The corporations don’t have names like, say, “Hot Military Stud.” No, the corporations owning subsidiaries that sell porn have names like Holiday Inn, Marriott International, Comcast Corporation, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Adelphia Communications, Cablevision Systems Corporation, Echostar and General Motors.
The list of 15 politicians profiting from such rentals includes surprising names. There’s Mr. Stand Up Guy himself, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and Holy Joe Lieberman (D-CT), famous for giving out “Silver Sewer” awards to purveyors of immoral videos. There’s even Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) who dubbed pornography “the crack cocaine of sexual addiction.”
Closer to home, there’s Heather Wilson, renowned for her angry tears over Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. The site, www.citizensforethics.org, lists Heather’s 2002 take from porn profiteers as $26,000 for the 2002 cycle and $21,000 for the 2004 cycle. The entry about Wilson includes the following: “Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) accepted $47,000 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography. Yet along with (Wyoming Republican Rep. Barbara) 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.”
I’m moved to share the beginning of Ogden Nash’s 1931 poem on Utah Senator Reed Smoot, an earlier crusader against smut, who, as far as we know, did not take his cut:
Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)
Is planning a ban on smut.
Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
And his reverend occiput.
Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
Grit your molars and do your dut.,
Gird up your l-ns,
Smite h-p and th-gh,
We’ll all be Kansas
By and by.
