U.K. to impose restrictions on Internet pornography

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You'll excuse the crassness of the tweet I wrote yesterday, posted below. But how is one to respond to Prime Minister Cameron's announcement that the British government intends to impose restrictions on Internet pornography?

Look, I'm not defending (all) Internet porn, and I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with porn. But the point should be to crack down on illegal porn -- depicting children, criminal violence, etc. -- not to demand that there be filters that customers must turn off if they want to see any adult content. First, this isn't going to stop anything that ought to be stopped. And second, it's about freedom, and the right of people to consume information/entertainment as they please.

Even if you argue that the purpose here is to go after criminal activity, it's clearly the thin end of a dangerous wedge that could see the government and its corporate partners intrude ever deeper into people's private lives -- a slippery slope, if you will.

Consider the problems: Who decides what is and is not appropriate content, or what in this case will only be able to be accessed by turning off the filter (thereby announcing one's intent to anyone paying attention)? It's one thing to try to block obviously horrific content. But that's just at the extreme. The massive gray area is another matter entirely. Furthermore, who decides what "horrific" search terms to blacklist, as Cameron put it? And what are those search terms? Again, there may be a number of obvious candidates, but there's a massive gray area otherwise.

The government, obviously. But do you really want the government telling you what you can and can't see on the Internet, or on television, or wherever? And do you really want the government telling you what search terms you can't use? This is the sort of thing authoritarian states do to restrict access to information. Coming from a supposed liberal democracy like the United Kingdom, it's just as appalling. Those who have fought for freedom and won should know better than to turn the clocks back.

Cameron is concerned that pornography is "corroding childhood." Look, I don't want my children seeing it either, in any form, but censorship is hardly the answer. Criminal activity should obviously be dealt with under the law. But free people should be able to be free, genuinely free, without the government legislating its own narrow idea of morality. Because there's no telling where it might stop.

Looking forward to XXX porn video featuring character named "David Cameron" into spanking and pegging. Called "Cum Through the Tory Hole."
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) July 23, 2013

Michele Bachmann signs anti-gay, anti-porn pledge

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Michele Bachmann has risen to the #2 in the Republican presidential field, behind Mitt Romney. Can she actually win the nomination? Yes, particularly if it comes down to a one-on-one against Romney and she manages to secure both Tea Party and "social conservative support" from the grassroots base.

But the question is how she gets there.

While she's certainly crazy, in terms of advocating extremist positions on a wide variety of issues and advancing ridiculous conspiracy theories, the only way she can defeat Romney and whoever else might challenge seriously for the nomination (e.g., Rick Perry, who would eat into her support from social conservatives) is to appear to be not crazy, or at least much less crazy than she really is. This is why she's recently been in walk-back mode, distancing herself from her own views and assertions in order to present herself as a viable presidential possibility, that is, as sane.

But she can only walk back so much. She's still a Tea Party darling and, lest we forget, a rampaging social conservative, and while she needs to appear to be less crazy she also needs to continues to stress her right-wing bona fides in order not to lose her core support, particularly if someone like Perry gets in the race. And, of course, she is what she is. It's as simple as that. She can't run away from herself altogether.

And stress her bona fides she did:

Michele Bachmann became the first presidential candidate to sign a pledge, vowing to support a constitutional amendment that defines marriage between a man and a woman, and which calls for a ban on all pornography.

"The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family," sponsored by the Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative organization, equates same-sex marriage with bigamy and polygamy and calls on candidates to promise to be faithful to their spouses.

Etc., etc. In other words, right-wing evangelical theocracy, just the sort of thing you'd expect from her, along with her anti-government Tea Party views. There is undeniable inconsistency here, of course. How is it possible to combine theocracy with the sort of libertarianism that prevails among Teabaggers? Well, it doesn't matter, and it needn't make all any sense, not as she aggressively courts multiple Republican constituencies. She can talk about small government and the Tenth Amendment while also pushing for an activist, bigoted government regulating morality, a government that leaves our money alone while closely monitoring what we do in our bedrooms or in front of our computers or televisions. Maybe that makes some sort of distorted sense way out on the right. It probably does. Republicans are full of inconsistencies. Bachmann is hardly alone there.

