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Apr. 17It takes a lot of gas to run a gubernatorial campaign.

Literally.

The five candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor have racked up thousands of dollars in fuel charges and thousands of miles on their vehicles' odometers as they've crisscrossed the state on the campaign trail over the past six months.

"The car that I bought in August had nine miles when I got it. It just passed 49,000, and it's on its second set of tires," said state Rep. Rebecca Dow of Truth or Consequences, who reported $6,400 in mileage reimbursements.

Although high, the candidates' fuel charges pale in comparison to other big-ticket expenditures listed in their most recent campaign finance reports, filed Monday.

Since October, the five hopefuls spent a combined $1.36 million to try to connect with Republican voters and voters in general before the June 7 primary.

The winner in the five-way race will face off against Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has nearly $3.8 million cash on hand, and a Libertarian candidate.

Political consultants in New Mexico and across the country were among the biggest beneficiaries of the Republican candidates' spending.

Big fundraiser, big spender

Mark Ronchetti, a former TV meteorologist who raised $2.1 million over the past six months, more than all of his Republican rivals combined, led in spending, too.

Ronchetti reported nearly $584,000 in expenditures.

The biggest expense for Ronchetti, who has been running TV ads statewide, was $158,724 in media advertising.

It was followed by more than $132,000 to McCleskey Media Strategies for a wide variety of services, from media production costs to design and printing. The president of the Albuquerque-based political consulting firm is Jay McCleskey, who ran former Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's gubernatorial campaigns and also served as her chief political adviser during her two terms in office.

Asked about the campaign's decision to work with McCleskey, Enrique Knell, Ronchetti's campaign spokesman, said the campaign doesn't generally discuss strategy or spending.

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"Mark's campaign is about listening to New Mexicans and talking about his vision for turning New Mexico around after four years of a disastrous administration that has devastated family budgets and our freedoms," Knell wrote in an email.

Ronchetti listed dozens of fuel charges that added up to more than $4,900.

"Mark is driving to every corner in New Mexico to meet voters and talk about the issues New Mexicans face," wrote Knell, who called the price of gas an "absolute disaster" for families and small businesses.

Knell argued gas prices would be climbing even higher if the Legislature had passed a proposed clean fuel standard that Lujan Grisham supported during the 30-day session earlier this year.

Boosting name ID

Dow, who raised more than $751,000 since October, came in second in spending with just over $406,000 in expenditures.

A $112,500 ad buy was the biggest expenditure for Dow, who has released two television ads. That was followed by some $99,000 in political consulting services and about $35,000 in mailings and other campaign literature.

"I started this race with 3 percent name ID, so you see a lot of mailers because we're targeting voters and letting them know who we are, what we stand for and how we're going to move New Mexico forward," she said. "I am, everywhere I go, passing out business cards, palm cards, putting signs in windows, 'Small business for Dow' and 'Parents for Dow.' "

In addition to putting 49,000 miles on her new car, Dow said she's logged at least 11,000 more miles on her other vehicles as she travels the state.

"Just this week, for example, we've gone from Angel Fire to Espaola to Santa Fe to Albuquerque, T or C and [Las] Cruces and Socorro," she said. "We're going to be in Dulce and Aztec and Farmington next week, as well as Carlsbad."

Dow also reported nearly $10,000 in campaign T-shirts.

"We can't keep T-shirts in stock," she said. "Our most popular T-shirt says, 'Green chile, guns and freedom,' and the second most popular one says, 'We're sticking with Dow,' and it has cactus on it."

Dow, who loaned her campaign $40,000, has close to $684,000 cash on hand.

"I think we're in good shape," she said. "We're getting contributions daily."

Dow said she's feeling "comfortable" with her campaign's financials with less than two months until the primary, adding the candidate with the most money doesn't always emerge the winner.

'I'm Seabiscuit'

Ethel Maharg, a former mayor of the village of Cuba who now serves as the executive director of the Albuquerque-based Right to Life Committee of New Mexico, said she's not worried about her campaign's fundraising numbers.

After raising just $12,999 in the last reporting period, Maharg has less than $800 in cash on hand.

"You gotta understand, I've worked for [two nonprofits] for the past 10 years," Maharg said. "There were times they'd ask the executive committee whether or not we literally could wait to [cash] our checks. To me, not to have that money doesn't scare me. It probably scares [the other primary candidates], but it doesn't scare me."

