The Jeff Booth Show

Internet Radio with Pictures

Show Transcripts

May 25th , 2008

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Jeff@eroticuniversity.com

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This is the Jeff Booth Show for May 25th, 2008, brought to you by the Center for Sexual Expression and Education and Erotic University. I’m Jeff Booth. And this show is our official one year anniversary. In light of that, we bring you a piece from our very first show about Sex Outdoors.  Less light-hearted and quite disturbing is our Sexvestigation about the Justice Department, politics, and John Stagliano, better know as Buttman. After that you might want more light-hearted fare, so our Entertainment roundup brings you the latest in the entertainment world, including the latest adult DVD releases and sex and nudity in the movies. Our Sex news roundup includes more crazy prosecutions, political sex scandals, and insane anti-gay nonsense, After that, you might want to listen to the Entertainment Roundup again. Doing this show has been great fun. Over the course of a year I’ve written about 140,000 words for the show, created over a dozen voice characters, done interviews on adult sets and at adult trade shows, Just click on the topic to the left that you want to listen to, and thanks for clicking in.

Politics

I had the opportunity to speak once at the National Press Club. It’s a really cool place with a lot of history. But it seemed a very ironic location for an assembly featuring people exercising their free speech rights to speak out against free speech. It was titled Speeches/Press Conference Against Illegal Obscenity, a somewhat redundant title since obscenity is already technically illegal. Pornography is not, but the difference between the two is essentially unmeasurable. Some 16 representatives of conservative religious groups came together to decry the failings of the Justice Department because they have not prosecuted enough smut. As you’ll learn in this week’s Sexvestigation, they have been a little preoccupied railroading innocent people into prison. Even so, they have still found time for their share of obscenity prosecutions. The presentation was filled with usual litany of facts- facts the rest of us would more accurately refer to as stuff they just made up. They claimed the porn industry and the ACLU want “no limit on the people it can exploit for profit- including children”. That’s news to me and I think to everyone else in the adult industry- with emphasis on the word adult.

They were caught dealing out of their home. A two-month undercover sting operation finally brought the couple down. What were they dealing? Uh, adult videos. Kyle and Amber Lexes have been rounded up and their daughter placed in the care of state welfare officials. They weren’t making porn. Just selling it.  In Utah. And apparently, that is a huge crime in that state. Sure, the Supreme Court has ruled that pornography, but not obscenity, is protected free speech, but somehow that does not apply in Utah. They have strict laws against the distribution of pornography, and they were charged with pornography distribution. I don’t necessarily think they are the good guys here, as it looks like they were selling bootlegged content, but shouldn’t they have been arrested on that charge? I guess stealing from the porn companies is okay in Utah. The one thing that you should not do in Utah, at least as far as I am concerned, is live there.

For awhile it seemed like there was a sex scandal featuring a hypocritical Republican every week. Then it slowed down, then we had the Democratic political sex scandal with Elliott Spitzer that also exposed hypocrisy.  Tag, it looks like a Republican is it again. Republican Rep. Vito Fossella has announced he will not seek reelection. Turns out he fathered a secret daughter during an affair with a divorcee, an exposure that was poorly timed with his arrest for drunk driving. The revelation of a daughter came as a surprise to his wife, who was raising his three other children.  It puts yet another supposedly safe Republican seat into play. Ironically, while championing family values and refusing to attend events if his gay sister was in attendance, he was also banging his mistress, knocking her up, and flying with her to Europe at taxpayer expense. I guess I am really confused about this whole family values thing. Apparently it involves shunning members of your family and cheating on your wife.

Former Senator Rick Santorum is not pleased with the California decision to legalize gay marriage. He wrote in his column in the Philadelphia Enquirer that he worries about the future of marriage as a union between husband and wife. He wrote: “ Is anyone saying same-sex couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too? “ No Rick, not unless you are living with them and fucking them . Is there something you’re not telling us?

And with the same clarity of thought as Santorum, the far right group Campaign for Children and Families also reacted to the California decision by launching a web site called Save California. On it, they encourage people to try and convince their local county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. They suggest this persuasive argument: “Ask your county clerk if they were a Nazi officer during WWII and had been ordered to gas the Jews, would they? At the Nuremberg trials, they would have been convicted of murder for following this immoral order.” So, gassing Jews is the equivalent of issuing a marriage license to two people who love each other. I guess that makes actual gay sex the equivalent of the final solution. Except, weren’t the Nazis the ones out killing homosexuals along with the Jews? Boy, these analogies can get real confusing.

