that truly struck me, however, was why he had taken Migliorini away from Brazil in the first place:

“This is an extremely difficult film to make, it is not only difficult to avoid legalities it has been extremely difficult to find the virgins who can see it through to the end. The reason I choose a Brazilian virgin was to take her out of her environment where she was less likely to be influenced by family and friends and therefore more likely to stay committed to the project,” wrote Sisely.

Te question that arises in my mind: If this were truly meant to be a documentary, wouldn’t the “virgin’s” interactions with family and friends be a big part of the story? If the documentary is solely about her losing her virginity (to a bidder who has paid $190,000 for the honor), then it really is more about filming an act of prostitution.

Sisely has not responded to other questions from me, aside from pointing out he has directed documentaries before.

Another side of the story comes from Huffington Post’s Weird News, where writer David Moye spoke with Sisely and the first crack in the media’s poor effort in covering the story came out. In her statement, Migliorini said she would use a big part of her earnings from the documentary for charitable purposes, something Sisely said he was unaware of:

“I was surprised she said that because in all my dealings with her, she made it clear that it was a business decision for her,” Australian filmmaker Justin Sisely said in an exclusive interview. “Now, given how big this story is in Brazil, she’s trapped. If she doesn’t give any money to charity, she’s going to look bad.”

In regard to how to prove the virginity of Migliorini, Sisely gave an answer that would make Todd Akin proud:

“There is apparently a test that can tell if a penis has been inserted into her,” Sisely said.

I’ll let you know more about this story should Sisely write me back and answer any pertinent questions, such as how the bidding got to $190,000 in just a few days, whether or not Sisely will film the encounters, why no one in the production seems to use social media, and others.

My current opinion is that Sisely got a lot of attention for this idea, but is struggling to get it to come to fruition and didn’t realize just how difficult the whole undertaking would be.

If the project is what it says it is, it is clearly a filmed act of prostitution. But there is still no saying for sure whether the project is what Sisely claims it is, as his comments on it have been vague and incomplete. It still could be just performance art, or pornography. Or it could all be an attention-grabbing hoax. Or perhaps an ill-conceived idea that has gotten away from Sisely. Time will tell. Should I hear again from Sisely, I’ll let you know.

-WKW

Penn State deserves worse

Penn State just received a walloping from the NCAA for the Sandusky pedophilia ring. A penalty of $60 million, vacating all its wins from 1998 to 2011 and a ban from bowl games for four years.

And it’s not enough.

On its own, Penn State University needs to drop its football program for at least five years. Pulling Joe Paterno’s statue down and pretending like the last 40 years didn’t happen isn’t enough.

I feel for the young men who signed with Penn State to play football. I truly hope the NCAA helps them - and other students - transfer easily to other schools.

But make no mistake about it, these penalties by the NCAA will hurt. They’ll hurt State College and the surrounding area. They’ll hurt students. But we need to keep our eyes open to reality. We need to remember our priorities as civilized people.

Joe Paterno let Jerry Sandusky turn Penn State into a pedophilia camp. Let us not forget how heinous the crimes were at Penn State. And they were covered up because of football.

Penn State needs to dump the football program. And Americans need some time to think about how far we are willing to allow our love of sports take us off the path of basic humanity.

-WKW

Lance Armstrong: The guy who lied about cheating

It has always been a no-brainer to me that Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs. The world of cycling is dominated by PEDs and has been for a long time. The idea that a guy who heroically recovered from cancer of the everything came back and completely dominated fields full of guys who cheated while not cheating himself is unreasonable. In 2009, I wrote this:

With the rampant use of performance enhancing drugs in the world of cycling, it is starting to take an extraordinary act of intellectual dishonesty to believe that Armstrong has been clean his entire career. So while I have a lot of respect for Armstrong as a man and an athlete, I’m not willing to keep my head buried in the sand. My opinion is that Lance Armstrong has benefited from illegal performance enhancing drugs in the past, and may very well be using whatever he can in this latest comeback attempt.