The biggest chunk of Maharg's expenses $4,129 has been for campaign consulting. That's followed by fuel at more than $2,000, or about 15 percent of her fundraising haul.

Maharg is undeterred, saying money corrupts. She pointed to a candidate forum in Santa Fe last week in which some of the contenders lodged potshots against their rivals.

"Did you see the display of foolishness?" she asked. "That's what that money buys you, so I'm not going to be doing attack ads and all this other nonsense that's going on. I don't do that."

Maharg said she running a "truly grassroots" campaign.

"I don't need $10,000 so I can stand there and pontificate about how much money I got because every email I get [from the other primary candidates] is like, 'I raised a million dollars.' Well, good for you," she said. "How does that help New Mexico? I'm truly here in the interest of people, not in the interest of raising a million dollars."

Maharg continues to call herself the "Seabiscuit" of the Republican gubernatorial primary, referring to the small racehorse that upset the 1937 Triple Crown winner, War Admiral, in 1938.

"Slow out of the gate, but I'm going to win in the end," she said.

'Still in this fight'

Jay Block, a Sandoval County commissioner who was the top vote-getter in the Republican pre-primary nominating convention, is heading into the primary with a lackluster $20,000 cash on hand.

Like Maharg, Block is optimistic.

"We didn't spend a lot of money in the convention, and we won the convention, while other campaigns poured in tens of thousands of dollars in mailers and other resources," he said, saying his, too, is a grassroots campaign.

"The message we're speaking around the state is resonating, and we certainly don't believe Mr. Ronchetti's polls that are done by his consultant Jay McCleskey's wife. If those polls were correct, he would have won the convention handily."

Block, who raised nearly $119,000 in campaign contributions since October, reported just over $128,000 in expenditures. The biggest portion $80,476 went to McShane LLC, a media strategy and political consulting firm in Las Vegas, Nev.

"They have a lot of experience and a winning record with races from city council to U.S. Senate," he said.

Block also reported a $5,000 payment for "legal defense" work, which was tied to a court challenge of his nominating petition signatures. The challenge was dismissed on technicalities.

Block said his fundraising efforts are ongoing.

"Today, we had a big donor give us a check for over $5,000," he said Friday. "We're fighting. Other campaigns are part of the swamp, and this is a grassroots one, and we're still in this fight."

'A lean operation'

Investment adviser Greg Zanetti, who has about $172,000 in cash on hand, reported $169,396 in contributions over the past six months.

Zanetti spent $237,000 since October, including about $157,000 on the services of three political consulting firms for digital marketing and other expenses.

"We're running a lean operation," said Ryan Lynch, who is serving as manager, spokesman and political director for Zanetti's campaign.

Zanetti loaned his campaign $185,135 at the start of the primary race.

"In a perfect world, we'll raise so much money that by the end, we've got that and then some in the bank and he's been elected governor and we can reimburse his loan," Lynch said. "But he's also committed to spending what it takes, so if that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen."

Lynch said "it's definitely a possibility" Zanetti will loan his campaign more money.

"We've got a five-way primary. Anytime you have a crowded field like that, it's more difficult to raise money and, well, our fundraising certainly reflects that," he said.

In addition to the loan, Zanetti reported $31,396 of in-kind contributions from himself for travel, advertising and rent. Lynch said he didn't know exactly how much was for fuel costs but imagines it's a "big chunk" of the total.

While Zanetti is happy with his fundraising efforts so far, Lynch said the campaign wishes it were better.

"It's one of those things that, no matter how well you do, it could always be better," he said.

"We're doing this sort of the old-fashioned way, handshake to handshake, and it's thus far proving to be effective," Lynch said. "There's more we have to do in terms of traditional marketing, TV and such. But, you know, we're happy with where we're at right now, and we're just going to keep our foot on the accelerator all the way through June 7th."

Follow Daniel J. Chacn on Twitter

@danieljchacon.

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New Mexico's GOP governor hopefuls spending big to connect with voters - Yahoo News

Assuming that the rule of law and intellectual integrity matters to a court with an originalist supermajority, the choice before the court is a clear one: It must weigh a modern libertarian preference for gun rights against the strong historical evidence allowing robust gun regulation, including may-issue permit schemes premised on specified threats like New York has had in place for a century. As the recent horrific events on the New York City subway underscore, guns have no place on public transportation or any other place where a large number of people gather. The Supreme Court would do well to act with some measure of judicial humility on this issue, respect history, not invent it, and reaffirm that the people, not unelected judges make the laws in our system.

