I read the article in Think Progress at work about Newt giving, then rescinding, a small-business-of-the-year award to Pink Visual, a porn distributing company in Van Nuys, and spit iced tea out of my nose. (It burns, though not as bad as Pepsi.) Decided that with all the insane teabaggery afoot over the weekend, it hadn't gotten nearly enough mockery, so I took a crack at it for my biweekly Examiner column. With pics, even, though everything is PG rated, I think.
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Meanwhile, some of the choicer bits are below.
For a brief moment, our beloved former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, had a similar opportunity open to him. He could embrace the porn as his own [...] Unfortunately, when news of Newt's golden opportunity became public, instead of standing up like the red-blooded, clandestinely porn-swilling Americans who voted for him, he ran squealing off into the night, braying about "family values" and "inadvertent," happenstance errors of the cosmos, like Jimmy Swaggart when his rowdy cousin Jerry Lee Lewis tried to get him to peek at naked women in the hoochie koochie tent. Undoubtedly, liberals were involved in Newt's discomfiture.
Newt's PAC, American Solutions for Winning the Future, voted to award its Entrepeneur of the Year award to a small California outfit, run by a Miss Crump-lookalike named Allison Vivas, called "Pink Visual." (Warning: The two Washington City Paper links in this article are not safe for work, impressionable children, or your Aunt Hepzibah. Be warned.) I am no porn connoisseur, but I know enough about the connotations of such a slogan to have at least a suspicion that something not family-friendly is afoot behind the doors of an establishment sporting that name. But obviously Newt, being pure as the driven snow and innocent of such matters, went tripping blindly into the maw of the lubricious skin industry without having a clue that Pink Visual distributes adult movies. As in triple XXX. As in I can't post any pics to illustrate the business. Dave McKenna of the Washington City Paper, reporting on the award, writes (without the occasional redacted vowel to keep the vicar safely confused): "Perhaps Newt was moved to give kudos after viewing such Vivas titles as An_l Devastation, Couples Sed_ce Teens, Br_zen And Unsh_ven, Double Pen_tration Tryouts, or, knowing the political visionary's past, Wife Switch Vol_me 7. (I could type this stuff all day ...)" Fortunately for my own discomfiture and the few shreds of my own remaining innocence, I can't type any more of it, though Dave makes the most of the opportunity. Ugh. I don't even know what some of that stuff means. Maybe I could ask Newt; after all, it is obviously award-winning material at his PAC.
Anyhow, Vivas's PR flack, Brian Gross, took instant delight in circulating a letter sent to Pink Visual (come on, how could they not know?) by Joe Gaylord, a consultant for the Newter's PAC. The September 9 letter read in part, "Newt's Business Defense and Advisory Council" thinks you are just peachy and deserving of this all-American, Norman Rockwell-approved award in "recognition of the risks you take to create jobs and stimulate the economy."
Stimulate. You know, you just can't make some things up.
But, I think Newt missed a tremendous opportunity. We all know that the Republican Party has the vote of the average anal-retentive, teeth-grittingly pious, fire-and-brimstone, I-don't-allow-porn-in-my-house-and-don't-look-under-my-mattress conservative voter pretty much locked up. That's about 10-12% of the American electorate. (They have a bit bigger impact on the poll numbers, because they are very good at storming the polls en masse with steam coming out of their ears, determined to vote those licentious Demoncrats out of office once and for all.) A nice chunk of the voting public, but not enough to really win anything, just enough to keep the rest of us on edge. Newt had a fabulous opportunity to reach out to a whole new bloc of voters: the unabashed porn consumer.
Yes, they're mostly white males (Clarence Thomas notwithstanding), and a good number of them probably think of themselves as Republicans (or at least can't stand that weenie N_gro college boy Barack Soetoro bin Obama). And most of them don't vote. Most of them don't do anything beside watch television, drink beer, express their inner gastric turmoil, and cuss. Had Newt decided "the hell with it!" and gone to dinner with Miss Glitter Britches regardless of the embarrassment involved, he would have won an entirely new swath of potential voters, some of whom might actually have rolled up their copies of Maxim to take with them to the polls on those critical Tuesdays just to celebrate the randy, ready-for-anything, steel-pantsed Gingrich and his willingness to embrace the dark side of American commercially marketed sexuality.
And he wouldn't be risking the votes of the stiff-necked, overtly moralistic right-wingers already panting to vote for him and his minions. They've already proven their willingness, over and over and over again, to forgive, defend, and ignore the sexual transgressions of their cultural and political heroes. John Ensign is running for office in 2012, unashamed of either tagging his employee's wife or convincing his parents to pay them off. Mark Sanford, the Argentinian Quail Hunter, is refusing to resign from office. Larry Craig is taking a wide stance for heterosexual family values, regardless of whose foot he did or did not molest in the men's room. Former evangelist Ted Haggard has proudly denied ever using the meth or having the gay sex he repeatedly paid for (mostly), and is angling for a way to once again get in the pulpit. Mark Foley — well, okay, Foley's political career is toast, but in defense of the unforgiving Republican voters, he actually admitted to being gay instead of denying it. (The Foley lesson: as long as you deny it, your supporters can also deny it, and everyone's happy. Craig is the best example of this. He pled guilty to soliciting sex from an undercover cop, then pretended not to be a lawyer long enough to explain that he didn't understand that guilty meant you actually did what they said you did. He is now denying soliciting anything, ever going to a men's room, or having a foot. He will probably serve in the Senate until he's older than Strom Thurmond.)
Read the whole thing.