Friday, September 10th, 1999

I hear that Gene Ross's buddy Tawny Lions spent Tuesday night in jail in Florida.

Vasiloff Jumping Ship?

WebSpy writes: Well, here I am again with more news on your supporters.... FANtastic! helmsman C. Vasiloff has been contacted by representatives from New Frontier Media. In their efforts to secure web dominance they have been looking into the FANtastic! machine and come up with the conclusion that he is the whole show. Why buy the company when one guy will do? FANtastic (or should I just say Vasiloff) has just secured a deal to operate a wrestling league. He is working with Ricky "soulman" Johnson (the Rock's uncle). Amazing what you can get isn't it? Why aren't you printing this stuff? Still waiting for reply to 20 questions I emailed the info@fantasticonline.com address - you'll get it when I do.

Cable Carnality Controversy Continues!!!

Luke F-rd Wire Services Ltd.:

Full-frontal nudity and other erotically expressive extremes are still part of the basic service for some 300, 000 Time Warner Cable subcribers in a zone of Manhattan Island that begins below 79th Street on the West Side and 86th St. on the East.
    Since the mid-1970s, this ribald electronic sideshow—still occcurring nightly on Channel 35 between the hours of 10 PM and 5:30 AM—has included such sexually explicit programming as Al Goldstein's Midnight Blue, The Robin Byrd Show, and Gay Cable Network's The Dungeon.
    Probably no other mass-media forum on the planet simultenously brings as much controversial, independently produced material into as many households as Channel 35.
    This provocative programming dates back to the expansive mood of mid-1970s America, when the mass-cult erotic awakening known as the Sexual Revolution was conjoined with the McLuhanesque spirit of radical television. These two impulses spawned a hybrid cable channel in
Manhattan known as "leased access."   
    Stipulated as a well-intentioned part of the city's original franchise agreement with Time Warner's predecessor, leased-access was meant to ensure diversity on the cable system by offering commercial programming to small, independent producers at bargain-basement rates. In exchange
for this access the cable system was immunized from any legal liability resulting from those programs; moreover, existing state and federal law protected the programmers from censorship by the cable company.
    According to ACLU anti-censorship specialist Marjories Heins, Esq., "From the very beginning, the city not only awarded lucrative cable TV franchises to companies like Time Warner, but it permitted them to dig up the streets and string cables across the public thoroughfares in
order to install their systems. Leased access is a very modest concession to offer in return."
    The modern history of our nation's content-based communications policy--known less euphemistically as "censorship"--is a fertile field for the conspiracy-minded.
    In the beginning there was the word, and the word was Miller. The 1973 U. S. Supreme Court ruling inMiller v. California is one of the most enduring legacies of the Nixon Administration. Miller signaled a change in how the Federal government would henceforth conduct business with its more sexually expressive citizens. It became the legal and philosophical basis for countless obscenity--and later indecency--actions right up to the present day.
    In writing the Miller opinion, Nixon-appointed Chief Justice Warren Burger displaced his predecessor's more enlightened 1957 Roth v. United States doctrine that had stipulated only material "utterly without socially redeeming importance" could be judged obscene. Miller's less demanding criteria for obscenity were: First, "the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; second, "the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law", and finally, flunks what is known in First Amendment circles as the S.L.A.P.S. test--
lacking Serious Literary Artistic Political and Scientific Value.
    Not only did Miller eliminate a national standard by which obscenity could be judged, but its its imprecise terminology--"patently offensive", "community standards"-was ripe for exploitation at both ends of the spectrum, from cornpone evangelists like Rev. Donald Wildmon to rootless cosmopolitans like Al Goldsteins. The only aspect of Miller on which legal authorities agree is that nobody knows exactly what it means.
    In the Seventies, an interviewer asked Al Goldstein to describe the impact of Miller on the business of pornography, to which he replied, "If the Miller decision had not taken place, we would be selling Screw... right next to the National Enquirer in the supermarkets."
    Goldstein's Manhattan-based enterprise would itself feel the bite of 1977's "contemporary community standards" on America's mainland when a Federal judge in Kansas stipulated that his eager-to-offend Screw magazine never be distributed in that great state again.
    A near-biblical plague of Federal wrath had descended in 1976 upon the defendants in the Memphis “Deep Throat”: The Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tenneesee-- an elder in the Memphis First Evangelical Church who granted fellatrix Linda Lovelace immunity from
prosecution in exchange for her testimony—is remembered for his declarations that he'd "rather see dope on the streets than pornography" and "we're going to get rid of these perverted minds."
    This divinely-inspired reading of Miller would be heard again and again throughout the Seventies in a series of Federal actions targeting porn as a racketeering influenced enterprise. A hard rain of Federal anti-obscenity activism fell upon mob-associated porn enterprises nationwide, culminating in the notorious 1980 St. Valentines Day nationwide round-up in which 400 FBI agents made some 58 arrests for felonies that included interstate transportation of bootlegged Hollywood movies. No one was more taken aback by this affront than Michael "Mickey Z" Zaffarano, a New York porn kingpin who died that Valentines Day of a heart attack when Federal agents served him with a warrant in
