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Pondering the Porn Industry Bailout
Columnist Ron Hart looks at recent tongue-in-cheek requests by adult-entertainment magnates Larry Flynt and Joe Francis to get in on bailout bonanza and sums up the nefarious logic at work in Washington's actions:
This latest request punctuates the absurdity of what we have become. We are moon-walking up the slippery slope of financial disaster set by Congress with its own special blend of social engineering, government intervention, spending for the moment and utter incompetence. It has privatized profits and socialized losses with its meddling in corporate America, all the while putting itself at the center of it all.
Guy Montag|1.12.09 @ 7:35AM|#
I am glad these were tongue-in-cheek requests, or something in
cheek anyway.
Conversely, I am amazed that the visual segment of the adult
entertainment industry still makes any money at all with all of the
free images out there.
Perhaps more analysis is needed. This may take a while.
ed|1.12.09 @ 8:32AM|#
Somebody should tell FOX News that they were "tongue-in-cheek requests." The ex- weathermen and beauty queens there were righteously indignant at the prospect of bailing out Larry Flynt.
|1.12.09 @ 9:00AM|#
It's painful watching someone like Hart, who tries so hard to be funny, and fails so miserably.
|1.12.09 @ 9:06AM|#
Ron Hart- just like P J O'Rourke. Yup.
They both (presumably) have ten fingers and ten toes, anyway.
|1.12.09 @ 9:15AM|#
Seems to me that US Government has totally lost its mind.
JT
www.anonymity.at.tc
|1.12.09 @ 9:32AM|#
Larry Flynt is the Greatest American Hero.
Cue Joey Scarbury
♫ Believe it or not... ♫
Kolohe|1.12.09 @ 9:52AM|#
Many of the male actors may have to go back to actually
delivering pizzas for real
This was a good line, and well-delivered, so to speak. But he
trails off after this (and repeats this same joke another
time)
That's the thing I've noticed about Hart columns; he'll start of
with some relatively decent 'A' material, but seldom has enough to
sustain one or two paragraphs, much less an entire column.
T|1.12.09 @ 9:55AM|#
I feel dumber and less amusing for having read that.
And Warren, I dunno about the greatest, but he's certainly up
there. You have to admire a man that went to court for his right to
call someone an asshole.
|1.12.09 @ 9:57AM|#
I am not a Randian but if this isn't Atlas Shrugged come to life, nothing is. If it were a novel it would be a comic one. It is like Oscar Wilde writing a Rand novel only played out in real life.
|1.12.09 @ 10:02AM|#
That's the thing I've noticed about Hart columns; he'll
start of with some relatively decent 'A' material, but seldom has
enough to sustain one or two paragraphs, much less an entire
column.
I don't know Kolohe. I thought he kept it punchy. I smiled all they
way to the tearful end. he doesn't repeat the pizza line so much as
he alludes to it. I like the following line even better.
Recent hardships in the industry have resulted in half of the workers out of jobs. That means 4,000 "actors," 2,000 "actresses," 800 cameramen, 400 fluffers and one writer. I think his name is Murray.
At any rate he's a thousand times more readable than Steve
Chapman.
|1.12.09 @ 10:13AM|#
The death of the porn industry is no different conceptually than
the death of any other obsolete industry. We have a good,
pornography, that was once produced in an expensive and inefficient
manner (8mm films sent in brown paper wrappers and shown in run
down theaters) that is now thanks to technology delivered in a very
efficent manner via the internet. In addition, technology and the
fall of the Iron curtain has opened up new sources of the commodity
and allowed people to make and distribute the product in their
homes. All of this has resulted in the amont of resources that
comsumers have to spend on porn to go down. This allows that money
to be spent elsewhere. It also means we need to pay fewer people to
produce the commodity which frees those people up to put their
productive capacities elswhere and still have the needed supply of
porn. In the long run everyone wins.
The bottomline is that it is absurd to bailout the porn industry
and stop this progress. Of course, the same logic applies to every
other obsolete industry to.
T. Brady|1.12.09 @ 10:46AM|#
Oh hes gets blown on National TV enough allready.
Sez the dude with the handle 'Boston'.
Boston|1.12.09 @ 11:16AM|#
I've never really got why they use DVD sales as the measure in this day and age. Also, rentals? Is that from like brick and mortar adult stores? Because it seems like that would naturally go down. Where do they get these numbers anyways? What company does porn analytics?
LurkerBold|1.12.09 @ 11:18AM|#
Boston, like all Capitalist/Corporatist analysis it is just a big shell game to exploit the workers and in this case mostly women and other minorities.
|1.12.09 @ 12:23PM|#
If you took the exploitation of women and minorities out of porn, you wouldn't have anything left at all.
|1.12.09 @ 1:05PM|#
it's a long, hard road to economic recovery, and we need stiff policy support from the government to get us back in the pink. i'm in favor of anything that would lube the wheels of commerce so we can come back from where we are to a satisfying fiscal climax.
|1.12.09 @ 1:10PM|#
That's the thing I've noticed about Hart columns; he'll
start of with some relatively decent 'A' material, but seldom has
enough to sustain one or two paragraphs, much less an entire
column.
He'll never make it in porn without stamina.
|1.12.09 @ 1:15PM|#
The porn industry isn't going anywhere. It's just saturated to
the point where upstart producers don't automatically make money as
was the case a few years ago.
The big, reputable, high-quality producers that didn't base their
entire business model on selling DVDs are still making money hand
over fist, so to speak, and will almost certainly continue to do
so. As for amateurs, if I want to watch a real woman having sex
I'll have sex with a real woman.
|1.12.09 @ 1:18PM|#
And Larry Flynt definitely falls into the category of porn dinosaurs. Other than name recognition, Hustler has no real advantage to exploit in the Internet porn market. They've been totally dependent on selling mags and DVDs.
|1.12.09 @ 7:06PM|#
If you took the exploitation of women and minorities out of
porn, you wouldn't have anything left at all.
Just a bunch of DVDs of fully dressed white men pretending to slap
asses that aren't there.
Howard Huge|1.12.09 @ 8:08PM|#
Hart is as funny and bright as any columnist working today. This shows how he can take news events a make it LOL funny. All the while making his point. Brilliant.
Janice|1.12.09 @ 8:11PM|#
Agreed, Hart is damn funny. And to be that humorous and still
make a point at the sillyness that Congress has become is why he is
on fire now. Our paper just picked him up.
Folks who do not understand the libertarians views are much more
accepting of them when parceled out by Hart and his trademark
humor.
Wanka|1.12.09 @ 8:20PM|#
This was edited out, but in our paper where Hart said: "Along the lines of a private market solution to this problem, I would suggest retraining some of these workers. Perhaps in the area of tax preparation, since they seem to like to work with people and in a situation where someone is to get screwed. But be real specific when you ask one of them to handle your extension, that could get awkward"
Ewalk|1.12.09 @ 8:23PM|#
He also said that the male porn actors could be retrained to be
gas station attendants. If only they could be kept from taking the
hose and spraying the cars when they are done...:)
Much of his better stuff gets edited by some of these papers. But
make no mistake, Hart is a damn genius.
|1.12.09 @ 8:31PM|#
This Woody comment is pretty sporty too: "Most classes somehow
revolve around a doorbell being rung, either by a pizza delivery
man or a plumber. Many of his students have gone on to win acting
honors in the annual adult movie actors' guild awards. While
Hollywood calls its award an Oscar, I think they call theirs a
Woody."
Hart is good, I am pretty sure John-David is some kind of
unpublished angry writer. Good luck with that.
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