A Bailout for Porn

The thought occurs that things must be really bad if the porn industry needs a bailout. Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis are hitting up Congress for a five billion dollar-er-stimulus package.

Next thing you know, the Columbian Cartel is going to want a bailout. Why not? Everyone else does.

It was only inevitable that some of the strangest people in America would show up with their hands out when a trillion dollars comes into play. A porn bailout is not more to be unexpected than a bailout of any other business. Why try to be a smart businessman and do some of the more traditional things to expand market share when the government is just handing out free money? It is so much easier to hire a lobbyist or two and send them up to Washington.

Mind, one suspects that most people, even regular customers of porn, are going to be shocked and offended by the idea of a porn bailout. And Flynt and Francis are the worse of the worse in that industry.

Larry Flynt's Hustler is indescribable tasteless and raunchy, making the act of sex not beautiful and pleasurable, but something that makes one want to throw up just thinking about. Hustler makes its tamer competitors like Playboy seem wholesome by comparison.

Anyone who has had insomnia and watched TV to try to cure it is familiar with Joe Francis' Girls Gone Wild. Joe Francis has made millions producing videos of drunken college coeds taking off their tops and indulging in fake, lesbian make out sessions. Some of the Girls Gone Wild, however, have been underage, which caused Joe Francis to spend nearly a year in jail for purveying kiddie prorn, among other things.

Of course a close examination would suggest that the porn industry in general is hardly in need of a bailout. The problem Flynt and Francis face is that the venue for porn has shifted away from magazines and DVDs to the Internet. Why go to the bother of buying Larry Flynt's disgusting magazine or Joe Francis' silly videos when for just a point and a click one can indulge in any sort of porn from the tamer, Playboy Channel kind, to some of the more exotic, bizarre sorts of things from off shore servers that good taste forbids one to describe.

A bailout for porn? One thinks not, though one has to thank Larry Flynt and Joe Francis for one thing. By asking for a bailout for porn, they have neatly illustrated what a farce a giant bailout package is.

Source: Francis and Flynt Hustle Congress for Porn Bailout, Natalie Finn, E!, January 7th, 2009