The hypocrisy of West Roxbury's morals squad

There are several odd things about Roslindale resident Robert Joyce's campaign to rid West Roxbury of the Boston Phoenix.

For starters, there's the fact that he lives and works near Roslindale Square, where the Phoenix adult section is just as exploitive of women as it is in West Roxbury, and yet he's crusading to protect West Roxbury. NOTE TO BOB JOYCE: I stopped by the Roslindale branch of the BPL yesterday and they have copies of the Phoenix available. And they're right by the front door, where any impressionable young girl could grab one, take a look at the ads and instantly decide to become a prostitute!

But why just the Phoenix? Does Bob Joyce realize what you can see - at no additional charge - on Comcast On Demand, which is available in West Roxbury? And surely, the Amazing store just over the town line in Dedham has far more hard-core exploitation going on than ads in the back of the Phoenix. Where's the public profession of outrage?

Heck, the West Roxbury public library has a copy of the Kama Sutra (updated by Deepak Chopra, no less) right there on the shelves where any young woman could see it and fall prey to licentiousness (I checked; it's on the same shelf as a guide to sex for teenagers and, gasp, a book that shows an unwed teenage mother with a smile on her face instead of in agony as the flames of Eternal Damnation rise behind her).

Oh, and while the West Roxbury library had no copies of the Phoenix in the front lobby last Saturday, it did have oodles of copies of Stuff@Night, the cover of which consisted largely of a clearly exploited young woman wearing only a black negligee and a stole.

And what if I told you there was a free publication, filled with sexually exploitive ads of women selling their companionship, that was delivered to every single household in West Roxbury. Bob Joyce would be up in arms, no?

Strangely, no. Over at the Transcript, Wayne Braverman describes what happened when a reporter asked Joyce what he was going to do about this outrage, otherwise known as the Escort section of the Verizon Yellow Pages for Boston (pages 451-462 of the 2007 version):

... He didn't really seem to want to talk about it. He told the reporter that she would have to have a separate meeting to discuss it because it was too "complex" to discuss it there. He also told her the ads in the phone book were not like those in the Phoenix. ...

So the question really should be not whether Bob Joyce is trying to protect the fair sex, but why he hates the Phoenix so much. Setting himself up for another run for public office?