the office of Time's Square's Pussycat Theatre. Among Zaffarano's last words, reportedly, were, "I'm just the landlord here."
    Perhaps this is the kind of thing Al Goldstein was referring to when he told New York Newsday's David Friedman, "You don't know fear until you've seen a Federal Indictment reading The People of The United States versus [oneself]".
    And indeed, government legal technicians were hard at work on a new and more virulent strains of Miller that seemed designed specifically to keep incorrigibles like Al Goldstein in court. The 1978 U.S. Supreme Court's FCC v. Pacific ruling used a 12-minute George Carlin radio schtick self-referentially entitled "Filthy Words" provided the basis for the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to lower the standard permitting the government to intervene in broadcast expression. By reducing Miller to a single "prong" —"patently offensive"-of it's three-prong requirements, Pacifica would ultimately be used "restrict", or "channel", previously protected material in order to limit its access
by children . And in a trend that would encompass cable TV, broadcast television and telephonic communications as well as radio--a trend now making inroads on the Web—a nearly indefinable category of expression that was not legally obscene was now the stuff of criminal law: Indecency. By 1982, the spirit of Pacifica was enshrined in title 18, section 1464 of the United States Code: "Whoever utters any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication shall be fined not more than than $10,000 or imprisioned not more than two years or both."
    Both U.S.C. 1464 and Pacifica would be later cited repeatedly by Time Warner legal briefs in the fight to scramble its sexually oriented cable contents.
    In the meantime, Pacifica 's contention that children of the Charlie's Angels era needed protectation from George Carlin and others like him would be taken up as a family-values issue-by such grassroots groups as the 10,000-member Morality and Media and Rev. Wildmon's 320,000-member National Federation for Decency.
    Marjorie Heins: "Indecency was portrayed as something with the ability to invade the home. The FCC changed its media policy in response to religious right. And for the first time, the Feds were able to regulate communications based on indecency."
    A coup d'etat— like sequence of behind-the-scenes deal-making between religious extremists and FCC appointees dates from 1986, with anti-indecency groups targeting the Reagan Administration with a letter-writing campain opposing the renomination of an FCC chairmen who, according to Rev. Wildmon, had done "nothing, zero, zilch" about indecency. FFC Chairman was renominated nonetheless, and in June, 1986, members of Morality in Media picketed the FCC.
    A second Morality in Media demonstration was averted only after the group's leadership was given a personal audience with both FCC Chairman Fowler and the Commission's General Counsel. Shortly thereafter, a letter from Morality in Media's Brad Curl to FCC Chairman Fowler included this bracing message: "If you can stand strong, you may have the historic mission of keeping the onslaught of R-rated material off television until we can get a better pool of material in Hollywood.
Stand strong."    
    After another Morality in Media/FCC powwow occurred two weeks later, when the Feds received a memo from the group with suggestions and legal guidelines for cracking down on indecent programming. And in a parallel developement, a listener complaint regarding the University of
California at Santa Barbara's radio station KSCB's broadcast of a raunchy novelty song titled 'Makin' Bacon' was sent to Tipper Gore's Parents Musical Resource Center, which in turn forwarded to the letter to the White House. Shortly thereafter, White House Communications
Director Patrick Buchanan was dispatched to the FCC with an offer they couldn't refuse.
    The rest is hysteria.
    In September 19, 1986, the FCC's exceedingly helpful General Counsel wrote Rev. Donald Wildmon to share his views of the The Rose , starring Bette Midler: "...I do not believe this the kind of air-tight case that you want to push at this time. We are inquiring into a couple of other cases which we think may be more clear violations. I think you should agree with our reasoning on the matter." The letter added, "If you have no objection, I would like to retain the tape you sent us so that we can have it as an exhibit as the pornography question evolves over the coming months."
    Not even this conflation of church and state was enough to satisfy Pat Buchanan, who viewed even Ronald Reagan as being soft on smut. In an open memo to Reagan, Buchanan wrote: "As even the National Council of Churches now backs the Administration's campaign against pornography
and obscenity, the President should become more visibly involved; and demand of that toothless lion, the FCC, that it begin pulling the licenses of broadcasters who flagrantly abuse the privilege. A single
license jerked would instantly depolute the airways of this garbage, which the Supreme Court has ruled is not protected speech."                
    While Buchanan's sentiments may not have inspired the best and brightest of his generation, the minds that did heed his call were unquestionably the most determined.    
    In 1990, as Sen. Jesse Helms carried the anti-indecency torch into Congress against the NEA's dirty-art subsidies, , there at his side was Morality in Media's Bob Peters. Regarding an NEA grant allegedly received by frequent Midnight Blue guest Annie Sprinkle for a gyncocentric performance-artwork, Peters is quoted in the Congressional record with this penetrating observation: "Some avante-garde people may consider this art, but a jury may not agree."
    According to Morality in Media’s law and public-policy specialist Bob Peters--who, contrary to stereotype, is a grad of New York University Law School and resides in Greenwich Village--the watchdog group was also there in 1991 again to directly assist Sen Helms in shaping the cable
