But If You Want To Discuss Human Action, You'll Need To Go to the Champagne Room

From a Denver Post interview with Debbie Matthews, owner of a strip club called Shotgun Willie's:

Matthews: I love to read. I have a Kindle, and I love it. We have a book club for the staff called Strip It Down. We meet once a week. It's a conservative reading group.

BH: Well. What do you read?

Matthews: Friedrich Hayek's "The Fatal Conceit," "Super Freakonomics," the Federalist Papers. We talk about the prisoner's dilemma (a philosophical question about human behavior).

Hat tip: Mark Hemingway.

Comments

[Giggles McChortle]

Hehe, a book club for the "staff".

[John]

No one works harder for their money than strippers. They are basically small business women. And of course many of them are working single mothers.

My general experience with strippers is they hate welfare and anyone on it. Their attitude is "hey I fucking take off my clothes in front of strangers to make a living, what do you mean you don't want to get a job?" It is not surprising at all they are not liberals.

[fresno dan]

and they're all going to college - they are very education oriented.

Strip clubs are epitomize the free market - free individuals, some buyers, some sellers. We used to have a place in DC called...O, forgetful in old age....Shepard Park!!! the alzheimers hasn't taken everything yet. Anyway, there was this poor deformed guy in there. (not me, but I guess you could say the same thing). Anyway, thanks to strip clubs at least he got to look at pretty naked women (damn, that is disconcertingly similar to me).

[Clich? Bandit]

It really is no joke about college. The good ones (tenure, good tips, etc.) get the pick of shifts, work 4 or 5 nights, make a metric shitload of cash, and are not as dumb as most think. The dumb ones are weeded out early by hooking, drugs, just all around being dumb. The smart ones though have the perfect setting to finish college on their terms (i don't know how many are actually med students though...my gut says there are a lot of Art students). Most also realize that they will not be stripper quality forever. As a matter of fact a surprising number of them actually save money...I know one that needed a new car and so she went to the dealer with wads of benjis and bought a new car (mid size sedan, gotta have car seat ya know)...Fuck, I cant do that and I have a decent job.

[rustedangel]

Neither can I, because I have sworn a blood oath to never buy cars from dealers, and to never buy new. 40% value depreciation in 3 years is for suckers!

[James Ard]

I always buy them with fifteen to thirty thousand miles. But I get them from a dealer. The dealer has a chance at repeat business while the individual usually doesn't.

[SFC B]

I've taken to buying through a broker. The agency does the ground work finding the car I want for what I want to pay, I pay a reasonable fee for the service, and since they want my money again I avoid the "not caring about repeat business" risk. Plus they want word-of-mouth advertising (or want to avoid adverse word-of-mouth) which makes it more likely that I'll be treated better than at the dealerships.

[prolefeed]

The prices on Japanese branded used cars have been bid up so high that new cars make sense if you can get the dealer well below MSRP.

Detroit iron, though, has fierce depreciation -- and not fierce enough, IMO. Never buy a car built by the UAW if you want the best durability and reliability.

[BakedPenguin]

Nothing wrong with buying new if you plan on keeping the vehicle. I bought a pickup new in 2002, and still have it. I plan on driving it into the ground. Given that I average about 7,000 miles a year, this should happen in 2020 or so.

[prolefeed]

Many strippers are liberals, since socons obviously aren't going into that business. My gut is that the extremely free market aspect of their job makes for a higher percentage of libertarians among them (and hookers) than the general population, but hardly any conservatives.

[Old Mexican]

Those ladies are very knowledgeable...

[Binky]

Many are working their way through college. Really.

[hmm]

I would, but there is no sex in the champagne room.

[John]

No matter what a stripper tells you.

[Enough About Palin]

You know I have never had a lap dance (back in the 8's I was in a road band that started out working a lot of strip clubs, but I digress). So my question is, do these strippers actually get guy's off in the champaign room? And if so, are they blowing their wad in their pants?

[leavemealone]

YMMV.

[Warty]

No, they just dance and rub themselves in front of you and pretend to be into you, while they think about how they need to do the laundry or whatever.

