If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the A-B-C of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems. – Edward HodnettNothing rings so loudly in our ears as the things that we heard someone else never say. – Me
This week, Rick Santorum found himself in the crosshairs not just of the Left-leaning media, but the media on the right, over one of several policy statements posted on his campaign website. The offense? Promising to prosecute laws that the Obama administration has shown no interest in prosecuting. Were these laws against illegal immigration? No, although being in support of those would have been controversial enough for some who supposedly occupy space on the right. No, his crime was far worse. He suggested that he would have his attorney general prosecute existing obscenity laws against hardcore pornographic materials. From his own website on the issue:
For many decades, the American public has actively petitioned the United States Congress for laws prohibiting distribution of hard-core adult pornography.
Congress has responded. Current federal “obscenity” laws prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier. Rick Santorum believes that federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced. “If elected President, I will appoint an Attorney General who will do so.”
The Daily Caller printed a story this week on Santorum’s policy statement that launched a firestorm of outrage by people who furiously tweeted, commented on Facebook, or blogged with one hand on how ridiculous this concept is, and how it is yet more evidence that he is unserious about becoming President. While the cries of “Get your hands of my [sticky] porn!” rose from many quarters, people who should know better began to weigh in with opinions about things that he didn’t say. I could cover them, but Stacy McCain has done a pretty good job of compiling some of them in his piece on the subject, which you should read, as well as covering the very interesting point that this breathless “news” story has actually been posted on the candidate’s site since JANUARY 9th of this year, but is only now a threat to America getting its rocks off. Stacy McCain also has asked the follow-up questions regarding the coverage of this “story” that in days gone by might have been asked by a good reporter, which makes me believe I should actually hit his tip jar. Hell, I guess not all of this should do this simply as a method to keep from succumbing to the gaslighting being done to us by the legacy media. And predictably, as the week wore on, the usual suspects weighed in with the usual answers.
“I find it ironic that Republicans (like Santorum) are out there wanting less government and government intruding into our lives, but when it comes to moral issues they want government to legislate morality,” says [Steven] Hirsch [co-founder and Chairman of Vivid Entertainment]. “It doesn’t work. It will never work.”
Thus once again ignoring that the bulk of law “legislates morality”, as it is intended to punish and discourage behavior that society finds is bad (murder, stealing, rape), and to not interfere with something that society finds is not harmful (having an honest job), or even encourage that which society finds beneficial (buying a home, saving money, having children). It isn’t that “legislating morality” doesn’t work, Mr. Hirsch. Law does it all the time. The real question is “Who’s morality shall we legislate?”
What I find surprising about this story is not that people on the left and the right are getting very excited about what Mr. Santorum didn’t say (that he is coming to your home to take all of your porn videos, and copies of “Sex With Animals”). If there is a sign of the times for our age, it is hearing the things never said, whether is Maureen Dowd hearing Joe Wilson’s unsaid “, boy!” at the end of his declaration to the President Downgrade, or the many, many plans for a christofacist theocracy heard by anti-christian and anti-theist bigots whenever someone speaks about the strong Christian influence on our body of law, our culture, and our founding as a nation.
Instead, the real story is the questions no one is asking. Questions like “Why do we consider it acceptable that we have such a body of laws to begin with, if the notion of their enforcement is so ridiculous/silly/offensive or wrong? We have all sorts of laws that regulate what materials can and cannot be sent through the mail. The FCC will issue fines for dropping f-bombs on the air, or having a “wardrobe malfunction” during a Super Bowl halftime show, and arguably these actions are far more tame than a download of “Snow White and the Well-Hung Dwarfs”, a DVD of “Debbie Does Everyone”, or the latest issue of “Barnyard Love”. If the idea of these laws is as ridiculous as Mr. Flynt suggests, then why doesn’t he spearhead the movement to have them repealed? Certainly, if they do not accurately reflect the moral sensibilities of a majority of Americans, then it should be a relatively easy matter for Congress to repeal them, right? After all, the issue is much more titillating and sexy than addressing insanely out of control spending, or even passing a budget, right? This is the same Congress that had time for hearings on baseball, and having professional activists and part-time students come and give testimony on the burning need to violate religious schools’ conscience rights and provide astronomically priced contraceptives to students who are so busy training to be the 1% that they need $1000.00 worth of birth control a year.