act on which Time Warner's case against Manhattan cable indecency is built.
    The Helms amendment to the 1992 Cable Act permits "a cable operator to enforce prospectively a written and published policy of prohimbiting progamming that the cable operator reasonably believes describes or depitcts sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards."
    Thoughout the warm and fuzzy mid-Seventies and two or three pre-AIDS years of the Eighties, Midnight Blue and like-minded programs were generally regarded colorful expressions of Manhattan's progressive community standards.
    Recalls Alex Bennett, the longtime alternative media personality who was Midnight Blue''s first producer, "There was an opportunity there. It wasn't like there was a gold rush to get on. Hardly anyone even knew about it. When we went commercial on Channel J we were the first to sign
up for it.
    "We're talking 1975. I had been into video for quite a while. I had a PortaPak and editing equipment Leased-access was an opportunity to make television that said something new. With financing from Al Goldstein and his former partner Jim Buckley—whose magazine Screw had entree into certain advertisers— we started out as Screw Magazine of the Air."
    Hosting the premiere was erotospheric adventurer Steve Krauss, who today chronicles the mate-swapping scene for Screw : "Dressed in a business suit, I opened the program with a pledge that Screw Magazine of the Air would offer only the most dignified content. That's when Honeysuckle Divine pelted me with cream pies."  Honeysuckle Divine is a porn performer who wrote the "Diary of A Dirty Broad" column for Screw until she was mysteriously overcome by obscurity.
    Screw Magazine on the Air, although not the first leased access programming to offer nudity—this distinction goes to maverick media maven Anton Perich, whose cable show covered such demimondial scenes as punk birthplace Max's Kansas City and the Chelsea Hotel—it was the
first sustained television coverage of human sexuality.
    Maintains Alex Bennett, "We invented all this stuff that Time Warner profits from today. We were the first to go on the air and call our show an erotic magazine. Fifteen years before bogus documentaries like HBO's Reel Sex series, we were going into swing clubs and massage parlors and
SM dungeons. And those video centerfolds you see on MTV and the Playboy Channel? We were broadcasting our strip segments as "video centerfolds " when Playboy was still calling its center spreads gate folds. And before there was an Oprah or a Geraldo or a Montel there was our "Speak
Your Piece" spot, a public forum for sexually demonstrative citizens."
    Other erotically oriented entertainments to take root in the early years of leased-access was the now-vanished The Ugly George Hour of Truth, Sex and Violence-- featuring Porta-Pak-rat videographer "Ugly" George Urban who wandered Manhattan in silver-lame briefs taping
exhibitionistic women who were hungry for the kind of stardom that only Ugly George could offer. There was Interludes After Midnight --a frank exchange of views by naked sex-cultists of every stripe, in which the plump, satyr-like host, Dan Lander, would invite his viewers to disrobe as
well. (A highly placed Time Warner executive points out that both these program were bounced for non-payment of their access fees.) In 1982, Gay Cable Network came on the system with its erotic film showcases, talk shows, and verite sex scene coverage—and would be a vital forum
for gay sexuality as it came under attack in the plague years to come.
    In 1976, Robin Byrd made her libidinal leap from porn films like Debbie Does Dallas and That Lucky Stiff to leased-access when a pal who produced a call-in porn show called Hot Legs used her as a substitute host. Not only were Byrd's blondined allure and welcoming giggle an instant hit with views, but when the producer fell behind in his cable fees, Byrd picked up the time and has reigned as leased-access cable goddess ever since. Her signature intro "If you don't have a loved one,
you always have me" still induces arousal in late-night cable viewers of every sex.
    For many years her strip-and-talk show format was sponsored by the Times Square porn emporium Show World's Triple Treat Theatre, where her twice-a-year nude onstage show was a much-awaited Time Square event. By the late Eighties, Byrd's beloved call-in show had spotlighted
personalities ranging from Traci Lords to Sandra Berhard (whose movie Without You I'm Nothing Byrd appears in), as well as such spin-offs such Byrd Droppings and her gay-oriented Men for Men. Today, Byrd's show is said to be the cable's most successful televised vehicle for phone-sex advertising--including hot-lines featuring Byrd herself].
    From the very beginning, however, it was Al Goldstein and his cohorts who would prove the most rambunctious inhabitants of what was thencalled Channel J.
    From the beginning, Midnight Blue-- a twice-weekly video annex to the once-popular Screw --was a dense, satirical mix of reportage from the world's erotic frontiers and derrieres featuring Al's Goldstein's interviews with past-and-future notables ranging from Abbie Hoffman, Robert Crumb and Mad founder William Gaines as well as a fleshly feast of mainly female porn personalities. Midnight Blue 's rock'n'roll video-burlesque segments are regarded by some cable esthetes as
precursors to today's cheesecake-driven MTV clips. Other precedential moments included an appearance by British porn diva Tuppy Owens, who fellated the Midnight Blue cameraman as he taped her.]
    Says Bennett, "It was an embarrassment to the then-owner Time Life. In 1976 their lawyers demanded we pull Screw Magazine on the Air because it supposedly violated some rule about advertising a commercial product. With the ACLU's help, we worked out a compromise by changing the name to Midnight Blue. In 1976 a copy of Midnight Blue was played for legislators on Capitol Hill, with predictable results. So when the cable company complained about Midnight Blue we changed it to a American Blue and then Midnight Blue's America , Midnight Blue '77 —and when no one was looking, back to Midnight Blue. "
