"The vernacular of pornography is now embedded in our culture. Even if you’re not consuming pornography, you’re consuming its logic."

It's neither an apology nor a boast. The simple fact is I watch almost no television apart from documentaries, most of which are viewed on-line.

I haven't seen a minute of any series mentioned in this article, and probably won't watch The Deuce, either.

Rather, I read and write, and typically the way it works for me is that I read a piece about a television show, as below, and find myself intrigued by the subject matter.

Then I go out and find a book to read more about it. It's just a better use of time this way. Different strokes, and all, but "a ready-made critique of market capitalism" is precisely the sort of exercise I cherish -- so long as it isn't necessary to spend time watching it.

David Simon: ‘If you’re not consuming porn, you’re still consuming its logic’, by David Smith (The Guardian)

Alongside longtime collaborator George Pelecanos, The Wire’s creator talks about their new TV drama, The Deuce, which examines porn’s impact on US society

 ... (David) Simon is animated by the perpetual struggle between capital and labour and believes that, after the ravages of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and globalisation, and the anti-establishment anger that produced Donald Trump and Brexit, the argument for unions and collective bargaining is as vital as ever. Which brought him to The Deuce, his ambitious new HBO series charting the rise of the porn industry in 1970s New York.

“What I stumbled into seemed to be a ready-made critique of market capitalism, and what happens when labour has no collective voice, and that seemed to be apt for this moment because I think a lot of the lessons of the 20th century are going to have to be learned all over again thanks to Reagan and Thatcher and all the neoliberal and libertarian argument that has come after,” says Simon, 57, unfailingly intense as he leans forward on a sofa.

"How a failed attempt to get porn off the internet protects Airbnb from the law."

The crux of the Airbnb matter?

It's Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, "a much-maligned law that was decried by free speech advocates, dismissed as a 'departing Senator’s half-baked notions' by the New York Times editorial board, and swiftly struck down by the Supreme Court."

How a failed attempt to get porn off the internet protects Airbnb from the law, by Julia Carrie Wong (The Guardian)

Airbnb, like pornography, is a business based on selling a fantasy. Porn offers the simulacrum of a sexual encounter; Airbnb, that of being “a local” in a city not one’s own. There’s less fuss, less muss, and a much reduced chance of STDs and irritated neighbors.

At least, there’s less fuss for the visitors. Cities around the world, however, are waking up to the headache of hosting transient populations in previously residential neighborhoods, and attempting to crack down.

But while local politicians in Reykjavík, Berlin, and Barcelona are taking a stand against Airbnb, their counterparts in the United States have struggled to come up with regulations that have teeth.

Just for Valentine's Day: "Indy's last pornographer can't capitalize on retro-raunch."

Searching online for coverage of yesterday's legislative hearing, I stumbled across this.

Arguably, it is the finest Valentine's Day feature in recent memory.

Indy's last pornographer can't capitalize on retro-raunch, by Will Higgins (IndyStar)

At 82, Rivoli operator recalls the "golden age" and the moral outrage that snuffed him out on Valentine's Day 1992

Valentine's Day is a sad reminder for a lot of people but especially for Charles R. Chulchian.

It was on Valentine's Day, 1992 that Chulchian was forced by the city of Indianapolis to shut down his business. He ran porno movies at the Rivoli Theater on East 10th Street. He had rock concerts there, too, occasionally, but his chief revenue source was dirty movies. He'd screened them since 1975, since the advent of the genre's so-called "golden age," when the films began to have actual story lines and their stars, like Linda Lovelace and John C. Holmes, came close to being mainstream celebrities.

"Porn production moves to Vegas after condom law," and the city's fine with it.

It's an insightful story about supply, demand, the comparative costs of regulation and production, and in fact, the very essence of capitalism.

It just happens to be about porn, and the city of Las Vegas seems to be taking an approach to economic development unheard of amid the corridors of Southern Indiana municipal government. Just try to imagine our Floyd County (Indiana) commissioners Mark Seabrook, Steve Bush or Chuck Freiberger uttering the same words as the Clark County (Nevada) commissioner quoted below.

Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana would gag on its pablum spoon.

Porn production moves to Vegas after condom law (Associated Press via USA Today)

Number of permits requested to make porn films in L.A. County has declined by about 95%.

... The studio sits in what was once another empty building on blighted Industrial Road behind the town's tourist corridor. Local officials appear content with the arrangement and have no plans to pass additional rules.

"It's a legalized industry and properly regulated, so I don't see it as a problem," said Clark County commissioner Chris Giunchigliani. "I think the city and the county will benefit from any expansion of the film industry. It's economic diversification."

Herbert Streicher has died. Stage name: Harry Reems.

