I want to talk about something that was recently brought to my attention. It’s a video that was made about a month ago by Kink.com showing various players voicing opposition to AB 1576, the statewide condom mandate bill written by Assemblyman Isadore Hall and endorsed by AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
To say this video is an embarrassing joke is a massive understatement. I can’t believe that anyone thought that this would sway the members of the assembly against voting for passage of AB 1576. If anything, it had to have convinced any fence sitters to vote FOR the bill.
It opens with a guy in a leather bondage harness. Whoever made this mess of a video must be working for Michael Weinstein. Do you really think a twink in bondage gear is the right image to present to the public to convince them to support the cause? Are you out of your fucking minds? Every negative stereotype that you could possibly conjure about the adult business is right there. Not the stereotype that everybody tries to say we are, educated individuals with college degrees. Where are all the college educated girls like Tasha Reign and Joanna Angel? Lexington Steele with his Syracuse double degree?
Let’s put the college educated porn stars aside. What about the people that we see on television and lecture tours? Jessica Drake? Brad Armstrong? Axel Braun? Steven Hirsch? Phil Harvey? How about those fucking people? Instead, you have a bunch of irrelevant freakazoids slurring unintelligible nonsense from the scene of the crime: The Kink.com Armory, where Cocaine Cowboy Peter Acworth engages in shoot em ups and cop lockouts when he’s not being investigated by Cal/OSHA. www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=60388
This video has Lorelei Lee mumbling and stumbling over words, once again echoing the mantra, “If this bill is passed it’s not gonna make people wear condoms, the industry will just move to Nevada or go underground.” Wow, I’m glad she put that out there to all the people, because I’m sure the Republican politicians in Nevada will be happy to hear that. What these idiots don’t understand is that the threat of leaving the state and fleeing to Nevada doesn’t dissuade California legislators from passing the bill, but what is does do is paint a big fat target on the backs of everyone who does shoot in Nevada. The Nevada politicians have got to be thrilled that the porn business is moving to the state so they can evade health regulations in California because Nevada doesn’t give a fuck.
What the porn business is saying is that even though California is the most liberal state in the nation, they are gonna flee that state and go to Nevada which has a Republican governor, a Republican senator and a Democratic senator who was almost toppled by a tea party nut job in the last election. They are gonna set up shop in Las Vegas, where a man by the name of Sheldon Adelson resides and has an enormous amount of influence and is incidentally the Republican Party’s single biggest donor. Running to Vegas is a real sound plan. Announcing it to the world is even more brilliant.
I’m sure the Republican governor, senator and all of conservatives in Nevada loved the video with the transsexual and the guy in the bondage outfit that was shot in the building in San Francisco where they have illegal guns and coke parties. “C’mon down to Vegas! Bring your whips, guns, blow and ladyboys!” I’m sure their church going constituents won’t have a problem with that.
A video with Village People members saying that they don’t want the government in their lives. Guess what fellas? The government’s coming and moving to Vegas ain’t gonna stop them. The notion that Vegas is this bastion of liberalism that is gonna welcome the porn biz with open arms is laughable. You guys are outta your fucking minds. They haven’t even legalized gay marriage in Nevada yet.
How do you think a huge company like Kink is gonna be able to operate in a state like Nevada? I’m not talking about a small operation like Lee Roy Myers or PUBA shooting under the radar. When the Nevada Republican establishment sees the freaks in this video coming across the border they’re gonna send every health official and law enforcement entity that exists to shove a cactus up their asses.
When Kink sets up The Vegas Armory or Steve Hirsch builds Vivid Vegas and opens a large studio and starts shooting condomless porn because California made it illegal, every politician in the state led by AIDS Healthcare Foundation will shut them down so fucking fast it will make Peter Acworth’s head spin like he snorted up all the cocaine in Miami. I just can’t believe that everybody is that fucking delusional.
Do you realize that Larry Flynt makes beaucoup dinero off of his casinos in California? Don’t you think he would venture into Vegas if he could? Don’t you think that Flynt has realized that setting up a business in Vegas is not as simple as you all think it is? Packing up a business like Hustler or Vivid is not something that can be done in a weekend. There are tax incentives to move to Nevada. If selling The Armory and packing up and moving like Peter Acworth has been threatening to do was so easy, don’t you think he would’ve done it already? If it was so simple wouldn’t Larry Flynt have Hustler Vegas operating now? Opened up a studio so he could bust out condomless scenes for his cable company? Why hasn’t Manwin sold their building in Burbank and set up a flashy tower on The Strip?
If people say, “Well, we’re gonna wait to see if the bill passes,” OSHA is already busting companies. Not just in California, but in Florida as well. Cal/OSHA hit Evil Angel recently with big fines. Even in the unlikely event that the bill gets killed, the industry still has to deal with OSHA. OSHA is busting people right now.
