Politics of Porn: Justice Department Launches Long-Anticipated War on Obscenity (thanks, Adam!)
The funny thing about my business is I don't force it on anybody. The only people that are going to be forced to watch my movies are the 12 people that sit on that jury.
- Rob Zicari
Let's see...we're struggling in the war against terrorism. What to do...what to do?? I know!! How about we go after something that makes it look as if we're doing something, and we'll make it something that no one can defend? How about pornography? Sadly, this seems to be the sum total of the thought process that has gone into Chairman Ashcroft's new campaign against pornography.
Never mind the 1st Amendment issues at stake here. In this day and age, "free speech" is whatever the Chairman Ashcroft and the Shrub Administration decide it will be. And it sure is easier than chasing terrorists, no??
Rob Zicari and his fiancée, Janet Romano, are facing the first major federal prosecution for obscenity in more than a decade. They face 10 counts relating to the production and distribution by mail of obscene materials, and each could get 50 years in prison and a fine of up to $2.5 million....
"We're facing more time than the guy that they just arrested that was trying to sell the surface-to-air missile," said Zicari.
On April 8, law enforcement seized five movies produced by Zicari's California-based company, Extreme Associates, which bills itself as "The Hardest Hard Core on the Web."
One of the confiscated movies, Forced Entry, features three graphic scenes of women being spat upon, raped and murdered. Extreme Teens #24 has adult women dressed up and acting like little girls in various hard-core pornographic scenes. We can't even tell you the title of one of the films.
I'm not about to defend this sort of trash. I don't believe that there is any place for this sort of crap in civilized society. Having said that, however, I believe that Mr. Zicari is on the right side of the 1st Amendment. It's the old "I detest what you do, but I will defend to my death your right to do it" argument.
The question here is who do we want setting the standards? A group of trolls from the Religious Right who are bent on turning this country into something out of the set of "Pleasantville"? No, we may not like this sort of trash, but if we outlaw this form of expression, where do we stop drawing the line? Can one man's prostitution be another's art? What offends one may inspire another. Where, then, DO we draw the lines? I would submit that we cannot subvert the 1st Amendment to the personal prejudices of those who think literature begins and ends with the Bible.
Many anti-obscenity activists are members of the Christian right, a group that generally admires Ashcroft and is a key constituency in President Bush's re-election campaign.
Frankly, it scares the hell out of me that Chairman Ashcroft has chosen pornography as his latest crusade. And then he has the nerve to blame the "problem" on Bill Clinton. I can think of no more cravenly political move than to blame what you perceive as a problem on a previous Administration.
The 1st Amendment was not designed to appease the wingnuts on the Religious Right. It was designed to allow Americans the right to express themselves freely, without fear of repression or recrimination. If you don't want to watch graphic pornography, violence, bad news, or Astros games, nothing and no one will force you to do so. That does not give you, or John Ashcroft, or any of his Right Wing trolls the right to determine what other Americans may watch, write, say, or read. That is the beauty of our system. It is also a beauty that is in grave danger of being horribly disfigured.
