The Jeff Booth Show

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Show Transcripts

June 22nd , 2008

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 This is the Jeff Booth Show for June 22nd, 2008, brought to you by the Center for Sexual Expression and Education, and Erotic University. I’m Jeff Booth. This week our Sexvestigation looks at the utter craptitude of modern mainstream journalism, especially as it relates to sex. We have an interview with the photographer whose book, Naked Ambition, captures adult stars revealing themselves and lets us get to know a little more about them. We have our usual round up of sex and politics in the news, including how your sex life might be messing up your credit rating. And finally, we bring the lighter and more entertaining side of things with sex in entertainment, with celebrity news, and the latest on sex in mainstream and porn. Just click on the topic to the left that you want to listen to, and thanks for clicking in.

Sexvestigation

It’s a remarkable act of censorship. It impacts the entire Internet. And it probably even violates the law. So who is behind it? Would you believe the Associated Press? You’ve read endless excerpts from Associated Press articles on the Internet, quoted under the concept of fair use, the doctrine that allows you to use a small part of a copyrighted work with the proper attribution.  The AP wants to put a stop to all that, but instead of lobbying legislators to rewrite the copyright laws and eliminate fair use, they have decided to do it using high priced lawyers and the threat of expensive lawsuits. They now insist that the use of even just five words from an AP article must be paid for. Five words will cost you $12.50, and it goes up from there. Here is where the censorship part comes in- if they don’t like you, you can’t quote them. So, for example, if you were writing an article on the crappy quality of modern journalism, and you wanted to quote something from an AP article to demonstrate the poor quality of mainstream media journalism, you can’t. At least according to the Associated Press.

In fact, their policy specifically forbids such things. And if a sex site like ours wanted to use AP quotes and even pay for them, we probably couldn’t, since they forbid anything that might harm their reputation, like being associated with a site that deals with the forbidden topic of sex. And their very first target for a threatened lawsuit, not surprisingly, was a liberal news site, the Drudge Retort, taking its name from the more conservative, often highly inaccurate, and I’m guessing more in tune with the AP, Drudge Report.  Fair use does not go away just because a company says it does, but their lawyers can put the hurt on you anyway.

And in the Associated Press article in which Marcy Jane Tiffany, wife of judge Alex Kozinsky who called a mistrial in the notorious California bestiality porn trial, complains about the distortions in the media about the alleged porn found on her husband’s private web site, she says "Alex is not into porn - he is into funny - and sometimes funny has a sexual character." That quote the AP used comes from the Patterico.com site, and I expect AP to be sending them a check forthwith. We reported in detail in last week’s Sexvestigation about how distorted and dishonest the coverage of this story in the mainstream media was. The AP quotes California Los Angeles Times editor David Lauter from a published statement, in which he claimed that the articles were fair and accurate and that the articles “raised important issues on a matter of significant public concern. The judge was presented with the facts ... and was given a full opportunity to respond."  I am assuming that a check from AP to the Times is also on its way. Even though Lauter’s statement is embarrassingly inaccurate, as we reported last week. It was not fair and accurate, but distorted and misleading, as anyone who actually saw the material on the judge’s web site like I did would know. Or as I was able to guess before researching it and tracking down copies of what was reported to be on the site after it shut down, based on the Times’ history of misreporting stories on sexual topics, going all the way to a Playboy sponsored bus tour of Los Angeles that I and an L.A. Times writer went on and in which the Times story bore little  resemblance to the trip I was on and was written in an ugly, nasty, sex phobic way.

The AP clearly did not see the material on Kozinsky’s site, at least I hope, , as they simply quote the deceptive descriptions from the Times. Nor do they bother to verify that Marcy is actually telling the truth, which we have verified, and she is. But this is typical of the mainstream media.

The irony of the AP’s demands to be paid for quoting their material is that it, like the rest of the mainstream media, seems more about quoting people and using their words without paying them for it, but not bothering to do any actual reporting to verify the veracity of those words. They report, we decide, which we can’t do, because they don’t bother to do any actual reporting to help us decide. Shouldn’t fact checking be the reporter’s job?  They stick with the much easier he said she said reporting which guarantees that much of what they report will be misinformation without analyses. But if they are going to rehash the same misinformation based on quoting others, they should follow their own policy and pay for it. But I suspect that the rules they set apply to everyone else, but not to them. And this is just part of the reason that people are losing all respect from the mainstream media and turning to the best reporter and interviewer on cable- comedian John Stewart.

And when the media should be censoring itself, it doesn’t. At least not at the prestigious National Press Club, the historic clubhouse of our Washington press corp. I have had the privilege of speaking there and it has a sense of history and gravitas that permeates the building. SO what the hell is going on now?