    Al Goldstein first filed suit against Time Warner, a multimedia giant that seemingly ate First Amendment challenges for brunch, in 1990—charging that the cable carrier, in violation of existing law and the the First Amendment, was censoring Midnight Blue by demanding preview tapes and superimposing blue dots over hard-core sexual activity. At this time, in renegotiating its franchise agreement with the city, Manhattan Cable also attempted to "bump" independent erotic programming from the cable by eliminating leased-access channels altogether.
    Producers like Goldstein, Byrd and Maletta who had been paying an average of $200 an hour for cable time were "invited" to apply for time on a "commerical-access" channel at a considerably higher rate—subject to Time Warner's "discretion." There, a Federal Judge ruled that, pending action by a higher court, Time Warner was required to accomodate the embattled producers. This ruling is still in effect.   
    Richard Aurelio, now-retired President of Time Warner Cable since 1989, maintained that the system's mandate had been to "develope uniform channels" between Manhattan and its boroughs which, having only recently been wired, do not carry the offending programs.
    Insisted Aurelio, "If Al Goldstein were not around, we'd have been
able to convert everybody to join the new rate card. Goldstein's 1990 court challenge was about the new rates. He didn't like the terms. The new franchise meant he'd be paying $500 and hour on Friday night and $400 an hour on Monday night."
    A typical hour of Midnight Blue contains an average of 40 phone-sex and escort-service ad spots costing anywhere between $75 and $300.   
    The specter of "indecency" was brought into this lucrative mix by former city Comptroller and unsuccesful mayoral candidate Elizabeth Holtzman, who was outraged by a leased-access ad spot for the "970-INCEST" chat line. Holtzman was instrumental in a "safe harbor" requirement in the 1990 franchise negotiations that exiled erotically explicit cable to between midnight and 4:30 a.m. In 1995, a spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau revealed that a "criminal probe" was under way into escort services that advertised on public access. A spokesman for the DA recently confirmed that "There was an investigation into these dating services, but there was
insufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution." Significantly, there was never any probe into escort services with ads in such media as the Village Voice, New York and even the Yellow Pages.—although in many instances the advertisers are the same ones that appear on cable.
    Theorized Alex Bennett: "Time Warner's just taking advantage of the Helms Amendment in order to clean up its own image. It's a standard corporate response to William Bennett-type conservative punditry and accusations that the company sponsored cop-killing gangsta rappers. As politicians like Jesse Helms have shown, Al Goldstein makes a great scapegoat."
    Richard Aurelio of Time acknowledged that Sen. Helms and other sponsors of the 1992 Cable Act had such programming as Midnight Blue very much in mind when they shaped this legislation: "Manhattan was the dominant target of the Congressional action against indecent programming. It was a consequence of what people there observed on leased access."
    Further, Aurelio pointed out, "Al Goldstein personalized the conflict. He accused me on his program of being as evil as the Holocaust. And when Steve Ross, the former head of Time Warner, was dying of cancer, Goldstein went on Midnight Blue to say he hoped Ross died a long and
painful death."
    Al Goldstein corroborated Aurelio's account: "I hope Aurelio dies of a painful disease. He's a Nazi. I hope his family dies. Don't expect me to be philosophical. I know how to hate hate with the best of them. I hope Aurelio chokes.
    "Aurelio was in the Congressional cloakroom giving blowjobs to Jesse Helms and groups like Morality in Media. They're whores. They're lower than any of my advertisers.
    "They envy me. They wish they were endowed like me. They wish they were hung like me. They envy me my women. They envy me my fine dining."
    Summarized attorney Marjorie Heins: "Jesse Helms used Al Goldstein to achieve a broader agenda to control access of American public. "
    Can a publicly-held business be faulted for exploiting the prevailing political, moral and cultural climate in order to lawfully turn a profit?
    What’s more-- Time Warner argued that it, too, had First Amendment right as a communicator. Among the cites in communicator Time Warner's 1995 brief attempting to pry Al Goldstein and his cohorts from the cable was the cases Bicknell v. Vergennes Union High School Board of Directors , which held "a school board's decision to ban certain books from a high school library did not infringe students' First Amendment rights."        
    The culture of coercion and obedience so hotly coveted by Sen. Helms and his supporters bears certain structural similarities to the kind of effective consumership sought by corporations like Time Warner and Disney --especially as the growing information-industrial complex expands beyond news and entertainment into broader public venues like telecommunications, the Internet and-- in the case of a “Disneyfied” 42nd Street--America's urban spaces.
    Will Channel 35’s quirky telegenic creations be entombed in the same graveyard of vanished American entertainments that also claimed drive-in movie theatres, carnival sideshows, and a sex-saturated 42nd Street?        
    On January 8, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the final constitutional challenges to the Helms-inspired, anti-indecency provisions of the Public Telecommunications Law of 1992--suggesting that Manhattan's maverick cable tradition may be broadcasting on borrowed time.