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Guns, guns everywhere: Last weeks subway shooting was horrifying. If the Supreme Court creates a national right to carry, the future will be worse. -...

At the beginning of his short book Why Not Socialism?, G.A. Cohen asks the reader to think about a group of friends going on a camping trip together. He doesnt describe anything out of the ordinary. The friends find a site and set up a tent. Some of them fish, some of them cook, they all go on hikes, and so on.

What Cohen wants the reader to notice is that the way this trip is run looks a lot like how socialists think society should be run. The pots and pans and fishing poles and soccer balls, for example, are treated as collective property even if they belong to individual campers. When the fish are caught and cooked, everyone gets to partake equally of the result of the collective effort, free of charge. Cohens hypothetical campers act this way not because of anything especially noble about them, but because this is how any group of friends would act on a camping trip.

To make the point more sharply, he invites us to imagine a far less normal camping trip one thats run according to the principles of a capitalist market economy. One of the campers (Sylvia) discovers an apple tree. When she comes back to tell the others, theyre excited that theyll all be able to enjoy apple sauces, apple pie, and apple strudel. Certainly they can, Sylvia confirms provided, of course . . . that you reduce my labor burden, and/or provide me with more room in the tent, and/or with more bacon at breakfast.

Another camper, Harry, is very good at fishing, and so in exchange for his services he demands that he be allowed to dine exclusively on perch instead of the mixture of perch and catfish everyone else is eating. Another, Morgan, lays claim to a pond with especially good fish because he claims that his grandfather dug and stocked it with those fish on another camping trip decades ago.

No normal person, Cohen notes, would tolerate such behavior. They would insist on what he calls a socialist way of life. Why, then, shouldnt we want to organize an entire economy around the same principles?

Many defenders of capitalism would insist that, however obnoxious or unacceptable it would be to treat your friends this way, people still have a right to assert private property claims including claims to private property in the means of production and that it would be unacceptably authoritarian for a future socialist society to abridge such rights. Cohen doesnt spend any time in Why Not Socialism? on this defense, perhaps because he addresses it at length in two of his other books, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality and History, Labour, and Freedom.

Instead, he devotes the later chapters of Why Not Socialism? to objections that even some progressives might have about whether socialist principles can scale up from a camping trip to an entire economy. Is whats possible among a small group of friends really possible for a whole society? What about economic calculation problems? What about human nature?

Cohen takes these challenges seriously, but cautions against premature defeatism. He admits that its possible that the closest well get to the fully marketless economic planning modeled by the camping trip on a society-wide scale is some sort of market socialism although he thinks its premature to rule out the possibility of going further than that.

Either way, Cohens view is that the ideal is one worth striving for. Even if we dont get all the way there, a society that more closely approximates the way of life found on the camping trip would be better than one further from it.

Why Not Socialism? was published in 2009, the year Cohen died. Five years later, libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan came out with a critique entitled Why Not Capitalism?

In it Brennan argues that instead of looking at the flaws of actually existing socialism and those of actually existing capitalism, Cohen was weighing a socialist ideal against the warts-and-all version of capitalism. Such a lopsided comparison, he thinks, proves nothing.

Brennan illustrates the point by discussing the animated Disney show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (not to be confused with the older variety show The Mickey Mouse Club). In a parody of Cohens camping trip chapter, Brennan describes the show as it actually is everyone seems to be friends with everyone else and there doesnt seem to be any poverty or serious social distress, but it looks like a regular market economy. Minnie Mouse owns a factory and store for hair bows called the Bowtique, Clarabelle Cow is a reasonably successful entrepreneur (she owns both a sundries store called the Moo Mart and a Moo Muffin factory), and Donald Duck and Willie the Giant both own their own farms.

Brennan then asks the reader to imagine a hypothetical version of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Village where some of the villagers started doing what Stalinist regimes did in the name of socialism. Donald forcibly collectivizes all farmland like Stalin did in 1929, Clarabelle Cow starts a secret police force, and so on. Obviously, that would be horrible!

