The Internet is a wet, wild ride. That has been established. Anyone attempting to read their e-mail knows by now the skanky side of life has a way of sneaking into your inbox no matter how many times you adjust your shields.

Spam is like influenza. It is constantly evolving into new forms capable of invading your privacy. Porno spam is at the top of the list of highly evolved invaders — it’s less like influenza and more like the Borg. Resistance is futile. If you can’t beat them, you may as well join them, right?

It has gotten to the point where we accept the fact that when we open our e-mail, we will spend valuable time deleting spam. It is as natural as breathing.

The only thing more impressive than the ability of spammers to find new ways to bombard us with their foul images, is the creativity people are capable of demonstrating when it comes to new ways to entice and titillate us with sexual images.

A close second is the ability of Pizza Hut to come up with new ways to get more stuff on a pizza. I thought the cheese in the crust thing was impressive, then they opened a whole new world with this extra pizza underneath the pizza. What’s next, TWO pizzas under the pizza? The mind reels at the possibilities for exponential growth. In a thousand years, you will need a basic understanding of fifth dimensional physics just to work at a Pizza Hut.

Back to porn.

Have you seen Nakednews.com? I heard about this one through the grapevine and thought it would good for a laugh. At first glance, this site seems like every other soft-core porn gag site going, but by the time you watch it 17 or 18 times, it starts to dawn on you that Nakednews.com is at least as legitimate as FoxNews.

Nakednews.com is very basic, nothing sick or twisted here, just naked women reading the news of the day: current events, sports, weather, etc. The only other difference is the women are obviously not professional journalists.

Should this stop us from getting our news from Nakednews.com? While I certainly depend on a more legitimate news source to find out what is going on in the world, I certainly prefer getting my news from the same place I get my porn rather than watching “Hannity & Colmes,” “The O’Reilly Factor” or “The Edge with Paula Zahn.”

The difference is fundamental. There may not be much that is legitimate about Nakednews.com, but then there isn’t much that is legitimate on FoxNews either. Nakednews.com is surprisingly refreshing in a postmodern kind of way. They don’t pretend to be legitimate. They dispense with all pretense of legitimacy by giving people what they want: naked women.

Now, you can almost hear the detractors out there, “is this some kind of joke? Naked women reading the news is completely ridiculous.”

Objectification issues aside, I find Nakednews.com less offensive than watching the talking heads on NBC, CBS or ABC pretend to be real journalists. It is common knowledge that news anchors read from teleprompters. They aren’t gathering the news any more than Nakednews.com anchor Victoria Sinclair.

The networks decided long ago to start giving people what they want to get them to watch the news. The model used to be Walter Kronkite, the fatherly dependable old-school journalist with a worldweary face, a paternal voice and an air of unwavering competence. Those were the glory days.

After he left us, the model moved toward more attractive anchors that viewers would enjoy staring at. Local news broadcasts were ahead of the curve on this one. The news can be harsh at times, but you can always count on your local action news team to provide you with the illusion that that no matter what horrors are occurring in the world, everything will be OK because hey, they’re shiny, happy people, why not me?

Tabloid news shows blew the lid off of everything. It’s like they took a look at where all of these changes were heading and decided to get there first. Spooky soundtracks, dramatic re-creations of crimes and REALLY attractive hosts combined to change the news from information to entertainment.

Professionals scoffed, but the audiences loved that stuff. Thank god CNN was always there to let idealists think someone was still doing journalism. That couldn’t last. Cable means one thing if nothing else: there are more channels, more hours and more minds to fill with pabulum than ever before.

Twenty years ago, no matter where you went, you had the big three and PBS and that was that. Now we have hundred of channels to fill and standards have changed if not actually dropped out of site altogether. FoxNews is the epitome of the new format. All hours of the day must be filled with bright lights, clever logos, factoids and clever banter. It’s the news channel of the damned, frankly.

FoxNews tries to pass off salacious, gratuitous sensationalism as “the news” 24 hours a day. If a guy gets beaten by cops in Philadelphia, FoxNews quickly assembles a panel of disturbingly unqualified people to have a flamboyant argument while we watch the videotaped beating on a continuous loop.

I look at Nakednews.com with a certain respect. These pioneers have seen where all these trends will eventually culminate and they have stripped away every remaining shred of decency and pretension along with every stitch of clothing. Why not? I give NBC five years before they’re doing it, too.