What does it say about us as a people that some among us feel so strongly in favor of hardcore pornography that we consider unfettered access to it to be a right, despite what our laws say about it? What does it say about us that the idea of continual non-enforcement of law is somehow considered to be a legitimate and laudable goal? Does this concept edify or delegitimize the notion of rule of law in a society that is supposed to be based upon laws and not on men? And what does it say about us that we as a society are so quick and eager to vilify a man who states among his many goals a desire to have law enforcement under his administration enforce the laws? When I ask myself those questions, I don’t like the answers.
Larry Flynt can say that there is no “there” there all he likes. As someone whose home is built upon the furious fapping of others, I would expect nothing less from him. But there is something about systematic exposure to hardcore porn that diminishes the humanity of both the object and the end-user. The gratification without effort or consequence can kill the ability to relate to and recognize the satisfaction of another, driving the emotional intimacy of a healthy relationship extinct as the use of another person merely to satisfy lustful impulses becomes a primary goal. Creativity also suffers, as we become programmed to react to what someone else has decided is sexy. But don’t just take my word for it. It’s recognized in all sorts of interesting quarters these days.
I’m no fan of porn but I think you misread Santorums position.
First off I am unaware of any laws Obama or anyone else isn’t enforcing. I do know in the first year of his admin Holder was involved in a suit going after the “Girls gone Wild” folks.
All the laws I’ve seen on the federal level for the past 20-30 years seem focused on child porn and potential access and targeting by and of minors.There is always an underlying battle between anti porn and 1st amendment types but the former always seem to lose.
Also relative to the campaign trail Santorums announcement seems way too related to his signing on to the recently rejuvenated values crowd and their petition. Said petition/pledge signed by Rickie but not Mitt. All seems like he’s waving the bloody rag.
Also relative to the campaign trail Santorums announcement seems way too related to his signing on to the recently rejuvenated values crowd and their petition. Said petition/pledge signed by Rickie but not Mitt. All seems like he’s waving the bloody rag.
I’m not sure that you bothered reading the links.
If this was “an announcement”, it wasn’t a new one, since the DC was talking about a position statement posted on his campaign website at least as far back as January, when ironically, two of the three other four-letter candidates went on the record with similar statments, Mitt in writing, and Newt in a face-to-face interview. I guess we can take that committment as seriously as we take anything else Mitt says.
And for the record, I too fell for the impression that this was somehow a new focus of Santorum, and was asking why this was his [main] priority. But I didn’t know that it was actually one position among many that he had committed to writing, and not something new that he was flogging on the stump.
First off I am unaware of any laws Obama or anyone else isn’t enforcing. I do know in the first year of his admin Holder was involved in a suit going after the “Girls gone Wild” folks.
I’ll put aside immigration law, bankruptcy law for certain entities, and Contitutional law as it applies to conscience and religious rights and instead point out that while the DOJ’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force did prosecute the man responsible for those videos, Holder folded the group into the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in spring 2011. At this same time, some in Congress perceived this as a lack of interest in pursuing such cases.
All the laws I’ve seen on the federal level for the past 20-30 years seem focused on child porn and potential access and targeting by and of minors.
Which isn’t entirely true, as the FCC has had the responsibility to pursue obscenity complaints for a lot longer than that, and 18 USC 71 has also been around for a very long time.
The story is that the “controversy” is selective, not that it is something that only Santorum talked about.
I don’t know how about we start at immigration Which doesn’t even include his ignoring of the illegality of self proclaimed “sanctuary cities” or his open warfare against Arizona in it’s pursuit to force the Fed to live up to it’s constitutional responsibility to protect it from invasion.
Then let’s go to voter intimidation Which doesn’t include the (in)Justice Departments assault on voter ID laws.