“Nobody under 50 even knows who I am now. Unless you’re a porno historian, and then you’re really sick.”

“I’m the thread to tell the story of social change in America.”

-- Harry Reems, quoted in 2005 (see "The Afterlife of a Porn Star," by Dave Itzkoff)

It isn't everyday that a Utah real estate agent's death merits national headlines: Harry Reems dies at 65; porn actor starred in 'Deep Throat' (Los Angeles Times)

I know it when I see it.

This is absolutely hilarious, at least you begin to consider the same gag in the context of New Albany, and, well, gag. Ewwwwww.

Thanks to T for both making and ruining my day.

Illinois Does A Few Adult Films To Make Ends Meet, from The Onion.

Officials said that since ending the 2010 fiscal year with a record $4.7 billion in unpaid bills, Illinois has been actively pursuing roles in sexually explicit direct-to-DVD features, but is only doing so until it can get back on its feet.

Some afternoon porno irreverence.

No doubt with Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana's recent propaganda barrage ringing in his ears, one of my friends posted this comment on Facebook:

According to google, Louisville is number one, two years running, when it comes to internet users searching for porn! As a former Louisvillian, I have never been more proud!!!

I replied:

Finally, some recognition. The flip side of it is that many of us hereabouts are so backward, we didn't actually FIND any of it.

I say: Keep it local. Makes you wonder why people bother with the Internet when Cleopatra's is right down the street ... and on the way to the boat.

Previously: C-J: "New Albany again rebuffed in battle against adult bookstore."

Next: A dialogue about One Southern Indiana, ROCK and economic development as religious (why?) outreach.

Yesterday: Join the discussion: Is a stonewalling 1SI being disingenuous?

It will disappoint some of you to learn that, slightly paraphrasing General U.S. Grant, “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all winter,” so in today’s installment of li’l ol’ NAC versus the establishment leviathan of greenfield development, the one that still can’t manage a coherent response to the pertinent issues we’re raising – the one that can barely muster a response of any sort – the conversation turns back to One Southern Indiana's flirty winks and provocative nudges with ROCK (Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana), a lobby group that is wielding a bulky anti-pornography shield as means of obscuring a number of more controversial platform planks (anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay marriage) that involve matters that fall far outside of 1SI’s purported developmental realm.

Wow; that was one hellacious paragraph. But first, here’s a recent posting by a blogger completely unaffiliated with NAC who also can see the fundamental contradiction of ROCK.

Exactly What Battle? (from the John Manzo blog).

It would, on some level, be nice to be able to stand with this group. I do not believe that they are truly wrong about the issues of pornography and the difficulties the sex industry bring to any region. It is a legitimate issue on so many levels.

The problem is that as I watched their video I did not get the impression that ROCK is a group that's main interest is in dealing with the local sex industry. The very name of the organization, Reclaim our Culture Kentuckiana, hearkens to something more. A lot more.

They decry a moral decline in a culture and claim this as a fact. I hear this a great deal and it's usually from people who haven't studied ethics.

Subsequently, over at the NA Health blog, I tried to start a conversation with my friend and physician Dr. Dan, a supporter of ROCK who also appears in the group's hot video.

---

The New Albanian said:

Dan, do you think that 1SI should support a radical right wing organization like ROCK? You've been suspiciously silent on this issue, and I'm in desperate need of material.

---

Healthblogger said:

First off, how do you conclude they are a "radical right wing organization"?

Does just having Christian values label them in your mind?

Where is the tolerance?

Is this not bigotry on your part?

Their goal is better communities and families. That seems to be an admirable goal.

---

The New Albanian said:

What do anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research and anti-gay marriage planks have to do with economic development?

Does not ROCK have all three as part of the agenda? A cursory examination of the web site certainly seems to suggest so.

Must we then sign on to these in order to have (ahem) "good" jobs?

---

Healthblogger said:

So you always agree with 100% of every organization's viewpoints that you support.

If this is true, then I doubt you are supporting many organizations.

1SI did support ROCK in their stance against pornography because it has significant implications on economic development.

I do not recall 1SI outwardly supporting the other items.

If there is another organization standing up against pornography, I am sure they would consider standing behind them as well, as it does effect the growth of the economy.

---

The New Albanian said:

"Does just having Christian values label them in your mind?"

I didn't mention the word Christian. You did. Apart from that, you'll recall that my question was this:

"What do anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research and anti-gay marriage planks have to do with economic development?"

Don't forget that I watched the film on ROCK's website and turned past page one. I'm suggesting that (a) ROCK's ultimate ambitions aren't confined to the "bad porno" template, and (b) 1SI's endorsement of the marquee came sans consideration of the whole ROCK picture.

