DanMargarita.com

This thought comes to mind because Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis have considered asking congress to bail out the porn industry. Hey, I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Larry Flynt has long been a well-known figure in America, having fought before the Supreme Court in the case Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell (Seriously, why would I write fiction when reality is so fantastic?). That battle was depicted in the movie The People vs. Larry Flint, which starred former Cheers actor Woody Harrelson. I have to think that if Nicholas Colasanto, the actor who preceded Harrelson as “Coach” on the show hadn’t died, that he probably wouldn’t have landed the role of Larry Flynt in that film.

For those of you unfamiliar with Joe Francis, some evening when you can’t sleep, turn on any cable channel on TV. Chances are you’ll run into a Girls Gone Wild infomercial, the premise of which is that Mr. Francis and his cohorts convince drunken young women, who at the moment aren’t considering that videotape lasts longer than a buzz, to flash themselves for the TV cameras.

With congress doling out money to the banking and auto industries, Flynt and Francis seem to think that congress should consider their needs as well. According to msnbc.com, Flynt and Francis claim that XXX DVD sales are down 22 percent, which means that people will have to resort to using their imaginations or worse, begin having actual relationships with other human beings.

"People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement.

If that’s true, it seems to me that the problem here is not the lack of sex, but the depression. In either case, there are pills that can take care of both of those problems (although Tom Cruise might disagree on the depression aspect).

"This is very unhealthy as a nation,” Flynt continued. “Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex" (Insert your own marriage joke here).

Maybe, but what will teenagers do without the back seats of cars?

“The US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people," msnbc.com goes on to quote Flynt as saying.

I’m not sure that “cherish” is the right word in this instance. I doubt that Norman Rockwell would cite “baseball, apple pie and Hustler” as his idea of All-American institutions.

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind,” Flynt concludes.

Really? Have you watched TV lately, Larry? I can’t watch a Bullwinkle cartoon without commercials for Viagra, Enzyte, Cialis or Levitra, not to mention a number of Victoria’s Secret ads being thrown at me. I guess he hasn’t seen the Girls Gone Wild infomercials, either.

It seems to me that during the Great Depression, the long lines of people you see in newsreels were lined up to get bread, not porn magazines.

I can’t imagine Bing Crosby singing:

“Brother, can you spare some porn?”

Perhaps along with food stamps, poor Americans can be also rationed out their share of pornography to help get them back on their feet, although I guess Mr. Flynt’s contention is that not enough American’s are staying off of their feet.

“Congress must rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America” Flynt stated. Aside from that statement giving me visuals of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi that I don’t want in my head, one need only to read a newspaper and the goings on in congress to know that there’s nothing wrong with most American’s sexual appetite.

On the other hand (no pun intended), perhaps one doesn’t need porn to rejuvenate one’s sexual appetite…one needs to run for political office.