Despite the expected inflamed attack from the right, there was other good news this week for the gay community. A federal Appeals Court ruled Thursday that the military cannot automatically discharge people just because they are gay. While not striking down the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, the ruling did reinstate 20 year veteran Major Margaret Witt’s lawsuit for improper dismissal. The court ruled that the military must prove that her dismissal furthered the military's goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion. Previously, all the military had to do was say that was the case in general without having to provide any specifics. The new standard is a very difficult one to meet. Part of the change in the ruling was a reevaluation in light of the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws that discriminated against gays. And while the military has been obsessing about gays in they have a far greater problem with female soldiers being raped by other straight soldiers that they have almost completely failed to deal with. As was pointed out, a female soldier has a far greater chance of being raped by a fellow soldier than being killed in combat. Interesting priorities the military has in a time when we need every body we can get, and can’t really afford to lose highly decorated and trained officers like Major Witt.

Nothing better than having a pal like military contractor Brent Wilkes. He not only bribed you, but kept you from having to be lonely with all of that money… By supplying you with hookers. Just as he did with disgraced former Congressman and now federal prisoner Duke Cunningham, it has come out that he also provided former #3 official at the CIA, Kyle Dusty Foggo, with sexual companionship. So war profiteering isn’t just profitable- its also sexy fun!

The song the munchkins sing just after Dorothy arrived in Oz comes to mind. Susan Orr, in charge of federal family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, has resigned. She is another of the radicals from Pat Roberts Regent University. And not surprisingly, she opposed the very thing she was supposed to be in charge of. She called contraceptives part of the culture of death. In 2001 she supported a Bush proposal to stop requiring federal employee health plans from including contraceptive services. She has left Washington, leaving behind only her ruby slippers.

And finally, he may not have much of a grasp of facts, but you can’t say that presidential candidate John McCain lacks in courage. At least when it comes to standing up to those who oppose his policies. He made an appearance on the Ellen Degeneres show to express his disapproval of gay marriage and tell her to her face that she should not be allowed to go through with her recently announced plans to marry longtime girlfriend Portia di Rossi. Degeneres, who I find one of the most likable people on televison, responded with “Yeah, I mean, I think that it is looked at, and some people are saying that blacks and women did not have the right to vote. Women just got the right to vote in 1920, blacks didn’t have the right to vote until 1870, and it just feels like there’s this old way of thinking that we’re not all the same. We are all the same people. All of us. You’re no different than I am. Our love is the same”  McCain seemed little moved by her speech, and Degeneress’ audience was very unmoved by McCain. She called you old, grandpa. But apparently, gramps was too out of touch to catch on, or we’d have seen his notorious temper flare.

Entertainment

This is a relationship that no dating site would ever suggest- but Christian dating site BigChurch.com has just been purchased by- Penthouse. Penthouse has been moving aggressively into social networking, including their purchase of the popular Adult Friend Finder site. The acquisition has been, not unexpectedly, somewhat controversial, especially the new Penthouse Pew Pet of the Month. Okay, I did make that up.

The big L.A. adult show is almost here. Erotica L.A. takes place at the Los Angeles Convention center June 6th through 8th. It features over 300 exhibiters, with the opportunity to meet your favorite porn stars, check out the latest in adult toys, and attend a variety of seminars.  If you are in the Los Angeles area and like adult products and porn, this is a convention you’ll want to attend. It is reasonably couple friendly, as long as you both like porn stars, and they tend to have a lot of things that appeal to women. Plus seminars put on by adult boutique the Pleasure Chest, including instruction on Pole Dancing, Sex Toys for Beginners, fellatio, anal sex, and erotic role play.

I have long felt that there is not enough diversity in porn. Too many productions have been all blonde white girls you can barley tell apart. A new awards show is intended to honor those in the adult industry who provide a little ethnicity, with the first annual Urban Spice Awards. They will take place on June 9th at Platinum Live in Studio City. Adult stars Olivia O'Lovely and Sean Michaels are the hosts, and the presenters will include Cleopatra of the Nile, Tera Patrick, Tee Reel, and a whole bunch of others.