But how would this sort of thing play out in a general election. Not well. While Bachmann may win much of the extremist GOP base, there's no way independents or even many establishment-minded Republicans would ever support her, and this ridiculous pledge just makes matters worse for her in that regard. Which is why she'll need to keep walking back and walking back so much of what she has stood for in the past. Who knows, she might even have to walk this back in the not-so-distant future. Anti-gay bigotry plays well in the GOP, after all, but are Americans really prepared to give up their porn?

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Oh, by the way, the pledge also states that black children were better off under slavery than they are now:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

This is appallingly ignorant even by conservative standards.

But Bachmann signed the pledge, so she must believe it. One hopes that the media question her about it and refuse to let her brush it aside.

Bigotry will destroy Glenn Beck before porn or paranoia

By Nicholas Wilbur

On a brisk Connecticut morning in November, Glenn Beck mastered the art of multitasking by simultaneously praying to God, reading from Psalms, and thinking (a difficult enough task unto itself) about all of the conspiracies his left-leaning critics might create in order to ruin his reputation, get him fired, and destroy the wonderful "fusion of entertainment and enlightenment" he provides to the American masses on television and radio every week.

Thinking aloud during a Nov. 12, 2010 radio program, the 46-year-old talk-show mogul explained that he is not into drinking or drugs (having overcome both addictions in his 30s thanks, in part, to Mormonism). Then he said this:

I—uhh—you know—I'm not—I'm not into ch—I'm not even into—I was going to say I'm not into child pornography. I'm not only not into child pornography, I'm not into pornography. I'm not into any of it.

If his critics hadn't previously thought to capitalize on Beck's real or imagined struggle with pornography, they did after he stuttered his way through this awkward on-air denial. Why diffuse arguments that aren't being argued? Why defend allegations that aren't being alleged? Why offer unsolicited defenses against invisible attackers?

Some might say he was covering his tracks and preparing his faithful, if ever-dwindling audience for an onslaught. Others might say Beck is a porn addict.

I say Beck is finally starting to believe all the fearmongering, the paranoid prattle and the anti-government right-wing conspiracies he spews daily on TV and radio.

As unfortunate as it may be for those who hoped and prayed that Beck had a kiddie porn dungeon in his multi-million-dollar mansion, it turns out that the Beck backlash has nothing to do with his allegedly non-existent porn addiction. His fall from radical right-wing grace will not come from personal problems but from the anti-Semitism, racism, and general bigotry from his own mouth.

From news reports last week:

Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ), a charity that campaigns for social change, delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News Thursday demanding that talk show host Glenn Beck get the pink slip.

The petition began in November, according to PoliticsDaily.com, after Beck hosted a three-segment program on philanthropist George Soros, whom Beck accused of ushering fellow Jews into the gas chambers as a 13-year-old boy and stealing their land.

Beck also made headlines last week when New York's WOR (710 AM), "one of the city's two biggest talk radio stations" announced it was dropping Beck's program due to poor ratings.

And these are only the most recent efforts to undue Beck's chokehold on sanity.

The website StopBeck.com began in July 2009 as a non-profit effort to "(hold) Beck accountable for preying on racial anxieties, employing vitriolic rhetoric, propagating sexism and disseminating willful distortions."

The goal – to persuade sponsors to stop advertising on Beck's programs – has paid off. According to The New York Times, Beck has lost about 300 sponsors since StopBeck began:

His show now averages two million viewers, down from a high of 2.8 million in 2009, according to the Nielsen Ratings. And as of Sept. 21, 296 advertisers have asked that their commercials not be shown on Beck's show (up from 26 in August 2009).

The Nielsen ratings for 2010 put Beck at 2,248,000 average viewers, but StopBeck has continued contacting sponsors directly and requesting that they discontinue their financial support of the vitriol Beck contributes to the national dialogue.

According to a Jan. 10, 2011, update, Beck's United Kingdom program has been running without ads for nearly 11 months because of these efforts.

Beck's conspiracy theory of how progressives are trying to ruin his reputation and "take him out" with a smear campaign on his character have proven mere products of his own paranoia. Devotees of the self-described "progressive hunter" should rest assured there is no such pornography conspiracy, although it is possible that one is in the works considering the prevalence of the subject in Beck's broadcasts.

This is the guy, after all, who coined the terms "common-sense porn," "conservative porn," and "Chris Christie porn" after frothing at the mouth over the New Jersey governor's rant against the education system and the prevalence of bad teachers.

