Viagra Post -- Now With No Puns!

Bruce Reed, writing on plummeting sales for Viagra, says:

The Times says Viagra has lost its stigma "because of advertising featuring athletes like the baseball player Rafael Palmeiro." On the other hand, perhaps not everyone is looking for a drug that will make them lie to Congress and test positive for steroids.

But the larger point of Berenson's story is his fascinating conclusion: Sales are flat not because men have lost faith in impotence drugs, but because they've decided impotence isn't the end of the world. Urologists tell the Times that many older men face two problems the drug can't cure: No one particularly wants to have sex with them, and they feel like they've outgrown it anyway. Many appear to have found the same consolation as Jake in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: more time to fish.

Interesting stuff, and probably pretty damn healthy. O)f course, being something of a genius, Reed then manages to smoothly connect this to congressional Republican's new round of tax cuts. Good stuff.