Romance

Steve DeRose writes on RAME: Folks, I must alert you to be watching for this new French movie by Catherine Breillat, "Romance".

It was sneak previewed here in Chicago at the Film Center at the School of the Art Institute on Saturday night. It is easily the most (for this newsgroup) on-topic, *subversive* movie to be playing the art house circuit in the last quarter-century. For LCPofUSA and all the others who feel there are no films which combine eroticism with explicit sex, go see this one or shut up. (I grant you, it is slightly irritating that this film had to be made in France. And there is a production credit for Canal+, so I figure it _will_ eventually show on French cable television. Arrrrgggghhh. Why don't HBO, Showtime, or even Playboy have the guts to produce something like this?)

The star of the movie is Caroline Ducey. She is a low-20's {my guess} school teacher. As for her physical appearance; she has an A cup bosom, and a lush bush of pubic hair. (We do see it in perspective, as well as straight on.)

You will note the name of Rocco Siffredi in the opening credits. C. Breillat threw everything into the 93 minutes of this movie. I could take upwards of an hour just scribing this, so you will have to suffice with a 'laundry list'.

Caroline Ducey: Sucks the cock of her lover (in his apartment). She has been spending her nights there for 3 months.

Meets Rocco Siffredi in a late-night bar. The next night, she visits his apartment. She asks Rocco to put on a condom. Rocco says, "I haven't had sex in six months. I don't have AIDS." (The dialogue in this movie cracked me up regularly. This leads to an interesting exposition on how condoms affect most men. But it doesn't affect Rocco. [We then see Rocco's condomed cock in a medium shot. He's hard.]) Rocco doggies her. We don't see the 'proof', but the side view of the action, and the sound and appearance of Caroline's butt rippling make for convincing circumstantial evidence.

As she arrives back at the apartment house, she encounters a man who offers her $20 just to eat her pussy. She accepts the offer. But the guy turns perverse on her, flipping her over and doggy analing her. (He doesn't pull down his pants, so we aren't sure. His words strongly infer that that is where he is. Then he finishes, but we see no jism anywhere on her body. And he didn't give her the money.) Caroline screams, "I am not ashamed!"

Caroline's school superintendent, who mentions how, despite his ugliness, he has had sex with 10,000 women; is into bondage and domination (with rope). Caroline has two dalliances with him. (The perspective shot of her pubes is seen here as he ties the rope through her crotch.)