Or how about his abandonment of the Defense of Marriage Act
There is also the de facto contempt of court with respect to oil drilling in the Gulf and this is just for starters and doesn’t even include his open violations of the constitution from health care to the use of the military.
The man is openly contemptuous of the law. Apparently he has taken the views of his hero Derek Bell to heart.
Yes, and those of his predecessors to
jackbootboot.Let me clarify that my comment about law enforcement pertained only to the subject of pornography.
Alfie, read the Politco article I linked to…there are some interesting assertions made in the 3-4 pages of the piece.
Porn runs through every aspect of this country. A few years ago, thousands of Pentagon employees were being investigated for illegal (child) porn trafficking. I’m unsure to what back-burner that went. It remains one of our biggest exports and now readily found everywhere in all the nations we have conquered. It’s our calling card of sorts, along with drugs and weapons dealings. Some see it as free speech and free enterprise wrapped up in one neat fleshly package.
It probably has been one of the biggest forces involved in ripping apart our family structure, certainly since the explosion of the internet. I’m sure it destroys marriages and relationships.
Our laws are helpful only if the entirety of society follows them. Unfortunately, money still rules the roost. The situation we find ourselves in has been engineered and marketed to us our whole lives in this nation.
Until the profit incentive is replaced with a real moral compass, we can make all the laws and enforcement provisions we can want/afford and still not “fix” this society.
As for this being an attack on Santorum, sure. Not the first and certainly not the last. This rodeo’s not over yet.
Well, so much for Santorum. Not only won’t he get the nomination, but were he to get it, he might get 100 electoral votes at most.
No, I wouldn’t vote for him, either.
Well, if this is a disqualifier for him, I guess Newt and Mitt will go begging when it comes time for your vote too, right?
It really doesn’t matter how you feel about porn, under whatever definition you give it, BiW. Santorum’s priorities are wrong. Worse, he’s targeting the Internet — and I’d walk through a napalm fire to keep politicians’ hands off the Internet, no matter how virtuous their rationale.
The great problem with conservative politics and politicians generally is and has always been that when conservatives attain power, they do exactly what liberals have done: they act to advance the anti-freedom aspects of their agenda, and essentially ignore the rest of it. We’ve had one exception to that pattern in this century, and may God grant him eternal bliss.
While neither Gingrich nor Romney is a dream candidate, I have yet to hear either one argue for interventions into the last free medium of communication on Earth. I can hold my nose long enough to vote for either of them. Rick Santorum, however, has lost me — and I’d bet the mortgage money that he’s lost enough other conservative-leaning Americans to render him a guaranteed loser in November.
Or to put it differently, conservatives delight in a non-intrusive government unless the intrusion advances one of their pet peeves (like porn, homosexuality, etc.). It’s interesting that conservative’s commitment to freedom and liberty seems to hit a snag when matters of sexuality come into play. Why? Perhaps because of the tight link of modern conservatism to religion?
” It remains one of our biggest exports and now readily found everywhere in all the nations we have conquered. It’s our calling card of sorts, along with drugs and weapons dealings.”
All the nations we have conquered? And what nations would those be? Our calling card? Riiight, until we came along and conquered these nations, they had no expressions of visual sexuality, weapons or use of intoxicants….those poor pure people were obviously living a utopian existence until the big bad wolf came along and conquered them.
You are kidding right? You just forgot the sarc tag right?
Okay then… We brought to them democracy, free market capitalism, and freed them from religious tyranny – ready or not.
***SARC***
Well BIC I think I’ve got where you’re coming from especially in your closing para’s. I still disagree.
I’ve gone to the othermccain site and have really enjoyed the irony of the ads on offer. Near porno in quality the cleave shot on the one dressed in a yellow skin tight biker outfit– two thumbs up.
Candidates need to be assessed in the full context of their character. I’ve watched Rick since he was in Congress. I believe he is eager to display the fervor of his Catholicism.I find him in fact to be dishonest though when it comes to attacking via the social issues schtick.
