SICKNESS

I’m going to be sick.

Keeping pace with the “USGBCT” (“U.S. Govt. Bottomless Checkbook Thinking”), on Wednesday of last week, unabashed entertainment moguls, Joe Francis and Larry Flynt, announced they have requested the US government graciously grant them 5 billion dollars, claiming the fragile economy has damaged their beloved professional field.

I’m not kidding. The porn industry has requested a bailout. (...didn’t we ask somewhere here weeks ago, if you start distributing free money, where will the line for handouts end?)

Flynt semi-humbly said, "With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly." Francis (producer of a video series with such wonderfully titled episodes that we will refrain from offering any further publicity) added 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."

Cherished by the American people?

True, many in our nation significantly invest in pornography (I hesitate before referring to it as any kind of adult “entertainment”). Do a quick fact check on the internet. We spend billions. We spend more than the revenues of the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball combined. We spend more than the revenues of the leading technology companies combined... Microsoft, Google, Amazon, EBay, Yahoo!, Apple, etc. Half of all hotel guests rent X-rated videos. There are nearly 5 million porn websites. 260 porn sites are added daily. 90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn (usually when doing homework). And 80% of 15-17 year olds have had hard-core exposure. Average age of first exposure? Somewhere between 9 and 11. (Note: special thanks to www.nationalcoalition.org, www.techcrunch.com, and www.familysafemedia.com for their undoubtedly alarming research.)

Yet perhaps Francis and Flynt have never met a woman, whose husband callously discarded both his vows and his wife because he couldn’t control his sexual obsession. Perhaps Francis and Flynt have never met a man OR woman who lost his/her job, career, and all ambition, because a sexual addiction became his/her most pressing priority. And perhaps Francis and Flynt have never interviewed a child who’s lost a parent, because sex was more important to that parent than their own flesh and blood.

Cherished? An industry we can’t live without?

No, a perversion cherished only by the padded pocketbooks of Francis and Flynt.


AR