Our industry is led by ignorant buffoons like the people who made this video. A video with gay boys wearing leather bondage straps. That is what we’re presenting to the world. That’s what Kink.com is presenting. Of all the respectable companies, both gay and straight, this is what we present to argue against AB 1576. I’ve said it before, the leadership we had back in the 90’s had its flaws, but they were heads above what is in place now. You never would have seen them making a video with a stuttering, mumbling bimbo and a dude wearing a leather apparatus. You wouldn’t have seen Russ Hampshire getting busted at Trac Tech studios with cocaine and guns. People like Russ Hampshire and Lenny Friedlander were realists. They were from the school of you have to look good. You have to present a positive image. We have to counter the perception of being dirty disgusting pornographers. We have to look like upstanding citizens, contributors to society. We have to look like businessmen. Suits and ties. Russ Hampshire never would have had someone like Lorelei Lee stumbling through a speech like a spaced out Valley girl.
Sharon Mitchell was groomed. As much as people like to shit on Sharon Mitchell and there were a lot of things she did wrong, but when you put Sharon Mitchell against Diane Duke in a leadership position or any of the voices leading the charge now, you get someone who could say that she had been in the business for 30 years and gone through the pitfalls and challenges and had come through and succeeded. She had “street cred.” She presented an image that was carefully crafted by the business that was real and performers were able to look up to her because she was one of them and knew where they were coming from.
Eddie Wedelstedt of Goalie Entertainment would have dinners where all the powers players from Steven Hirsch to Russ Hampshire to Scott Taylor would get together and break bread. Free Speech Coalition would have fundraising dinners and golfing events and when there was a problem or an issue that needed to be addressed everybody would get together as a unit and deal with it as one voice. One voice that was approved and endorsed by people who knew what they were doing.
No one got a bunch of irrelevant mumbling degenerates together and posted a cartoonishly awful video for the world to see. For all of AVN and Paul Fishbein’s faults, the man carried himself respectfully. When he did interviews, he was someone you could take seriously. Who do you have now? Baghdad Bob Mark Kernes? There is a reason he was relegated to penning porn reviews for years. He’s a admitted communist who is prone to spreading propaganda and lies and now there is no one there to keep him in check. In fact, who is the leadership of AVN now? Who is the go to person? There is none. The leadership is Manwin. A company with no history or appreciation of the business and the way it is supposed to operate. When the media needed information on the business, they went to Paul Fishbein and AVN. They were the voice of the business. Who is the voice now? Thank you.
Now, instead of Paul Fishbein, we get Lorelei Lee. A stuttering trollop sitting in a dirty dungeon. We get a guy in a leather halter top. We get transsexuals and glassy-eyed twinks. These are not the people who will get society on porn’s side. You’re not trying to convince the gay and leather community that government intervention is bad. You’re trying to convince the average citizen. The voters. People that have some conservative views and some liberal views. Those people don’t understand transsexuals and hairy guys wearing leather studded outfits. And these are the people that we need.
They understand someone who is like them. They understand somebody who is like Steve Orenstein. They understand someone who looks like Jessica Drake. Someone who looks like Phil Harvey or Steven Hirsch. That’s who they can relate to. They can’t relate to the transsexual or the leather wearing guy. We already have those people. The transsexuals and the leather boys and the freakazoids are already voting no. We need the people who are saying, “I don’t want to see these people in my neighborhood, giving people the AIDS.” We need someone who can go to those people and convince them that we are just like them. That we are nothing to fear and we can be trusted not to spread disease all over their community. When we present these freaks as the representatives of our industry, we are playing right into Michael Weinstein’s hands. That image is exactly what he wants people to think about this business. That is why he gets legislation passed.
This industry is exactly where it is because it is run by people who think they know better than those who have been around for years and have seen it grow. Johnny-come-lately internet insta-moguls who haven’t got a clue what the porn business is about and where it came from. Political change is gradual. You have to give society a chance to adjust. Acceptance of alternative lifestyles is a process that has taken years. Bill Clinton didn’t come right out and say, “Gays in the military. Gays everywhere. WHOOHOO!!” It takes time to change peoples perceptions. People like Peter Acworth and the crew at Kink.com are like the Tea Party nut jobs invading the moderate political atmosphere. Society looks at them and cringes. Putting freaks on camera and trying to get average people to follow them is like some yahoo carrying an AK-47 into a McDonald’s. It scares the fuck out of normal folks. We need to dial it back.
Back in the day, Eli Cross would have never been able to go to a Cal/OSHA meeting and yell and insult the officers like he did. He would have been ostracized for embarrassing the industry and for getting Cal/OSHA to say, “We were gonna work with the industry, but because of that asshole, fuck you.”
Michael Weinstein used to work with the industry. In the past few years, he has become our adversary. Why? Because people like Diane Duke and Peter Acworth have said, “We’re the porn business. We do what we want. We don’t care what you think. Fuck you. Your rules don’t apply to us.”
The old leadership knew a foundation like AIDS Healthcare that has hundreds of millions of dollars and political capital to spare could crush the adult business with legislation, condoms, permits, you name it. The old guard knew that you had to work with the devil. Because the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t.
Click the link if you want to watch this atrocity www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylUKencRqzY#t=185
Follow Rob Black on Twitter @RealRobBlack Email: [email protected]