Caroline's boyfriend (who reads Charles Bukowski paperbacks) senses he is losing her, because he won't let her satisfy him. So one night, he actually allows her to have sex with him. In the cowgirl position (but we don't see, because she doesn't hike up her red skirt), he actually impregnates her. (Wait until you learn how she described this union.)

A pregnant Caroline then offers herself to a medical school, where a bunch of interns-in-training get to put on a latex glove and stick it inside her vagina feeling the growth. We see this. It's a train of guys fingering her.

She fantasizes about a round chamber where pregnant women and their fathers (of the unborn children) are there, but they can only see their faces due to the wall. On the other side of the wall, these same pregnant women (whose faces cannot be seen) have their legs spread for everyone to see and do as they please. This room looks pretty scuzzy. Some guys swive these pregnant women. We see this in perspective. There is a cumshot on one woman's belly.(!)

It is determined that she will have a boy. Her boyfriend then starts bringing her along like a trophy. Just to include one more thing, C. Breillat throws in some footage of an actual childbirth. Yep, yep, yep, we get to see a kid emerge from the vagina head first, in color and in extreme close-up (this had to be acquired elsewhere & spliced in), and we see some of the effluence following thereafter.

I will not reveal the *shocking* ending of this film, except to reveal that it is *heavy* on symbolism. The film was exhibited in French with English subtitles. I found Caroline's stream-of-thought philosophy to be eclectic, challenging, & fascinating. And it has Funkadelic's "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow" on the soundtrack!

Jasmine St. Clair

Herman writes: I just read the Jasmin St. Clair's bio. Is her educational background for real? Any one can claim all they like in this industry. Even, Traci Lords once bragged about attending El Camino College and having a desire to study interior design at UCLA, in a now illegal spread for Penthouse. I suppose the ancients had it right when the only educated women were to be courteans. But, I must contend her background real or not, is only another machination of prostitution. And, prostitution comes in all forms (stripping, nude modeling, topless, phone sex, escorts, adult films, waiting tables and of course sales). There is no fine line between the streetwalker working Sunset Boulevard, (are there any left?), the adult film star, or a featured performer at a gentlemen's club. Hoing is hoing is hoing.

French journalist Emmanuelle Richard writes: Hi Luke, Just saw the message on your site about Herman wondering how well educated Jasmin is. You can tell him that she's at least as multilingual as she claims to be. When I interviewed her a year ago, she spoke to me in perfect French: I've rarely spoken to an American who could handle this difficult language so well. She told me a few words in perfect German too. She's definitely impressive at languages.

Los Angeles Times

Lori White writes the LATimes.com: In response to "L.A. Economy's Dirty Secret: Porn Is Thriving" (Sept. 1), on the porn industry in the Valley: How would you like to have some of this scum operating on your street the way we do, in our beautiful residential area? Why would you dignify this industry by putting this coverage in your paper and on the front page to boot? We would like to get these slimes out of the Valley and you glorify them with this article about how much money they're raking in, what a profitable industry it is.

If it's so darn profitable, why don't they take their action to some studio instead of invading family neighborhoods with their fifth? Who is benefiting from their presence in the Valley besides them? You make it sound like the Valley is gaining revenue from having them here. I'd like to know how, other than renting houses. If I were moving to this area, I sure wouldn't look for a house in an area known as the porn capital of California! What an insult to the people of the Valley.

Lynne L-patin responds to the Times: I guess I don’t care to be called scum or slime, so I’m writing to say I was happy to see Jeffrey Gettleman’s fairly accurate coverage of the adult industry (“L.A. Economy’s Dirty Secret”) in last week’s Times. But it made me sad to see a letter in Thursday’s editorial section that really slammed the adult industry. How can I condense the following into three paragraphs?

Pornography is not dirty. The air in Los Angeles is dirty; metro rail construction is dirty in more ways than one; diapers are dirty. Sometimes even videotapes are dirty, and leave big gobs of crud on the heads of your VCRs. But entertainment, sexually oriented or otherwise, is not “dirty.” We pornographers are used to being explicit, but I object to being called “dirty.”

Pornography is just one name for that type of the entertainment, also known as sexually oriented entertainment, described in Gettleman’s article. Not all pornography is the same, any more than any other form of entertainment is the same. Porn ranges from sublime eroticism to bored copulation on dirty sheets. In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution allows us to decide which types we prefer to make and watch unless individual local jurisdictions decide otherwise.

Some people believe that pornography and obscenity are synonymous. They are not. Many things other than pornography might be considered morally offensive: sports utility vehicles, leaf blowers, HMO’s, seventeen page phone bills and illegal immigration come to mind. Obviously many people not only do not find adult entertainment morally offensive, they enjoy it enough to purchase it. The market drives the product. All rules of capitalism apply in today’s adult entertainment business.

