Addicted to Porn - Congress Takes Cash from the People They Love to Trash

The latest In Bed with Susie Bright, #196, is out! In this edition:

You would not believe— (okay, maybe you would) —  how many rightwing Congress people are taking sizeable campaign contributions from porn-profitting businesses.

This week, I out a number of U.S. representatives and senators who are “on the take,” thanks to a jaw-dropping, annotated report from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington.

What’s so beautiful about CREW is that they aren’t anti-porn, they’re anti-hypocrite. They were so fed up with Congressmen exploiting the Janet Jackson/FCC/morality spin, that they decided to hose them down with their own duplicity! 

Not only does CREW  detail how much money each congress member got from porn profit-makers— they also quote exactly what kind of hysterical anti-sex rhetoric these same hypocrites are spewing when they think no one is scrutinizing their bank account.

Some excerpts:

“Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH) accepted $24,500 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography.  In 1998, Oxley said, 'there are literally thousands of sites devoted to every manner of perversion and brutality... unfortunately, the Web is awash in degrading smut.'  In addition, Rep. Oxley has made it a personal mission to ‘protect young people from the corrosive, debasing effects of the voluminous graphic adult content readily available on the World Wide Web.’

“Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) accepted $47,000 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography. Yet along with Rep. Cubin and 10 other Republican Congresswomen, Rep. Wilson signed a letter to Vice President Al Gore in 2000, calling on him to return contributions from an Internet adult entertainment trade association and a Chicago strip club owner. Rep. Wilson has also been a strong proponent of broadcast decency, including proposing that decency be considered as a factor in license renewals.

"In 2004, after the Janet Jackson breast-baring incident during the Superbowl half-time show, Rep. Wilson erupted at a Commerce subcommittee on indecency, targeting Viacom president Mel Karmazin. ‘You knew what you were doing!’ said Wilson, who was so angry that her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears.

“Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) accepted $46,000 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography.  In 1998, when the Clinton administration was pushing to wire all the nation’s classrooms for the Internet, McCain introduced a bill to prohibit the government from granting subsidies to any school or library that didn’t screen the material on its computers, saying ‘[i]n order to get rid of the smut and the peddlers of smut, you have to energize communities.... We have to make them aware they’re on the Internet and they’re awful hard to get off the Internet.’  In addition, when Sen. McCain ran for President in 2000, he ran television ads touting his anti-pornography record."

Is Tom DeLay on the porno-trough list too? You betcha!  So are William Bennett, Joe Lieberman, and many more of your local favorites!

If you listen to my show, you’ll get to hear me rolling on the bed with laughter, and offering my own personal insights into this den of two-faced twerps.

Many people don’t realize who the largest porn-producing corporations are in the United States... it’s not Mom and Pop operations anymore.  Writer Eric Schlosser most famously revealed the corporate changing-of-the-guard in pornography empires several years ago in US News and World Report, with further investigation in his book, Reefer Madness, but remarkably, most Americans have no clue that it’s companies like Comcast, Marriott, General Motors, and AT&T who make the most money from porn.

Finally, in my Try This at Home mailbag, I get a letter from a long time Virginia Woolf fan who is now wondering about Woolf's sexual imagery. Don't forget, you can alwasy send me your confidential questions and feedback about the show to susie@susiebright.com.

An individual In Bed show costs about $5 to listen to, but if you want a free one-month trial, no strings attached, come to this page and give it a whirl.

Comments

[Garrison Steelle]

I'm just going to assume we're not REALLY surprised by this revelation, are we? I'd heard rumors to this affect several months ago. Thank you for the confirmation. I'll reference your book profusely.

-G

[Susie]

Let me speak up for the naive and uninformed! This is not popularly understood information... not at all.

I certainly had no idea of these details before I saw the report. I don't think the economy of the porn biz is well-known; people still think it's some weird old man with his pants hanging down around his knees in a back room somewhere.

When it comes to these Congresspeople, the sheer number of them raising money from this revenue stream, and the enormous amount of cash, is quite impressive.

Finally, how many of them really are clueless, and how many of them just think it's cool to play both sides? Have any of them returned the money after they found out it was "dirty"?

I see that the CREW website has some interview with one of the congressmen who's ready to split his pants over this, and I'm going to go read that now!

Susie