Peter Bart is worried about porn. “The drop in porn rentals and sales is worrisome on several fronts,” he writes in Variety.” Till now, porn has been a recession-proof business. Further, with the country already in a dispirited mood, the fact that porn has gone limp may indicate a true plunge in consumer confidence.”

Bart devotes about 400 words to the adult film industry’s woes, then awkwardly segues into a discussion of Judd Apatow’s “crusade to defy the code by making the full-frontal phallus an important co-star of all his films.” The basic thrust of the piece: fetishing erections is so five minutes ago. The limp penis––and, significantly, the mocking laughter it apparently induces in girls––is the symbol of our recession-depressed times.

Of course, this story was published before Forgetting Sarah Marshall failed to gross $20 million over the weekend, so I’m sure Bart’s already working on an addendum. But if comic degradation of male sexual organs isn’t the new porn, then what is?!? Oh right––this is Peter Bart we’re talking about. I’m sure the to-do over film critics getting fired is enough to turn him on.

In all seriousness, it’s interesting to look at Bart’s column alongside Molly Haskell’s recent observation that Apatowism is a reflection of the larger culture’s “retreat” into male adolescence. Haskell says war is turning the culture into pubescent boys (who, as far as I remember, tend to have erections in no short supply); Bart says the recession is turning us all into emasculating shrews who want nothing more than to laugh at a limp dick. Either way, it’s depressing, right? No wonder nobody’s buying porn. It’s The Age of Unsexiness.