This weekend, I was going to blog about framing the tax cuts as the 'Pornography Stimulus Plan', since the last tax cut rebate benefited few sectors other than the pornography industry. It would be similar to the Republican term for the estate tax--'the death' tax.
And then Larry Flynt arrived and screwed everything up:
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."
"We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout," he told CNN Wednesday.
Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger -- DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.
But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."
"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."
So far, there has been no congressional reaction to the request.
Rarely am I speechless. This is one of those times.
On a more serious note, this does show how stupid incurring debt for certain things are. Here are three things, and one of them is not like the others:
- Accumulating debt, either through a 'bailout' or a tax cut, to produce more porn.
- Accumulating debt to buy consumer electronics by way of income tax cuts.
- Accumulating debt to rebuild our decaying human, physical, and technological infrastructure.
All of these will provide jobs, but one of these is not like the others. Can you guess which one?
This is why having forty percent of the stimulus as tax cuts is stupid. And it takes porn for some to figure that out....
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I suppose it's possible that Flynt and Francis are trying to make some sort of libertarian political point with this (though I really don't think Francis is anyone I would take seriously). But it seems to me that bailout money is largely to be reserved for industries of major economic or strategic interest -- manufacturing, airlines, banks, that sort of thing. I find it very hard to believe that any sector of the entertainment industry -- porn included -- falls under that category, especially when it's possible to do some pretty spectacular things with a $300 camcorder and a laptop.
Maybe if the porn industry stopped gouging their buyers by making them spend twice as much on a DVD as they would on a Hollywood release and started promoting more female-friendly material I'd have some sympathy, but I'd still think a bailout was a ludicrous waste of money.
Maybe, just maybe, Flynt is using sarcasm to try and make a point: There are people that are getting this "bailout" money for unintended purposes. And if people are getting money for purposes that it wasn't intended, hey, why not take a shot!