This is the guy who acted out a potentially Oscar-winning orgasm on live radio after airing a clip on Sept. 4, 2008 of Sarah Palin, who was railing against the evil emperor of the Senate, Harry Reid:

Yes! Yes! Stop for a second. When she started to say this stuff, man, it was downright – it was conservative porn. This is as close as you get, yeah, thank you. Thank you! Oh, yeah. Now play the rest of that clip.

In a repeat performance on May 24, 2010, Beck once again came close to staining his Jesus jammies during an interview with Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, during which O'Reilly was offering some rather flattering feedback about Beck's occasionally accurate political hunches:

Keep talking, man. This is like porn to me... This is like Bill O'Reilly porn. Keep talking, Bill, keep talking.

This is the guy who titled the transcript of his Jan. 8, 2009 radio program, "Porn, yes... NYT no," and asked, "What's the difference between porn and The New York Times? I don't think there's any difference. Tell me, you read The New York Times; you read pornography. You feel dirty after doing both, don't you?"

Those who have experienced the wholly encompassing power of addiction know how easy it is to fall back into it. Beck is one such person, having struggled with and successfully overcome alcohol and drug addictions earlier in his career. So when Playboy magazine published an opinion column titled, "Why Glenn Beck is a Symptom of What is Wrong with America" in its November 2009 edition, it was not surprising that the rightly-guided Beck wouldn't even look at it – wouldn't even read the "hit piece" against him – for fear of the wandering eye and the successive gateway drug-like plunge into the depths of a (repeat?) pornography addiction.

He gave a quite vivid, even heartfelt description of how "deadly" porn addiction can be:

It's no longer like it's a magazine that comes, it's now the Internet and it's just a wormhole and you just start going down into this wormhole and you don't get out and before you know it, you know, the husband is downstairs at 2:00 in the morning spending, you know, a couple of hours online and then the whole relationship with the family just changes. And before you and it just gets worse and worse and worse. It's really dangerous stuff.

This is also the guy who described the TSA machines at airports as "porn scanners":

The enhanced patdown was created as an alternative option to the porn scanner. Remember a few weeks ago, none of us wanted to go through the porn scanner. So they decided, well you don't have to do that. We'll pat you down. You get the porn scanner or you get felt up.

This is the guy who mused during a March 8, 2010 program, "I don't know if I bought kiddie porn or what's going to happen now, but it was a great movie." He was talking about the Roman Polanski film, The Ghost Writer.

And this is the guy who, as recently as Jan. 13, 2011, couldn't help including porn stars in his letter to Americans after the Tucson shooting.

I challenge all Americans, left or right, regardless if you're a politician, pundit, painter, priest, parishioner, poet or porn star to... denounce violence...

All of this is to say that Beck doesn't have, never has had, and never will have any sort of obsession with or addiction to pornography.

To insinuate that he does is cheap, baseless, and dishonest – because everyone knows bigotry will destroy the Beck legacy long before pornography does.

(Cross-posted from Muddy Politics.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Christine O'Donnell

By Michael J.W. Stickings

TPM has the sordid details (read the whole post for even more craziness):

Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell has a robust evangelical outreach program, and she's appealed to these voters in her Republican primary bid in part with her old-fashioned views about sex.

O'Donnell has said, for example, that masturbation is wrong, and that looking at pornography is equivalent to cheating on your spouse. She outlined her views in a November 1998 article titled "The Case for Chastity" for Cultural Dissident.

Abstinence, apparently, isn't good enough. What is needed is the near-complete denial of human sexuality, and human nature, the repression, presumably enforced where possible by repressive theocracy, of every individual's sexual freedom and sexuality generally.

O'Donnell has a pretty face, to be sure, but it's also the face of Christian extremism. Her views aren't just "old-fashioned," they're dangerously ignorant.

I mean, seriously, what's wrong with taking your talents to South Beach now and then? And if it helps to watch some of whatever it is you happen to be into, as long as it's legal, so what?

I'd tell O'Donnell to go fuck herself, but obviously she never would. Right?

A party of easily manipulated cowards

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I mean the Democratic Party, of course, or at least the Democrats on Capitol Hill. Republicans can push them around by calling them soft on terrorism, but it goes even further than that, as we saw yesterday:

House Democrats had to scrap their only substantive bill of the week Thursday after Republicans won a procedural vote that substantively altered the legislation with an anti-porn clause.