If you dont think this hypothetical proves anything about capitalism and socialism, Brennan writes, you shouldnt think Cohens camping trip argument does either. In both cases, the problem is that like isnt being compared to like. And Brennan further argues that, even as an ideal, capitalism is better than socialism because in a laissez-faire capitalist world, anyone who wanted to secede and form a commune with their own preferred rules could do so.

There are three problems with Brennans argument. First, he is not comparing like to like in his attempt to satirize Cohen. After all, Cohen isnt describing some idealized fantasy of a camping trip; hes describing the kind of camping trip that untold numbers of people go on every year. They all work the way Cohen describes. The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Village is a trippy sci-fi fantasy of animals interacting in a half-imagined society, one where its unclear whether a state exists or what sorts of labor laws or regulations it potentially enforces. To compare like to like, Brennan would have had to find a mundane experience that many readers have had, or at least are very familiar with, where a capitalist way of life would be obviously preferable.

Second, Cohen isnt contrasting the small-scale implementation of socialist ideals with the worst things that have been done in the name of capitalism. Sylvias insistence on her property rights stops the other campers from getting apple strudel she isnt denying any of them life-saving medications because they cant afford to pay. No one hires other campers to stack firewood for them and then hires Pinkertons to beat or kill the firewood stackers when they go on strike. Cohen doesnt come up with a camping trip version of the British East India company or the enclosures that drove peasants off their land and made them desperate enough to take jobs in early factories or Adolf Hitlers declaration of emergency powers to protect Germany from the threat of left-wing revolution.

Instead, all of Cohens examples are examples of people asserting exactly the kinds of economic rights that defenders of capitalism are eager to endorse the kind that everyone would have in Brennans libertarian ideal of capitalism! Morgans grandfather passed on his property to his descendants, Sylvia is asserting her property rights in the means of apple strudel production as the initial discoverer of a piece of unowned property, and the other two are simply trying to bargain for the best deal they can get in a free market.

If Brennan wanted to seriously engage with Cohens argument, hed have to explain why, if its not okay to act this way on a camping trip, it wouldnt even be desirable to try to figure out a different way to organize a society.

Cohen thinks that whats wrong with introducing a capitalist way of life into a camping trip and with it serving as the guiding principle for an economy is that capitalism fails to live up to an ideal that its defenders often tout: equality of opportunity. In each case, some people are doing worse than others due to factors outside their control not having seen the apple tree first, not having a grandfather who bequeathed the particularly good fishing pond, or just not being lucky enough to have been born with the same skills as their friends.

Similarly, Cohen thinks, no one deserves a worse life just because they didnt grow up in a rich family or they werent born with the skills that allow some to climb up the social ladder. He contrasts bourgeois equality of opportunity, meaning that there are no formal impediments to anyone succeeding (for example, racial discrimination) and even left-liberal equality of opportunity, which attempts to go beyond bourgeois equality of opportunity with programs like Head Start that compensate for certain social disadvantages, with socialist equality of opportunity the principle that no one should have a worse life due to factors outside of their control.

If different people, for example, want to make different decisions about how many hours to work and how much leisure to enjoy, its not unjust to reward more industrious choices with greater consumption. But no one should have a worse life because of who their parents were or how well they do on tests. Cohen supplements this with a socialist principle of community: if you recognize other people as part of your community, youll try to make sure they dont suffer too much even from bad choices they make of their own free will.

Id argue Cohens list of principles is somewhat incomplete. Historically, socialists have, for very good reasons, emphasized equality of power (although, to be fair, Cohen writes eloquently elsewhere about the unfreedom that workers suffer under capitalism).

I also wish hed read about other models of what socialism could look like. As an achievable halfway house between capitalism and completely marketless, moneyless camping-trip-style socialism, Cohen discusses John Roemers scheme under which every citizen would be awarded equal stock ownership, but Cohen doesnt seem to be aware of, for example, the slightly more radical conception of market socialism advanced by David Schweickart. I wish he had, because in implementing democratic control at the workplace, Schweickarts conception comes closer to Cohens ideal while still seeming realistic in the short term.

Despite these minor defects, Why Not Socialism? is an excellent introduction to socialist ideals. The form of presentation is intuitive and even deceptively simple, while the underlying arguments are careful and sophisticated. You can finish it in an hour, and Cohens points will linger in your head for years. Read it.

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GA Cohen Showed Why We Should All Be Socialists - Jacobin magazine

Is Brave New World or 1984 more relevant?