[John]

I have been to my share of strip clubs over the years. I have never paid to go to a VIP room because I have been repeatedly warned that they are a ripoff. But, I suspect they are as Warty describes them.

[rustedangel]

It depends. My brother has gotten strippers to do things Al Gore never could, but he's a smooth talker. I would say 95% of the time though it's as Warty described.

[John]

I got a blowjob from one in new orleans once. But that was New Orleans so I don't count that as really being in the United States.

[zoltan]

New Orleans is Babylonian Heaven.

[libertymike]

Ah, we have friends named Benjamin who do the talking.

[Clich? Bandit]

I know Debbie. She is a great contributor to the Colorado LP. She and one of her Managers were the firebrands behind the Libertarian taking over of the Glendale City Council (the location of Shotgun's and an island of a city completely surounded by Denver but that is another cool stoty). She also sponsored the 2008 Denver LP Convention, which was awesome, and gave out free passes to everyone who bought a package (hehe he said package). The girls also had a booth at the convention. Man that was a good time. Nothing like watching Bob Barr talk to strippers.

A med student, really. That is interesting.

[Jack Rawlson]

Wow, thats just too funny dude.

Lou
http://www.post-anonymously.at.tc

[joshua corning]

Super Freakonomics

I thought these were the same guys who said abortions stop crime...

How are they conservative?

[Hugh Akston]

The reading list sounds like they are fiscal conservatives.

The fact that they remove their clothing in public in exchange for money suggests that they may be more flexible on social issues.

[Geotpf]

I actually followed their logic. Basically, a lot of criminals grew up in shitty home enviroments by mothers who lacked the ability to properly raise a child. In a world where abortion is legal, lots of those same mothers would abort their children instead. The semi-proof was that in states that legalized abortion first, the crime rate drop in the late 1990's happened first.

They clearly weren't advocating legalizing abortion to reduce crime, just pointing out that legalizing abortion had some unintended consequences. Unintended consequences was basically the overall theme of the book.

[Jordan]

Of course, to a utilitarian, this would mean that abortions should be mandatory for people living below the poverty line.

[Margaret Sanger]

^^THIS^^

[Margaret Sanger]

No, just the unwashed minorities.

[joshua corning]

The semi-proof was that in states that legalized abortion first, the crime rate drop in the late 1990's happened first.

Actually that is not true. They showed nation wide that after roe vs wade there was a decrease in crime roughly 20 years later. The problem with the study is that when you look at states that had legalized abortion before roe v wade they did not have earlier decreases in crime. You got the proof and disproof mixed up.

My guess is that you can find a far better correlation between the invention and availability of the pill and decreases in crime then you can with abortions.

[zoltan]

My guess is that you can find a far better correlation between the invention and availability of the pill and decreases in crime then you can with abortions.

You can probably find decreases in the advent of both, considering the pill is 99% effective only when taken correctly and abortion is 100% effective.

[Hugh Akston]

It's also possible that they are social conservatives, and believe that correlation=causation, so they will go out and commit some crimes in order to reduce the number of abortions.

[prolefeed]

Strippers can be socially conservative on selected topics. Had a conversation with a stripper in New Orleans about how she wanted to make alcohol illegal because of all problems her alcoholic family members and ex went through.

She obviously was not a socon on the issue of getting naked in front of strangers and rubbing her tits in their face.

[zoltan]

She obviously was not a socon on the issue of getting naked in front of strangers and rubbing her tits in their face.

Same as those who think it's okay for those over the age of 21 to get rip-roaring drink, but adults between the ages of 18 and 20 shouldn't drink and absolutely no adults should be allowed to use other recreational drugs. Cognitive disconnect or something.

[blubi]

You?re missing the point, they were not arguing the ethics of abortion, simply pointing out there was casuality between roevswade and a reduction of crime. Not a value judgement.
Some economists believe that, whatever your politics, there is a reality (free market) and that govts enact policies to obtain certain outcomes, and will ponder over statistics to see if it had the desired outcome, whether they agree with the policy or not is, as a scientist, irrelevant.
Then they applied the same logic to social issues.