Democrats had labeled their COMPETES Act -- a bill to increase investments in science, research and training programs -- as their latest jobs bill. It was the only non-suspension bill Democrats brought up all week.

But the Republican motion to recommit the bill -- a parliamentary tactic that gives the minority one final chance to amend legislation -- contained language prohibiting federal funds from going "to salaries to those officially disciplined for violations regarding the viewing, downloading, or exchanging of pornography, including child pornography, on a federal computer or while performing official government duties."

That provision scared dozens of Democrats into voting with Republicans to approve the motion to recommit. After it became clear the GOP motion was going to pass, dozens of additional Democrats changed their votes from "no" to "yes." In the end, 121 Democrats voted with Republicans -- only four fewer than the number of Democrats who voted with their party.

But because of additional changes contained in the motion, Democrats decided to pull the bill from consideration immediately following the passage of the motion to recommit.

This shows not just that, as Steve Benen noted, Republicans aren't at all "serious about lawmaking and public policy" but that Democrats are pretty much a bunch of cowards. Of course, no one wants federal funds going to people who have been "disciplined" for "viewing, downloading, or exchanging" child pornography (although pornography generally is broader and less easily defined, suggesting that application of the law could possibly be subject to abuse), but the obvious purpose of the Republican motion was not to keep federal funding from those people but to block the Democrats' legislation. And the Democrats, terrified that they would be labelled pro-porn (and pro-child porn) by Republicans this fall, caved.

I know what Democrats are like, and I've come to expect this sort of thing, but it amazes me that a party with a popular president in the White House and huge majorities in both houses of Congress is so fucking pathetic, not least at a time when they actually have a chance to do some good for the country. It's infuriating.

Stuff to Read (4/8/10): porn stars, condoms, oysters, and health care

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm fairly busy with other things this morning, but let me alert you to a few interesting articles over at Slate:

-- "That's a Wrap: The case for bringing condoms to adult films," by Kent Sepkowitz. I'm not sure the porn industry should be regulated like this, but I suppose it's important to humanize porn stars a bit, not merely to maintain them in our fantasies. And the reality is that people do learn a lot from porn and might benefit from seeing the "talent" wrapped up.

-- "Consider the Oyster: Why even strict vegans should feel comfortable eating oysters by the boatload," by Christopher Cox. Cox is a vegan. Personally, I describe myself as a flexitarian, insofar as I'm not an absolutist when it comes to food (even though I generally don't eat pork and red meat). And I love oysters, preferably raw and naked, preferably from Prince Edward Island. But while I eat them anyway, it's good to know that even a firm vegan can make such a strong case: oyster farming doesn't harm the environment, there's no real risk of overfarming, and oysters don't have central nervous systems.

-- "Unchanged Minds: A majority of Americans still believe the uninsured are doing just fine," by Timothy Noah. A majority of Americans, it seems, are, to put it nicely, deeply ignorant -- and, to put it less nicely, appallingly stupid. It's not really much of a majority, when you delve through the survey questions into the numbers, but there is still a great deal of insensitivity among the public, again to put it nicely.

Craziest Conservative of the Day: Michael Schwartz

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And just who is Michael Schwartz, you ask? Why, he's none other than the chief of staff to Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, and like his boss, and perhaps even more so, he's a right-wing extremist, not least when it comes to that favourite topic of right-wing extremists, homosexuality.

Schwartz spoke at the Family Research Council's "Values Voters Summit" on Saturday, and it was, more or less, just what you might have expected -- but with a twist. Here's some of what he said:

-- It's "a good instinct" for adolescent boys to be anti-gay.

-- "Homosexuality is inflicted on people."

-- Homosexuality is a "lifestyle."

-- Homosexuality is a "malady."

Here's the twist, as Schwartz (amusingly, because so ridiculously) linked homosexuality to pornography:

-- A "very good friend" once told him that "all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards."

-- Men need to be "healed of" the addiction to pornography.

Now, look, I'm not here to defend pornography. It is what it is, and I've seen enough of it to know that there's a dark side to it. I'm not against it -- far from it -- but I do see that it can tear relationships apart and that it can, if not kept in perspective, pollute one's mind. (Much of it is rather disturbing, to say the least, and there is no doubt it can create expectations that are not only unattainable but unhealthy to pursue.)

But to suggest that all pornography is homosexual is just inane. And insane.