Because not every videocassette release requires local film permit from the local office, Gettleman’s figures from the film permit office don’t begin to scratch the surface of the amount of adult product that is created and consumed.

I do agree with Art Croney, the conservative lobbyist from Sacramento, that the success of pornography is a reflection of the deterioration of American culture. People are having problems building lasting, loving nurturing relationships, yet still have healthy mammalian sex drives with few safe and appropriate outlets. Watching pornography and masturbating may be a better alternative than engaging in risky casual sex.

Adult media flourished in the San Fernando Valley long before VHS videotape and VCR’s. Tijuana Bibles may or may not have been printed over the border and smuggled in through Southern California. Girlie magazines were printed in Los Angeles County and distributed quietly for a long time before video proved a better delivery system for sexually oriented material.

Indeed, vibrant porn industries once flourished in both New York and San Francisco. Unfortunately the East Coast’s late switch to videotape and the West Coast’s Mitchell Brothers’ tragedy, Los Angeles County and, in particular, the San Fernando Valley became porn central for the United States.

The porn industry itself decries the 10,000 titles released. What industry wants a saturated market? Out of your 1999 projection of 10,000 released video movies, maybe 600 will have actual production values of $25,000 or more. These are the ones with permits, or which shoot in permitted studios. For every $200,000 production, there are five thousand $8,000 productions.

The other 4,999 titles are repackaged and recompiled or shot in someone’s bedroom in Nebraska. As home video cameras saturated the market, every entreprenurial voyeur with a video camera and an erection popped into the business. Major production companies were diverted with governmental interference at the federal level and the market was flooded with amateurish, vintage, cheaply duplicated cassettes available at wholesale level for as little as $1.65, just a few pennies over duplicating cost.

Back when just those 600 annually released titles were available to consumers on video, we each had a larger share of a high-priced market, as well as money coming in from theatrical distribution. We adult entertainment industry veterans may bemoan the days when we got mainstream prices for theatrical adult releases, but fortunately the Internet and new forms of technology are going to make a major change in marketing for all commerce, not just porn.

Even though Gettleman’s article focused on bigger video companies headquartered in the valley for over ten years, pornography is made all over the country, and indeed, all over the world. Anywhere there’s a phone line and a video camera, someone is taping material and uploading it into the Internet, and some of it is their own naked butts. For example, over the years I’ve learned that although Canadians enjoy sex and porn just as much as Americans, they have trouble getting it. It never occurred to me to ask the Canadian government for a subsidy to make porn, though.

Performing in adult videos is risky employment, though far less risky than some. I take a First Amendment risk every time I create entertainment. I currently have health insurance by virtue of having performed in adult videos. I concern myself with the health of all my co-workers including requiring mandatory condom use for certain types of sex.

Most female performers are young, just as holds true in other media. All types of adult entertainment exists. “87 & Still Bangin” may have curiosity value, but it is indeed enjoyable to watch healthy young mammals in lust Reminds us of our glory days, because many of us don’t lose our libidos to age.

The majority of pornographers are capitalists who are prepared to take certain risks in business. Most are entrepreneurs working as hard as they can to stay within the law while making a profit. Some pornographers are perverts with cameras, who’ve discovered they can make money off documenting their own personal sexual fantasies. A few are artists with something to say via this form of expression.

The First Amendment, that important part of our Federal Constitution, allows Mayor Riordan the right to say that the prevalence of adult business casts a “black eye” on “our” city in the Los Angeles Times. It also gives me permission to say that personally, I feel the same way about Tutor-Saliba and TCI Cable. Perhaps Mayor Riordan would like to personally look through those 10,000 new adult video titles released each year to see which ones he decides are not protected by the First Amendment and therefore inappropriate for the rest of us to watch.

I am thrilled at Gettelman’s conclusion, that porn seems poised for expansion, and delighted to hear that adult entertainment is having its most prosperous year ever. I have some great entertainment in the works, and it’s good to know I’ll be able to pay the rent.

World Pornography Conference

The Three R's: Reading, Writing and Raunch
Jon Scott
 
08/31/1999
Fox News: Fox Files

SCOTT: At one university, you can take a course called Pornography in Modern Society. At another, Advanced Studies in Pornography.

Catherine Herridge now on the new three R's - reading, writing, raunch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX FILES: Our society is inundated with pornography - in movies, music videos, and especially on the Worldwide Web.

But there's one place you may be surprised to find the triple-X's: the hallowed halls of America's universities.

