eDisharmony

An online dating service for unfaithful spouses leaves a lot to be desired.

Dear Noel Biderman:

Back during my days in parochial school, "adultery" was more of a concept than an actual word. The Seventh Commandment -- "Thou shalt not commit adultery" -- was interpreted loosely to include everything from "impure thoughts," that all-purpose adolescent sacramental alibi, all the way up to . . . well, usually, I never made it all the way up to whatever the top end was. I was long out of grammar school before I found out what "adultery" actually was, and I learned that from Lana Turner and John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice. I learned that it could lead eventually to murder -- and to listless remakes starring Jack Nicholson. All of which is a long way around to my telling you, the CEO of the Ashley Madison Agency, that your new online venture being pitched locally is something we really don't need. First of all, it's too antiseptic. Married people connecting with other married people through a website? Whatever happened to dark cocktail lounges and dimly lit motels on side streets run by all-knowing, but conveniently amnesiac, desk clerks named Irv? Where's the luridness? There's no noir in the virtual boudoir. And your business plan is pretty awful. In the first place, sports radio won't even take your ads, even though an awful lot of their revenues come from the male-enhancement industrial complex, and surely there's some synergistic possibilities there, as the marketing folks would say. And your slogan? "Life is short, have an affair." I mean, really now. If experience and Lana Turner teach us anything, it's that you've got the two phrases in the wrong order.