Surprisingly many conversations Ive had in the past half a year half a year, not 1.5 months! have to do with the Orwell vs. Huxley dichotomy.

Thinking about this dichotomy. And taking into account casual libertarian pro-individual mindset begins to make more and more sense every day.

The side that would win has to be the side that makes it more cost-effective to a) keep the people working, and b) keep the people from comparing.

Seriously, thats it. Whether its UBI or open dictatorship is merely a question of economy-based competition of various mindsets and ideologies. And the stronger one is very likely to win.

In other words, if you have preferences, instead of arguing from moral and persuasion grounds, just watch closely and help your preferred side show its strength.

My side is the one that supports individuals in the live and live fashion, for at least as long as their freedom does not infringe on others freedoms.

I hope my side will emerge victorious. Myself, I am doing and will do what I can. But Im also well aware my side might lose, in which case, assuming humankind and my bloodline continues, my kids and all of us left would have to learn to live under a different paradigm.

In conclusion, that this has happened many times before. And the thought that today is not quite exceptional gives me hope and optimism. Lastly, sharing just in case this thought may boost your morale too.

What is the difference between Brave New World and 1984?

The main difference between Brave New World and 1984 isthe way the citizens are controlled, furthermore, in 1984 they are controlled by the government through fear, while in Brave New World the government controls them with pleasure.

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Is Brave New World or 1984 more relevant? - Rebellion Research

Scratch a libertarian and you will find a prude. It's a truth beautifully illustrated in the season finale of "Minx," HBO's breezy-yet-sharp comedy about a fictional '70s-era magazine that combines Ms.-stylefeminist editorial with dicks-out Blueboy-esque nude male centerfolds. The show's two "shock jock" characters, Willy (Eric Edelstein) and Franco (Samm Levine), use their airtime titillating drive-time listeners with stories about how much they love sex and partying. But Willy's wife Wanda (Allison Tolman) gets her hands on a copy of "Minx" and decides to stand up for her own right to enjoy her life, instead wasting her time giving her husband joyless hand jobs between serving him meals. Suddenly the libertarians aren't so pro-liberty anymore.

The politics of equality are useless, unless joined with a politics of pleasure.

Instead, the shock jocks interview Bridget Westbury (Amy Landecker), a Phyllis Schlafly-esque city councilwoman to announce a new partnership combining "men's rights" with this religious right-tinged war on pornography. With the studio's prominent nude painting of woman looming over the scene, the councilwoman rants about how she plans to clean up San Fernando Valley, and the two men eagerly join in with the anti-porn sentiment they discovered the second they found out that women have sexual fantasies, too. The whole scene is very reminiscient ofDonald Trump smirking next to a smug Amy Coney Barrett, the "libertine" and the Bible-thumper joining forces to crush the hope of women's liberation.

RELATED:Stop feeding Joe Rogan's trolls: Progressives must reclaim the politics of pleasure

It's a hilarious satire of the sort of men who vote Trump and listen to Joe Rogan, and like to imagine they're "pro-freedom," despite having political views that stifle the much more real freedom struggles of women and LGBTQ people.

Amy Landecker in "Minx" (Photograph by Katrina Marcinowski / HBO Max)But this bit also serves a larger, more pointed message aimed directly at the American left, which needs to hear it more than ever: The politics of equality are useless, unless joined with a politics of pleasure. "Give me bread, but give me roses, too" was a feminist slogan in the early 20th century, but it resonates across the 1970s and today for a reason. People aren't moved by dry political treatises about justice. What moves people is imagining what a better life would be like. That means talking about pleasure.

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And on "Minx," that means talking about dicks. "Minx" is primarily the story of the unsubtly named Joyce Prigger (Opehlia Lovibond), a feminist Vassar grad who reluctantly agrees to helm a male nudie magazine for porn publisher Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson). Joyce wants to publish a rather strident feminist magazine originally called "Matriarchy Awakens" but finds, understandably, no one in "respectable" publishing is willing to bet on such an obvious money-loser. But Doug is willing to back her with his company Bottom Dollar. He believes women want to see pictures of sexy naked men and he hopes padding the porn with more high-minded writing will make it an easier sell on the newsstand. Joyce hates the idea of porn and finds the whole subject of sexual pleasure uncomfortable. Still, she goes along, because otherwise, she's never selling her magazine.

