Over the summer, Calvin Klein erected an orgy-themed billboard on Houston Street that drew some extra attention thanks to the Daily News reporting on the faux-controversy. Months later, the jeans and underwear company has put up a new ad imbued with an extra dose of sex to ensure the same result. The newspaper hit Houston Street in search of quotes and found even milder outrage over the Eva Mendes lingerie ad: a Queens resident calling it “borderline pornography.”

The Daily News also went so far as crediting the small controversy they created this summer with getting those topless teens taken down. It’s not as though Calvin Klein would ever cycle out their most provocative ads so as not to desensitize PR-generating newspaper reporters from promoting the next one. No, never!

Photo by Elisha Cook Jr.

After sparking a tiny bit of outrage in New York, Calvin Klein’s latest sexed up billboard on Houston Street is inspiring out of town attacks. In an article titled, “Sexy ads limit my freedoms,” Virginia-based conservative columnist Erika Lassen blames the jeans company for mind control because she can’t stop thinking about the topless models making out. The Brigham Young graduate writes:

An interesting thing happens when pornography is viewed. Like a leech, it clings to the brain. The image pops up in our minds at rather random, unexpected times. Even if we don’t want to ever see the image again, it sneaks up on you. I do not want the Calvin Klein image in my mind and when I saw it on the front page of Fox I immediately wished I had not, but I did see it. And now I will need to force the image out whenever it springs on me.

Lassen’s conclusion is that “Calvin Klein’s freedom of speech has effectively infringed upon my freedoms,” which isn’t true and is even more illogical when you consider that it was her beloved Fox News that was responsible for her seeing the provocative billboard more than 300 miles away.

The Daily News has found a modicum of outrage over a new attention-whoring ad on Houston Street, the latest in a string of predictably provocative Calvin Klein billboards. One neighborhood resident makes a keen observation that the image of three shirtless models making out, with a fourth sleeping on the floor, is “borderline pornographic.” A twenty-something passerby says it’s straight up “inappropriate” and the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group that’s uncomfortable with same-sex greeting cards, is naturally repulsed.

Not surprisingly for a company that has featured 15-year-old Brooke Shields telling the world she has no underwear on, amidst decades worth of scandalous ads, Calvin Klein Jeans was trying “to create a very sexy campaign that speaks to our targeted demographic.” When the ad campaign, shot by photographer Steven Meisel, came out in January, the company claimed the video was too sexy, releasing a censored version for American television, but you can decide for yourself below.

Photo by Copyranter