And in who is getting naked now, Buffy is in the buff raising money for charity. Sarah Michelle Gellar helped raise money for skin ailment sufferers by showing off some skin. The event auctioned off racy photos of Jane's Addiction rocker Dave Navarro, Hairspray actress Amanda Bynes and Leila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali.

And in our roundup of sex and nudity in the latest DVD releases, Teeth is now available. It’s a story about a young naïve teen who discovers that her vagina has teeth- ita horror parody of sexual power, and certainly a unique theme- exploring the male fear of the power of female genitalia. It stars Jess Wexler as the woman with a little something extra.

Naked concerned woman in the shower- in this case, Misty Meeler. You know it has to be a horror flick, and so it is, with Knock Knock, directed by Joseph Ariola. According to the blurb, it combines fear with revenge, hate with justice, responsibility with sacrifice- oh, and gratuitous shower scenes with scary scary.

Another naked woman in peril while bathing, in this case Lily Anderson, and we know we’ve got another horror flick. Fortunatly for her, she just happens to have a shotgun by the tub to take out her opponents. It’s a cheesy homage to post-apocalyptic films, where a one-eyed female warrior heads into a quarrantined Scotland to find survivors after a killer virus hits, with lots of flying dismembered heads and hands and cannibalism along the way, but nary an original idea amidst all the gore.

Newcommers Ania Bukstein and Michal Shtamler play young women who discover their own voices in a repressive culture, in the Israeli film, the Secrets. And they don’t even have to get dismembered. It about faith, the repression of religious orthodoxy, and the desire to be true to yourself. Did I mention there is nudity and no one has to die or get involved with sophomoric teen hijinx? Its definitely not an American film.

Pool Party is the heart warming story of a young man who just wants to pass the bar exam and win back his girlfriend, all while trying to deal with a forbidden pool party at the hosue of his boss that his boss’s kids insist on having. And, of course, there’s a pool, and a very naked Sarah Horvath in it. And shower scenes and skinny dipping and any other excuse to get the cast naked when they are not wearing swim suits.

Berkeley has some well-known names, including Herny Winkler and Bonnie Bedelia. Its about a young man at Berkeley during turbulent political times in the 1960’s. He meets up with radicals, falls for Lauara Jordan who quickly gets naked and has sex with him, and tries to deal with his conservative father played by Winkler.

We are going to mention  a theatrical release here, although I doubt it is playing many palces still. One would have expected it to be a straight to DVD release. Its Zombie Strippers, starring the former Freddie Krueger, Robert Englund, and the former porn star, Jenna Jameson. Jameson plays a Nitzie spouting stripper who is turned into a zombie, but that only makes her act more exciting for the customers. It’s the typical hookey zombies created by an accidentally released military zombie potion – and yes, it is sup[posed to be funny. But with heavy handed political satire, cornabll punning character names, and a climactic shoot-out where Jameson uses her vagin to shoot ping-pong balls at her opponent. I’m thinking Englund signed on just so he could hang out all with a former porn star and other naked actresses.

On the porn side of things, Director Will Ryder’s Barely Legal 18 and Easy from Hustler continues the popular series featuring young women. Priscilla Milan, Alexis Love, Julissa Delor and Kissy Kapri share their sexual blossoming with us, and Julissa and Kissy show us that we are starting to run out of porn names.

Sunny Lane has been a little behind in the anal department, but she finally joined the crowd in Elegant Angel’s Big Wet Asses 13. Lucky number 13 for her apparently, as she reports enjoying her on screen bout with Manuel Ferrara. We’ve interviewed Sunny for this show and she certainly lives up to her name.  As Déjà vu’s Girl Next Door she has been traveling all over the country making appearances, sharing her sunny nature far and wide.

Just in time for the release of the new Indiana Jones picture, Adam and Eve brings us Carolina Jones and the Broken Covenant. Directed by Ethan Kane, it stars Ava Rose as a boomerang wielding adventurer with her sidekick Bree Olson. It’s a big budget production by porn standards, shot on location in Budapest.

And finally, I mention this one because its a term I’ve never heard before- Whale Tail number four, shot in hi-def. Apparently, the title is a reference to the view of a thong riding just above the top of the jeans- a look that seems pretty popular these days. See- you learn new things on this show.