What the likes of Michael Schwartz fear is not just homosexuality, which they see as a plague, but genuine human sexuality generally. They want people to live according to their own fundamentalist dogma -- that is, according to their own lies. They want people to live not according to what is human but according to a construct that seeks to suppress the human.

Schwartz isn't just a theocrat, though, he's a hateful bigot. And he's our Craziest Conservative of the Day.

Porno for tyros

By Carl

There was a time, in the dark recesses of the '70s and into the early '80s, when porn was cool.

There was a time, before AIDS (then known as the Gay Cancer), before even herpes, when porn was about as mainstream as professional wrestling or professional bass fishing. Perhaps even more so, since anyone could participate and often did.

There was a time when birth control and abortion made sexual liberation and exploration inevitable and even palatable.

There was a time when the forces of morality... you know, the guys who later exposed themselves as serial adulterers and pedophiles... were waned behind the onslaught of popularity some porn produced.

I'm reminded of this by this sad story on the wires today:

Marilyn Chambers, the angelic-looking, blue-eyed blond who symbolized purity while selling laundry detergent then went on to become one of the first mainstream porn superstars, died Sunday in her Los Angeles home. She was 56.

The Westport, Conn.-born actress was found by her 17-year-old daughter, McKenna Marie Taylor.

An autopsy will be done but no foul play is suspected.

This is Marilyn Chambers. This is not a fake.

She was a mainstream model and actress, even appearing briefly in the Barbra Streisand film, The Owl and the Pussycat.

Her big break, so to speak, was a film called Behind The Green Door, the first porn film released to mainstream theatres. It paved the way for later films like Deep Throat, and actresses from Linda Lovelace to Tracy Lords to Jenna Jameson to have legitimate superstar credentials both in porn and in Hollywood.

In fact, so big an impact had she had in American culture that the city of San Francisco declared a "Marilyn Chambers Day" in 1998, some 25 years after her film.

I knew her indirectly. Al Goldstein of Screw magazine lived in my neighborhood, and we'd speak on occasion (the man wouldn't stop talking, in point of fact, so it was more me listening), and her name came up in conversation a few times, always with respect for what she did for his industry.

Marilyn Chambers represented a difficult crossroads for the burgeoning feminist movement of the '70s. On the one hand, some feminists thought all porn was to be shunned as exploitive. On the other, here was a woman who was taking control of her career in porn, who was strong and could dictate how and where her body was to be used, who was also exploring the First Amendment boundaries, very strong feminist values.

I do not judge the woman beyond this: She lived her life as she saw fit, and made her way as best as she could. She broke ground, and whether we are the better for it is for history to judge. But she was a human being, and for that she is accorded my respect and compassion.

Godspeed, Marilyn. Godspeed.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Dog bites man

By Carl

And conservatives consume porn faster than liberals:

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

OK, here's the issue with this.

It's not about moral hypocrisy. People have confessed one faith while worshipping at the altar of others for millennia.

It's about economic hypocrisy. I get the sense that conservatives would like porn to be kept under the covers, errrr, so to speak, in order to monopolize the market on it.

If we lived in a truly free market enterprise society, then porn would likely be the second largest business, right after alcohol and other narcotics (I'm including cigarettes).

Period. Look at, even as tightly regulated as those markets are, how much is spent in America alone.

Porn could be the stimulus package, errrrrrrr, so to speak, that would help America recover its economy.

So what really keeps porn off the free market? Morals?

We send soldiers overseas to kill for us, yet the Bible tells us not to kill, but nothing about looking at naked men or women.

We open shops and businesses seven days a week (mostly) even though the Bible says to keep the Sabbath holy.

Indeed, about the only two outright bans on any sexuality in the Bible are the story of Onan's masturbation and the commandment that states, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and even that was less a moral statement than a statement not to screw around with your neighbor's wife (a social commentary).

So how is it on the one hand, conservatives can claim moral higher ground in preventing the distribution of pornography, and on the other hand, utilize it so dramatically?

Errr, so to speak.

The only logical reason I can come up with, errrr, so to speak, is to monopolize the market on it, to prevent those who might limit the supply conservatives have enjoyed from obtaining it.

You know, teenagers.

Which brings up an entire other can of worms regarding the attitudes of this nation towards horny teenagers and sex.