1SI seeks de facto establishment as the region's economic development authority. I fail to see how this enshrinement includes the authority to determine the "proper" cultural and religious viewpoints.

---

It strikes me that one argument in all this is that has passed largely unexamined, and that’s the view that pornography plays a quantifiably negative role in a region’s economic development efforts. More than one source has intimated privately to me that 1SI possesses sufficient evidence to back its assertion that pornography is an economic development issue, and certainly we’re all eyes.

I’ve made it a point to assure 1SI’s Michael Dalby in e-mail messages that NAC will happily publish such materials if they’re made available, and I’m hoping that these are based on credible research, and not merely the anonymous complaints of real estate agents unable to sell otherwise valuable plots of Veterans Parkway land with the misfortune to be adjacent to the adult bookstore formerly known as Theatair-X.

The fact remains that ROCK is seeking to embrace far more than the purging of a local adult entertainment business that’s been turning profits for something close to four decades, and to be honest, that’s what worries me the most about 1SI’s thoughtless plunge into bed with yet another in a series of groups that specialize in offering us slippery slopes as the solution to largely imaginary problems. As I’ve previously written:

When religious groups take the field over matters like this, check the locks on the public library. Literature and other manifestations of free thought are sure to be next, and accordingly, what part of economic development does censorship enhance ... unless, of course, one lives in China … or Zimbabwe.

The community deserves immediate clarification from 1SI.

Why isn’t it forthcoming?

And, under these uncommunicative circumstances, why should the city of New Albany contribute a red cent to 1SI’s coffers?

Egads -- now we're in bed with Councilman Cappuccino.

Now that's pornographic.

One Southern Indiana chairman flicks his Bic as ROCK proposes to burn the sinners.

Coincidentally, I noticed the “XXX – Garbage In, Garbage Out” billboard while traveling on I-65 yesterday, and having taken an interest in the topic almost 30 years ago while in high school, leaped to the conclusion that it was another wild salvo in the decades-long effort to shut down Clarksville’s Theatair-X -- now sans those legendary drive-in accoutrements, and merely the adult "superstore" crowding the outer fringe of the 10th wonder of the world, otherwise known as the Veterans Parkway chain store paradise, and on an everyday basis scaring away good Christians from supporting the war in Iraq by eating at the nearby Cheddar’s, where each appetizer purchased is another nail in bin Laden's coffin.

Turns out my hunch was mostly on the mark. In this news story, the Courier-Journal notes the most recent …

Anti-pornography effort launched in Clarksville; Billboard targets adult businesses, by Harold J. Adams

A Louisville-based anti-pornography group came to Clarksville yesterday to launch a campaign against pornography and sex-related businesses in the metro area.

Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana, or ROCK, held a news conference under a campaign billboard at Veterans Parkway and Interstate 65.

I’m so old that I remember Citizens for Decency through Law, a representative of which made a presentation to my senior civics class in 1978. We’d scheduled an employee of Theatair-X to appear and provide instructive counterpoint, but he cancelled at the last minute. Later that year, he was shot down while mowing his yard. My aversion to cutting grass dates to that time.

At any rate, being innocently asked to “reclaim” a culture so seldom in evidence, and so consistently elusive in a pluralistic society, requires a certain commitment to impartiality and a respect for a multiplicity of viewpoints.

Unfortunately, after visiting ROCK’s website and seeing photos of the group’s president (unsurprisingly, one of several New Albany residents involved) in the general vicinity of our nation’s failed and perfectly impeachable chief executive, and also beaming alongside the banner at the Colorado base camp of Focus on Family, you'll excuse me for guessing that we’ll be having none of it during the course of this latest fundamentalist crusade.

But I’m most curious about this section in reporter Adams’s article:

(ROCK President Bryan) Wickens was joined by Kerry Stemler, chairman of One Southern Indiana, the Clark and Floyd counties' chamber of commerce and economic development council.

"We need ... an economy that our children and grandchildren will want to be a part of," Stemler said.

Boy, is THAT a loaded statement.

Leaving aside the suitability of 1SI’s chairman publicly siding with a haywire religious lobby group, we’ve seen lately that the development council’s tortured definition of a suitably futuristic regional economy still includes a healthy fetish for exurban sprawl, a jolly endorsement of continuing dependence on foreign oil and a concurrently blatant disregard for mass transportation strategies; excuse me for being impertinent, but aren’t discussions over these matters closer to 1SI’s ideal (if not its daily) purpose than providing photo-op succor to native Christian extremists?

Back in 1978, one of our topic presentation pieces was extracted from the pages of Hustler (I’d really prefer you not ask how we obtained it), one featuring photos of disfigured and mutilated corpses and the title, “War – The Ultimate Obscenity.”

Three decades later, it's all I recall from that class. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually did learn something in high school.