Alfie, the point wasn’t to advocate for Santorum as much as it was to ask why he was singled out on this issue for something he said months ago, when Romney and Mitt said something almost identical at approximately the same time. Why is this? Do we simply assume that Romney and Gingrich don’t mean it? And if so, why is that better?
As for your observation of Santorum and his eagerness to “display his catholicism”, whatever that means, could you help us with some concrete examples from his time in Congress?
I don’t remember the exact statistic but in the past 25 to 30 years of Internet explosion and the corresponding ease of access to pornography, the incidence of rape has dropped dramatically in the United States. Could be coincidental but perhaps not.
From a very simplistic perspective BiW I agree with you that laws are on the books to be enforced. If we’re not gonna enforce them why bother having them? I don’t think you’ve proven your point that Obama is soft on porn …. particularly since the only porn that is really illegal is kiddie-porn and snuff-porn and I’ve seen no evidence that purveyors of this stuff get off (pardon the pun).
Finally, every time Santorum opens his mouth about social issues he invites the criticism that his priorities are out of whack. We’ve got an economy in the dumper and a war that needs to end. Who cares if folks are looking at titties on their computer?
P.S. Off topic but …. it would also help if Santorum learned how the government he wants to lead actually works. He seem to think speaking English is a prerequisite to statehood. You’re big on the Constitution BiW, can you find that one for me?
It isn’t there. But then, I’d also be hard-pressed for an example of when we’d ever offered that to a territory that didn’t have English as its primary language, or why we’d want to. After all, that worked out so great for Canada. Just ask any anglophone in Montreal, or someone paying to have every official document in British Columbia printed in two languages instead of one.
That’s not what the college campus stats will tell you. Now whether you believe the statistics are not (and I suspect much of the reporting is fraudulent), one of four or five women (I forget the exact stats) have reported some sort of molestation or rape across the nation.
Tex, has the recent WordPress snafu robbed you of your Nancy Pelosi face stretch avatar? I quite liked that one.
Here’s one chart I found on the rape statistic. We’re talking over a 30 year time frame.
@ BiW: stances on gay marriage,Terry Schiavo and ardent abortion stance all creditied to his faith.
I don’t think any of those stances would be exclusive to Catholicism.
@BiW
I can only stress that context matters. It isn’t that Romney or Gingrich don’t mean it,it is that Santorum and Bachmann REALLY mean it and push the message for those that want to (need to) hear it. Obviously Santorum couldn’t actually succeed in policing the internet and Main St. to the point his overall message implies.
I think that it is why it is having legs for and against Santorum.
This is so stuck in my craw because it is an area that separates me from self proclaimed conservatives. A group so strident to have govt. out of lives demanding it to be present. I don’t get it.
I can only stress that context matters. It isn’t that Romney or Gingrich don’t mean it,it is that Santorum and Bachmann REALLY mean it and push the message for those that want to (need to) hear it. Obviously Santorum couldn’t actually succeed in policing the internet and Main St. to the point his overall message implies.
So, as I said, Mitt and Newt don’t really mean it, but Santorum does. It certainly is an interesting position to occupy, as you tip your hat to a candidate who probably doesn’t mean what he says. As for the effectivness, I’m not so sure… you have been paying attention to the stories about websites being shut down by the US government, haven’t you?
This is so stuck in my craw because it is an area that separates me from self proclaimed conservatives. A group so strident to have govt. out of lives demanding it to be present.
So you would also strip the FCC of its authority to regulate and issue fines for broadcasting “obscenity”? I don’t know that everyone would be excited about having a real-life boob tube over regular broadcast channels, but since the question also implicates questions of local law, why do you presume that it isn’t a “conservative” idea to allow a local community to make decisions about what does and does not violate that community’s “standards”?
It’s interesting that conservative’s commitment to freedom and liberty seems to hit a snag when matters of sexuality come into play. Why? Perhaps because of the tight link of modern conservatism to religion?
You are so cute when you babble your meaningless observations on shit that you have deliberately chosen to remain ignorant about. I’ll repeat it, since you weren’t paying attention the other 6,745,290 times that I’ve told you.