My feelings remain the same, and as of yesterday, it appears those feelings may be validated.

The seven-time Tour de France winner who in February saw a two-year federal investigation into his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs dropped without charges being filed, is back in the spotlight of doping suspicions.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has accused Armstrong and five former members of his support staff — three doctors, a trainer and a team manager — of engaging in a massive doping conspiracy from 1998 to 2011. Armstrong, 40, who retired from cycling last year, could see his Tour titles get stripped as a result.

USADA‘s letter to Armstrong dated June 12 includes previously unpublicized allegations against him, saying blood samples taken in 2009 and 2010 were “consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions.”

Armstrong denies the charges and he always will. He has pointed to some type of conspiracy that wants his legacyt tarnished. But in the U.S., Armstrong is beloved. He is truly a great person.

Sadly, in the end, Armstrong’s legacy won’t be that of a great cycling champion or tireless philanthropist. He will be known as the guy who cheated and then spent the rest of his life lying about it.

-WKW

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is palling around with terrorists

Ernest Hancock and Freedom’s Phoenix “watering the tree of liberty” with guns at an Obama appearance.

I’ve written several times about Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, focusing on his love for intimidating and slandering financial journalists, his constant misleading of investors, and other subjects.

Byrne - who has led Overstock to yearly loss after loss and has been key in driving OSTK stock to it’s current $5.01 per share - is also an extreme right-winger. Not a Sean Hannity-type extreme right-winger, mind you, but closer to one of those faux-Libertarian, overthrow-the-government types of extremists.

Such does Byrne support the right-wing libertarian militia movement, that he was recently a guest of Earnest Hancock on Freedom’s Phoenix radio show. Who is Hancock, you ask? Well, just someone who has been accused by Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce  - a far-right conservative himself - of being a terrorist.

Ernest Hancock, the online radio host who staged  an interview with an assault rifle-wielding associate at the Obama event in Arizona yesterday — and was himself armed with a 9 millimeter pistol — was a vocal supporter and friend of right-wing anti-government militia members who were convicted of conspiracy and weapons charges in the 90s.

And in an interview today with TPMmuckraker, Hancock said he still believes the Viper Militia case was “manufactured” by the same government that manufactured Waco  and lied to its people about 9/11.

The federal government initially accused the Arizona Viper Militia of plotting to blow up federal buildings, which the twelve-member group cased on videotape.

In July 1996, after a grand jury indicted the suspects, federal agents “seized about 90 high-powered rifles and hundreds of pounds of a bomb-making compound from the shabby bungalow of a man whom officials identified as the ordnance specialist of a local paramilitary group,” the New York Times reported at the time.

Hancock, who in recent years designed the famous “Ron Paul rEVOLution” graphic, was an oft-quoted defender of the militia members. The tapes of the government buildings, he said at the time, were purely “educational.”

More on Hancock and the Viper Militia here, via TPM and here at The Huffington Post.

Byrne - who notably railed against Utah voters for rejecting his push to “reform” the Utah school system by making it a voucher program and runs the libel factory known as Deep Capture - shared some of his radical, paranoid views with Hancock, including his claims that “Naked Short Sellers” have destroyed the stock prices of his mismanaged company.

Hancock is not currently under arrest, and it was by no means a crime for Byrne to appear on his radio show. But it shows he is a supporter of those with radical and dangerous ideologies. If you don’t think right-wing terrorism is a problem in the U.S., read some of David Neiwert’s work on the subject.

People like Hancock like to talk how they just want to be “left alone” by the federal government, but what they really want to be left alone to be racists who dream of an overthrow of the U.S. government. These are violent, ignorant, paranoid people who fantasize that Ron Paul will someday be President and allow them to unleash chaos in the name of of something they like to call Libertarianism.

And Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne supports them.

-WKW