BRIAN EDWARDS-TIEKERT, WESLEYAN SENIOR: Pornography is a taboo subject, but it's out there. And if you want to understand our world, it's one of the things that you have to address.

DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: This is a plot. This is a conspiracy to undermine the basic foundation of decency and sexual morality in our society.

HERRIDGE: Across the country, from the Ivy Leagues to state schools, courses in sexually explicit subjects are offered to undergraduates.

MEGAN WOLFF, WESLEYAN SENIOR: The very fact that it's such a big deal - that it's really not an issue that you could touch with a ten-foot pole in so many cultures and so many times - I think gives it all the more reason to need to be examined.

HERRIDGE: Megan Wolff and Lisa Charbonneau are students at Wesleyan, a $30,000-a-year private university in rural Connecticut. They took a course entitled Pornography: The Writing of Prostitutes, which caused an uproar when this headline ran in a local paper.

LISA CHARBONNEAU, 1999 WESLEYAN GRADUATE: I think when the story was picked up, the academic content of the course was not emphasized -and I think that's probably what triggered the sort of emotional, hysterical response that is quite unwarranted.

If you sat in the class every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and 20 minutes, I think that maybe you wouldn't feel that way at all.

HERRIDGE: But some people did when they learned about the final project for this literature course.

Students were required to create a work of pornography as part of their grade. One student chose to follow a man's eyes as he masturbated. Another student dressed as a dominatrix for a project on sadomasochism.

WOLFF: I've seen a lot smuttier Victoria's Secrets (sic) catalogues than - than this project certainly was.

HERRIDGE: Does sadomasochism have a place in the classroom?

CHARBONNEAU: Well, I think everything has a place in the classroom.

WOLFF: It wasn't exactly shocking.

CHARBONNEAU: Leather pants are leather pants. Who really cares?

HERRIDGE: Apparently Wesleyan did.

University President Doug Bennett called for a review of the course when it gained national attention, even though no students had complained.

EDWARDS-TIEKERT: Where are our priorities? Are we concerned about our missions as a university, or are we concerned about what the press thinks of us?

HERRIDGE: No Wesleyan officials would talk to FOX FILES about the course - which was the brainchild of this woman: tenured professor Hope Weissman, who taught it for two semesters.

Others, however, have not been silent - like radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

SCHLESSINGER: When you're dealing with something so insidious as pornography being mainstreamed as an academic course worth (sic) of intellectual assessment in colleges and universities, it's not going to get quiet as long as you have people who are willing to stand up.

HERRIDGE: Wesleyan's troubles pale in comparison to the controversy at a state school in Northridge, California.

An investigation is under way to see whether public money was used to sponsor a conference on pornography. Ray Haynes is a California state senator.

SENATOR RAY HAYNES, CALIFORNIA STATE WHIP: We have to ask a serious question as a state legislature: Is this the kind of activity that we want our universities involved in?

In essence, what the university was doing was allowing its name to be used for the public relations purpose of improving the image of the porn industry.

HERRIDGE: At last year's world pornography conference, nearly 500 porn stars and professors met for three days to discuss topics like Sex Toys and Porn 101.

HARRIS MIRKIN, Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI - KANSAS CITY: Pornography is one of the issues that is being used to justify censorship in the country.

HERRIDGE: Harris Mirkin is a professor at the University of Missouri, where he lectures on censorship and adult pornography.

At the conference, he presented this paper: Child Pornography: Forbidden Images in the Erotic Garden.

FOX FILES sat down with him, where, for the first time, he discusses his controversial position that, quote, if adult pornography is permitted, child pornography should be permitted.

MIRKIN: I don't think it should be illegal to possess child pornography. I think it should be illegal to make, if you want, child pornography.

HERRIDGE: So you think all the laws are wrong on this?

MIRKIN: There's nothing wrong with questioning the laws.

HERRIDGE: But pornographic pictures of children hurt them, exploit them.

MIRKIN: I don't think that people ought to be used sexually against their will.

HERRIDGE: Aren't you really contributing, because you own that picture?

MIRKIN: No. If I walk down the street and I see a picture on the ground and I pick up that picture, am I contributing to what the picture is a picture of?

HERRIDGE: Certainly you're not saying to me that if you are given a picture of a child that's exploiting him sexually, you're innocent as long as you haven't paid money for it.

MIRKIN: If I'm given a picture, I think there is no way in which I have contributed to the exploitation of that kid.

HERRIDGE: But Congress disagrees. In 1984, they banned the possession and distribution of all child pornography. And since then, law enforcement has aggressively pursued offenders.

No one has yet to challenge the law on the grounds of academic freedom.