A great deal of law is based on someone’s idea of morality. Britain and the US share a common law history that still underlies the culture in both societies. Understanding this common law doesn’t require any great leap of legal intuition. All you really need is a copy of Blackstone’s Commentaries, and in your case, a Bible, and then you will have the same understanding of law that the people who founded this nation, and who lived and worked in its legal system for a century and a half had. Religion was part and parcel of the law, and the philosophy that informed it, and to divorce the two leaves you with law that has little or no meaning, and that seems to be arbitrary and caprecious to those who like yourself, think much, but understand little. And the more change is orchestrated upon such a shallow understanding, the farther you get from a meaningful rule of law, and the closer you get to a mobocracy with a very thin veneer of legitimacy. But then, that’s been the goal of “progressivism” all along.
Only have time for the FCC part:
Yeah I would strip the FCC of a lot of its powers and I would definitely allow the market to dictate programming and absolutely not bow to the fanatics begging for false populism.
Guilty of liberty and capitalism. How freakin un-American of me!
For some reason, WordPress keeps telling me I have to logon on. So I do, then it gives me the same error message and sends my comments into oblivion.
Maybe they banned me?
Our mutual buddy ChenZhen posted the following link at my site to get around WordPress’s new password crackdown as it relates to the gravatar site.
http://diaryofdaedalus.com/2012/03/15/tech-note-wordpress-com-changes-commenting-with-gravatars/
I dedicate this song to Ms. Sandra Fluke and my good buddy, Rutherford:
Actually Tex, that was more of a treat than you figured since the singer is one of my favorite former contestants of a singing competition from a few years ago (“Rock Star: Supernova”). Her name is Storm Large. She rocks on this song.
If that really is her voice, she really is pretty talented. Pretty cute too.
I just saw that linked somewhere, and knowing you a fan of music, “R”, knew you would find that humorous.
It took me about a minute to figure out what I was listening to, then I giggled through the entire thing.
There is finally conclusive evidence that Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi are dead.
Yesterday, they both registered to vote in Chicago.
Fitting:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/21/report-al-qaida-was-saddened-by-keith-olbermanns-msnbc-firing/
This phrase from the article just struck me as funny: “written by al-Qaida media adviser “.
Al-qaida has a “media adviser”. I’m sorry that just cracks me up. I guess I think of them as a ragtag bunch of ignorant terrorists and not a sophisticated organization. Guess I need to leave my prejudices at the door.
Oh come on, Rutherford! All terror organizations have their own PR people. Otherwise how would they get credit for their “work”? What’s funny about it? You don’t diss the WH press secy. And, of course, they all disseminate truthful information.
Fitting for poolman:
Al Qaida is in partnership with Anita Dunn and Mao. Classic Lib Triangulation and shared expense (probably on the taxpayer dole).
Rutherford, you’re keeping good company, baby!
@KeithOlbermann’s Number One Fan: Al Qaeda Goon Adam Gadahn
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/al-qaedas-attempts-to-control-the-media/2012/03/20/gIQAbu0EQS_story.html
One fucked philosophy you hold Brotha Rutherford, but it does provide me with a barrel of laughs.
I’m shocked if that is honestly Rutherfords take on AQ. Dude they’ve got their own frakin’ magazine.
LOL Alfie … you’re right. I forgot about that. I even used to call it “Better Bombs and Gardens”.
Wanted:
Boogeymen from all nations.
No experience necessary.
Will train and provide credentials.
Lifetime benefits. Free promotion.
Test…
Thank you Brother(a) “R”. Seems kind of stupid to me to require this. Probably tracking us for the upcoming apocalypse.
But then many things don’t make sense on the internet anymore.
Oh you’re quite welcome. At least half of your charm lies in your choice of avatars.
I haven’t shown you my Obama Pinocchio one yet. At least half of my gravatars are for your amusement, being I determined long ago your skull to thick to penetrate and your hide pretty tough too.
El Tigre…
Poolman Gerard.