But that, I'm afraid, is probably best left to another column. Or to Bristol Palin.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

A handshake deal is reached around the table

By Carl

Now, I'm against most bailouts, but this industry is in hard times:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people."

Look, boob jobs ain't cheap. This is clearly an industry that is desperate for assistance. It needs to be firmed up and a hard injection of capital is probably just what the doctor ordered after his examination.

Sales reports do seem to indicate that things are sagging in porn. Market penetration is way off, and their assets simply aren't what they used to be. Of course, prior years' results could have been artificially inflated, but my suspicion is we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

The hole is deep, my friends. I've studied reams of data which suggest that at least half the adult stars blew their chances to sock away a little for retirement and will have to press their noses to the grindstones in order to make ends meat.

In the true spirit of American capitalism, these pioneers of prurience have opened wide and bared their assets for the shot, just the shot, at a peak market.

But as we all know, markets have their ups and downs, and no doubt right now, porn is at its bottom. However, with a brief respite, and this stimulus package, I have no doubt that as interest rises, this market too shall begin to swell and grow.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Vote for Simply Left Behind in the Weblog Awards.

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Needless to say, there's much more on this oh-so-sexy story over at Memeorandum. Check out Think Progress, which notes that Bush's '08 stimulus package stimulated the porn industry. -- MJWS

Phil Gramm, porn mogul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, not quite. He was a small-time investor, not a mogul, but, if nothing else, as Max Blumental recounted at HuffPo the other day, Gramm's forays into the porn industry in the '70s were rather amusing.

Back in 1973, he tried to invest $15,000 in a soft-core movie called Truck Stop Women ("No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle"). With that oversold, he eventually put his money in Beauty Queens (about pageant judges and contestants). When that fell through, he "contributed at least $7,500 towards... a satire of the Nixon White House called White House Madness that featured the crazed president wandering around the White House in the nude."

Gramm may or may not have known that his money ultimately went to help finance a soft-core anti-Nixon spoof -- the director of Beauty Queens, Mark Lester, shelved that project in order to make White House Madness, a sequal to his Tricia's Wedding (about drag queens) -- but what is clear is that, from the outset, he eagerly wanted to invest in porn. Not that he had much success, however. White House Madness was a failure. "Like the rest of Gramm's endeavors," Blumenthal notes, "his soft-core porn career was a complete disaster."

(And have I mentioned that Gramm is a conservative Republican who, until just recently, was a top McCain advisor? But surely you knew that already... Update: Actually, as Joe Gandelman is reporting over at TMV, Gramm is staying on as McCain advisor and surrogate. Madness!)

George W. Bush, pornography stimulator

By Michael J.W. Stickings

An unintended consequence? Sure, but, given American tastes and interests, perhaps a predictable one -- and certainly a hilarious one:

An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will "boost our economy and encourage job creation," has surfaced this week. An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans' mailboxes across the country.

According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, "Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market."

Jillian Fox, spokeswoman for LSGmodels.com, one of the sites reporting figures to AIMRCo, added, "In a June 15, 2008 survey to our members, thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership."

*****

Fox also added, "Getting more people to buy porn was probably the last thing Bush had on his mind when he came up with his 'stimulus package,' but we'll take it."

Well, how did you think Americans would spend their Bush-backed stimulation-package cash? On ExxonMobil stock? Hardly. (The American porn industry may not be as big as some claims would suggest, but it's still huge, a multi-billion-dollar business that obviously has enough consumers to keep it booming.)

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More from Think Progress: "NPR reported this week that the Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada 'is offering gas cards to lure people in, and the Moonlite Bunny Ranch has a deal called "double your stimulus" for folks who bring in their federal tax rebate checks.'"

Good times. Even with a crappy economy.

Trent. Lott. Larry. Flynt. Ron. Paul.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Trent Lott announced his resignation yesterday. "It's time for us to do something else," he said, referring to himself and his wife.

The surprise announcement caught "the political world off-guard," according to Steve Benen. "[I]t's a bizarre time for Lott to end his career." In a subsequent post, Steve offered a few possible explanations. The likeliest one: "He's cashing in," headed for the riches of K Street.

Perhaps.

But what if...