[hmm]

They are economists not political pundits. They weren't necessarily advocating any policy. They were looking at the data to draw a conclusion on what variables had a significant impact on crime. The showed that abortion laws had some impact on crime rates.

Injecting conservative or liberal into such a discussion with respect to the people doing the study would he a mistake.

[hmm]

Have I mentioned that I love strippers?

That just needed to be said.

[Clich? Bandit]

who doesn't?

[prolefeed]

Actually, I'm not so fond of them. At least the ones in Hawaii, who usually don't even pretend to be interested in anything but your wallet.

[hmm]

You need better strippers. I propose opening your own strip club and addressing these issues.

[?]

This place doesn't sound like The Bing.

[Ragin Cajun]

Maybe if Chris Christie walks in...

[Darkeyes]

I've been to that place ("Satin Dolls" in Lodi, NJ).

It's not an actual strip club. In not-so-dirty Jersey, you can have alcohol or you can have nudity--but not both.

So there were these gorgeous girls... in bikinis.

It was like being at the Jersey Shore if you somehow walked onto a calendar shoot.

Where the titties at?

[Fluffy]

I was always the dumbass who felt BAD for the strippers.

Intellectually I understood that they were the con artists and the audience were the rubes and marks, but I never quite accepted that on an emotional level.

[prolefeed]

Some of them have shitty lives, and so feeling bad for them makes sense.

Some are mercenaries who will have trouble having normal relationships, so maybe they too deserve some sympathy, though not so much so.

Read "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl" before you get too weepy over their "plight", though.

[dhex]

better yet find a copy of "g strings and sympathy". i never understood strip clubs until i read that.

alternately watch "born into brothels" and weep for humanity.

[zoltan]

Read the "Lust" chapter of Skipping Towards Gomorrah and feel intense envy for the intelligent prostitute who sank her profits into a Manhattan apartment and now owns a half-a-million dollar piece of property.

[Bill]

This made me think of Woody Allen's, "The Whore's of Mensa":
Shy, nervous guy walks in: "I'm looking for two girls to explain Noam Chomsky to me."

Anyway, with that reading list, it sounds like you'd get a pretty interesting lap dance.

I went once in Florida though and all the women were foreigners (not that there's anything wrong with that) and I didn't get the impression they were much interested in education.

[mr simple]

Obviously you didn't go to Mons Venus, the happiest place on Earth.

[?]

Intellectually I understood that they were the con artists and the audience were the rubes and marks, but I never quite accepted that on an emotional level.

You can fix that!

Befriend and/or bang a stripper. Look at her piles and/or bags of untaxed cash?heaps that are so abundant she's almost indifferent to them. Then feel different about strippers.

(I admit I've only known the highly paid puttin'-myself-through-coca-college "mercenary" type.)

[mr simple]

That's ridiculous. I fucking hate zydeco.

[Randy]

Having had the opportunity to socialize with strippers away from the club, I learned about "stripper time". Stripper time usually runs 30 minutes to an hour behind the regular time.

So, if you make a date to pick her up at 8:00 PM, understand that she really won't be ready to go until 8:30 or 9:00. So always call ahead before you leave to pick them up to avoid the additional waiting time.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Most of the strippers I've met seemed like chaos queens.

There was one whose problem of the week was winnowing down her collection of boyfriends from 16 to 5 -- that was her manageable number. She was going to keep the guy who flew her into Chicago for the weekend, twice a month.

Another was trying to figure out how she could drain her boyfriend's bank account and sell his collection of imported antiques (something like that) before he got back into the country from his latest trip looking for stuff to import. She also thought Clinton was a much more fiscally responsible President than Bush (this was pre-Obama).

[CE]

She also thought Clinton was a much more fiscally responsible President than Bush

He was.

[wylie]

Real late to the thread, but....

Many strippers are liberals, since socons obviously aren't going into that business. My gut is that the extremely free market aspect of their job makes for a higher percentage of libertarians among them (and hookers) than the general population, but hardly any conservatives.

What about the socially-liberal/fiscally-conservative crowd?