Sexy photos are more than just the sugar that helps the feminist medicine go down.

What Joyce soon finds out, with the help of her sister (Lennon Parham) and Bottom Dollar employees Bambi Jessica Lowe) and Richie (Oscar Montoya), is that sexy photos are more than just the sugar that helps the feminist medicine go down. On the contrary, pleasure is central to the feminist project. One reason that sexism chafes so hard is that it deprives women of their right to pursue happiness. But if women don't even know what happiness could look like, it's hard to convince them to fight against the forces that keep them from having it.

Ophelia Lovibond, Lennon Parham, Jessica Lowe, Oscar Montoya and Idara Victor in "Minx" (Photograph by Katrina Marcinowski / HBO Max)

As I've written about before, in recent years, progressives seem to have forgotten about the importance of pleasure. Much of the discourse on the left has taken on a hectoring tone, focused on pressuring people to give up stuff they enjoy, rather than imagining all the new joys that await us if we can liberate ourselves. The pandemic bears much of the blame, of course. The right wing resistance to emergency measures like social distancing and mask-wearing caused far too many on the left to start seeing these misery-inducing behaviors as moral signifiers instead of temporary inconveniences. Truth told, however, the turn to the grim on the left had started well before the pandemic, fueled by the way that social media rewards self-righteous posturing and the politics of showy self-sacrifice over the politics of pleasure.

RELATED:Why "Bridgerton" probably won't make Benedict queer (but should)

It's been especially troubling for me, as I came up as a late third wave feminist and was part of the early aughts explosion of feminist blogging. We early feminist bloggers married the transgressive politics of pleasure to our demands for equality. We didn't just say rape was bad. We had pro-pleasure actions like Slutwalk. We argued that the ever-present threat of rape constrains women from enjoying their lives, by preventing us from doing everything from taking early morning jogs to having late night sexual adventures. We didn't just talk about reproductive rights in terms of coat hangers and young mothers damned to poverty. We talked about how contraception and abortion allowed women to having fun dating and to experiment sexually, instead of being tied down to the first guy you ever slept with.

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"Minx" is set in the '70s, but very clearly speaking to the social dynamics of our time. The joyless progressivism one finds on Twitter is reimagined on the show as a New York City dinner party. Joyce's pretentious Manhattanite friends sneer at her little porn magazine and trot out ignorant assumptions about how Bottom Dollar employees must be a bunch of lost souls and losers. That's probably not how people talked at dinner parties then, but is very reminscient of lefty social media now, with its focus on over-the-top trauma talk and tendency to treat fun as an embarrassing waste of time. Joyce ends up sneaking out to have a drink and make out with a cute guy at a bar. In a sign of how much she's grown, she refuses to apologize for wanting to have a good time. She doesn't even try to justify it by calling it "self-care."

Ophelia Lovibond and Taylor Zakhar Perez in "Minx" (Photograph by Katrina Marcinowski / HBO Max)

As "Minx" cleverly demonstrates, this kind of pleasure-centered feminism has real power. If nothing else, it exposes how the supposed "libertarian" right is no such thing. Evensupposed hedonists like Trump are happy to pass all sorts of draconianrestrictions on sexual freedoms and even free speech, just to keep women and LGBTQ people from enjoying the pleasures that come from equality.

As "Minx" cleverly demonstrates, this kind of pleasure-centered feminism has real power.

Unfortunately, all the grimness on the left these days has served Trump and his acolytes well, allowing them to portray themselves as the "fun" ones opposed to "cancel culture." This, even though Republicans are trying to cancel your sex life, your ability to read what you want, and now even Oreos and Disneyland. The right's is a mean and narrow view of pleasure, mostly about cheap insults and lame trolling. Even figures like Joe Rogan only appeal as some counterpoint to the supposed scolds of the left, but don't really have much on offer in terms of actual fun, especially for anyone who isn't a cis straight guy.

"Minx," in keeping with its pro-pleasure ideas, is a fun show, with lots of laughs and plenty of genuinely sexy stuff. (Though the comically fake penises are a rare misfire.) Freedom is a great idea in the abstract, but to make it worth fighting for, you have to remind people what it looks like in practice. On "Minx," that's lots and lots of dicks. But it can be anything you want, as long as you give yourself permission to enjoy it.

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"Minx" is a breezy good time reminding the left to reclaim the lost politics of pleasure - Salon