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In what may or may not be an unrelated story, Big Head DC is reporting this (via Atrios -- and with thanks to TL, who brought this to my attention earlier today):

Larry Flynt, editor and publisher of Hustler magazine, just told FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto that he's "hoping to expose a bombshell" that will stand "Washington and the country on its head." Within the next week or two, he says his magazine will expose a sex scandal of huge proportions involving a prominent United States Senator. Flynt refused to comment on the Senator's political affiliation, but alluded that he or she is a Republican.

Cough. Cough. Ahem.

What exactly is the "something else" to which Lott was referring?

Well...

Big Head DC (via Melissa McEwan) is also reporting that Lott may be connected to a prominent male escort named Benjamin Nicholas (photo below):

Nicholas told Big Head DC today via e-mail that he didn't want to go on the record to talk about his dealings with Lott, because, said Nicholas, "Trent is going through his fair share of scrutiny right now and I don't want to add to it." However, e-mail and other records confirm that the two have met on at least two occasions.

"All I can say at this point is no comment," Nicholas told us. "It's the professional thing for me to do.'

In a subsequent e-mail message, Nicholas confirmed that another publication is working on a story about a "possible relationship" between Lott and himself, but Nicholas also "politely declined" an interview for that story.

"As I said before, Lott has quite a bit on his plate right now and I don't really want to add fuel to the embers," Nicholas told Big Head DC.

Quite the respectful professional, this "twentysomething boy-next-door type with reddish blond hair and a brilliantly white smile," no? Hmmm.

Anyway, what does it all mean? From here, I'll let you speculate on your own.

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Meanwhile, in what is somewhat related news, libertarian extremist Ron Paul has been endorsed by one of Nevada's leading pimps, the owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch, Dennis Hof:

"I'll get all the (working girls) together, and we can raise him some money," Hof told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I'll put up a collection box outside the door. They can drop in $1, $5 contributions."

Hof and two of his prostitutes, Brooke Taylor and a woman who goes by Air Force Amy, attended a Paul news conference.

The women said they liked Paul's message, but wanted to learn more about other candidates before making a decision.

It's nice to such civic engagement in action, isn't it? (Take that, Robert Putnam! Americans may be bowling alone, but, in Nevada at least, they don't need to sleep alone... for a price.)

And here's an invitation to Ms. Brooke and Ms. Amy to contact us here at The Reaction as they are learning about the other candidates and when they eventually reach a decision. We'll talk politics and make you feel right at home. Seriously.

By the way, I'm pretty much all for the decriminalization (and regulation) of prostitution, and I can understand why Hof has endorsed Paul

You know, 'cause pimpin' ain't easy, no it ain't, and it must be hard out there for a pimp like Dennis Hof.

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Porno Mitt

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The alluring headline at WaPo: Romney Criticized for Hotel Pornography

And what an amusing story it is: "Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, who rails against the 'cesspool' of pornography, is being criticized by social conservatives who argue that he should have tried to halt hardcore hotel movie offerings during his near-decade on the Marriott board."

Yes, horny men in hotel rooms all over America, and all around the world, are jerking off at this very moment -- and it's all Romney's fault!

Sort of makes you go limp, when you think about it.

Headline of the Day

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Bad news for Iranian smut peddlers:

Iran moves to execute porn stars

Here's the story:

With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that "producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corrupter of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corrupter of the world."

The term, "corrupter of the world" is taken from the Quran, the Muslims' holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual's criminal offenses. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.

The "main elements" referred to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.

In related news, the White House announced yesterday that it will likely not be sending Ron Jeremy to Tehran as an "emissary of peace and reconcilation," as had been reported earlier in the week by Adult Video News.

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Seriously, though. This isn't good, and not just because I oppose the death penalty. It is a sign that liberalism has a long way to go in Iran -- and not because liberalism is pornography, as some on the right might suggest, but because liberalism -- or the political philosophy of individual liberty, America's founding political philosophy -- demands toleration even of that which is, however defined, "dirty" (as long as there is consent, of course). You don't have to like pornography, you just have to tolerate it. You know: I don't like what you say, but I defend your right to say it.

In Iran, however, if they don't like what you say, or if what you do, or represent, is "pornographic" (which remains open to interpretation, one imagines -- it could be defined rather broadly, given the oppressive sexual climate in that country -- yes, this is about sex more than speech, strictly speaking), they'll kill you. Speech, you see, isn't free; it's deadly. Especially when it's sexual.

And I'm sure that pleases the Tyrant Ahmadinejad to no end.