Sexvestigation

While I opposed the obscenity prosecutions against Rob Zicari of Extreme Associates and against Max Hardcore, I didn’t feel all that bad for them. They pushed the envelope practically begging to be prosecuted. However, the recent indictment of John Stagliano is altogether different, and very upsetting. He is a giant and innovator in the world of adult film. His Fashionistas was one of the best selling adult films of all time, and he turned it into a dance review in Vegas that despite having no nudity was one of the sexiest and most entertaining shows on the strip. Stagliano is a legitimate artist whose work happens to focus on the erotic.

Stagliano pioneered what has become known as gonzo porn, and while the term has devolved into a form of plotless vignettes, what John created in his Buttman series was himself as the central character and a sort of pseudo-reality porn where we see things through his camera and follow along on his sexual adventures. The style was an immediate hit, and inspired the careers of many others successful adult film makers, including Seymore Butts.

Stagliano was hauled into court in Washington D.C. where he was booked and fingerprinted. He must check in with the court on a weekly basis. Win or lose, defending himself against these charges will literally cost a fortune. He has a very high powered and expensive defense team, but he has to. The government’s goal is to destroy his business and put him in prison. He could get 32 years in prison and $7 million dollars in fines – and, oh yes, forfeiture of all of his assets. Even though Evil Angel is a very successful company, the cost of defense is overwhelming. To help raise money, they’ve launched defendourporn.org, which will offer a best of DVD representing all of the studio’s directors. It will be available just in time for the .ourth of July.

And forcing him to be arraigned in Washington instead of California is just part of the Justice Department’s tactics. It serves two important purposes- being so far from home costs Stagliano money, and they want to make sure that the next step should he appeal would be the extremely conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C.- the most conservative appellate court in the nation.

Stagliano was indicted on seven counts of violating federal obscenity laws, which includes the distribution of allegedly obscene materials via mail and Internet. The movies named in the indictment are "Milk Nymphos," directed by Jay Sin; "Storm Squirters 2," directed by Joey Silvera; and a trailer from Belladonna's "Fetish Fanatic 5." They were distributed by Stagliano’s company, Evil Angel, which has been a sort of United Artists for adult directors.

The case against Stagliano is convoluted and raises many constitutional and legal questions. One of the huge questions is how you determine community standards when something is distributed online, as is the case of the Belladonna trailer. And how do you apply the obscenity standard of judging something as a whole when prosecuting a trailer that represents a whole the jury might not ever see? I don’t think a movie trailer has ever been prosecuted for obscenity before.

The Feds are also trying to apply a 1999 Dial-a-porn law to add on additional charges to the Belladonna trailer. He is charged with knowingly using an interactive computer service to display an obscene image … in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age. That is a very questionable and scary tactic- since there is no legal mechanism in place that would offer a producer protection for legally distributed online adult content that is not legally obscene.

The Justice Department, in a highly political move, even released a press release about the case before Stagliano was even served. This will be a prominent prosecution as we move closer to the next presidential election, and I don’t think that is a coincidence.

I doubt it is little comfort for Stagliano to know that he is being prosecuted for distributing adult entertainment by the most corrupt Justice Department in our nation’s history. A Justice Department that has been remolded into a powerful political tool to serve Karl Rove’s now failed goal of a permanent Republican political majority. A Justice Department that has been revealed to have orchestrated highly questionable prosecutions against prominent Democrats right before elections in order to influence the outcome. A Justice Department that literally railroaded the now former governor of Alabama into prison with what Attorney Generals across the country, both Republican and Democrat, have called a flawed prosecution- a case that many believe will make Watergate look like child’s play.

We are just now beginning to learn the full extent of the corruption of the Justice Department, and what is being revealed is staggering. Siegelmen was not an isolated case, but part of a pattern of political prosecutions- a pattern that was at the very heart of the U.S. attorney firing scandal. Those who got fired were not playing ball by using political prosecutions. And sadly, the amazingly corrupt and amazingly stupid Attorney General Gonzalez has merely been replaced by someone whose only virtue seems to be that he is less stupid.

These are the folks behind the prosecution of John Stagliano. And his prosecution has nothing to do with protecting children or protecting us from criminals. It is just as political as it seems almost everything the Justice Department now does. And as much as our obscenity laws are a travesty and mockery of law and justice, allowing prosecutions that seem to be almost random and defy sense or logic, it now appears that the traditional insanity of obscenity prosecutions has now become the standard for everything the Justice Department does- prosecutions as a powerful tool used solely for political ends