Remember Jeff Gannon? He was the former male prostitute that the White House brought into press conferences to ask the president softball and fawning questions. He did not work for a legitimate news agency. While John Stewart calls his Daily Show a fake news show with fake reporters, Gannon was the real world fake reporter. SO why is he now blogging on the official National Press Club web site? On it he ludicrously claims that the feminist fueled anti-war group CodePink has ties to terrorists. Sure, they did bare their breasts in a recent protest outside a Marine Recruiting Station, and to the decidedly gay Gannon, that may well have been terrifying. But is this how the National Press Club wants to be represented?

Apparently. Continuing with what seems to be a press club gay theme, they allowed Larry Sinclair to hold a press conference at the National Press Club this past week. He’s the gay man who claims he had gay sex with presidential candidate Barack Obama during a drug fueled binge. That’s a pretty shocking claim, and if the Press Club allowed him to speak there on this topic, he must have some credibility otherwise they’d look like a bunch of douches. Oops. They wound up looking like a bunch of douches. After speaking, D.C. police hauled Sinclair out of the building in handcuffs on outstanding warrants. You’d think any reporter worth his salt could use Google to check this guy out, but they seemed to have missed Sinclair’s 27 year history of felonies for crimes such as forgery and theft, or the fact that he had outstanding felony warrants in two different states. Those are the sorts of things that reporters used to use to gauge someone’s credibility- you know, a history of deceit and lying and criminal behaviour used to mean that you treat the guy skeptically. But I guess years of Bush have sort of removed that old rule of thumb.

So what the fuck? What happened to our proud fourth estate? How did it wind up as a rickety shack at the back of the White House lawn? I realized today that if we didn’t have shows like the Daily Show and if we didn’t have the Internet and had to rely solely on the mainstream media, we would have no idea what the hell our government was up to. And supporting the government and censoring speech was never the main idea behind a free press.

News

There are worse places to be prosecuted for obscenity than Florida  where Max Hardcore was recently convicted. For example, Utah. That is where the Cincinnati based Sami and Michael Harb of Movies by Mail are being prosecuted, Utah being one of the few places where their chances of winning are even worse than in Cincinnati. And in the bizarre world of community standards, the fact that they shipped almost a thousand adult videos to Utah in 2006 has no bearing on whether the material violates community standards, standards that are not set until a randomly selected jury decides. Then there is the question about how a video distributor carrying hundreds of titles could possibly know that a specific scene in a specific video would violate the as yet undetermined community standards of a particular community- one that they have never been to, have no knowledge of, and simply mailed something to at the request of a citizen of that community. Apparently, adult video distributors are expected to watch thousands of hours of video, visit all of the communities they ship to to get a feel for their nebulous community standards, and then make a legal determination on a scene by scene basis. That seems easy.

Well-know Vivid adult director Paul Thomas has come out strongly in favor of the prosecution in Los Angeles of Ira Isaacs, who is on trial for distributing videos such as  Mako’s First Time Scat and Gang Bang Horse, titles that soud more like parodies than something anyone would actually buy. Thomas said “We at Vivid applaud his prosecution. Freedom of speech carries with it responsibility. It was never intended for there to be videos of people shitting in each other’s faces.” As much as I personally like PT, I think he is being very naïve in making this statement. While he sees a huge difference between his own films and the sick shit, literal shit, of an Ira Isaac production, those on the pro-censorship right do not.

They would very much agree with the similar statement: “Freedom of speech carries with it responsibility. It was never intended for there to be videos of people coming in each other’s faces.”  Or fellating each other. Or participating in orgies. The problem is not one of objectionable material, but how we deal with it. By supporting the idea that people should be put in prison for creating videos that almost everyone finds objectionable, he is adding support to the idea that people should be put in prison for making videos that only a few, such as a jury, find objectionable.  I find the content of Isaacs videos disgusting. Maybe there is a legitimate question about whether such material causes societal harm.  I do not know the answer to that. What I do know is that people should not be put in prison for their artistic endeavors, no matter how disgusting. You want to ban his movies? Fine, if you go through a legal procedure to do that. But the scorched earth policy of obscenity prosecutions are designed to personally destroy both artists and the businessmen who seek to profit from them. To take all of their money and take away their freedom. Obscenity laws are a crude bludgeon designed to send a message to everyone creating sexual content that you could be next. And PT should have known better than to have spoken up for a system that may some day come back to bite him in the ass.

Its time again for the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which now apparently goes to those doing just the opposite. The recipient- the notoriously homophobic and sycophantic and now thankfully retired General Peter Pace. He perceived his role as Joint Chief’s Chairman as being chief cheerleader for the president. Only his homophobia kept him from wearing the cute little cheerleader’s outfit. His proclamation that homosexuality was immoral did little for the morale of the many gay and lesbians serving in our military. Their freedom was of little concern to him.

John McCain came up with a list of prominent Democrats supporting him. Except none of them were particularly prominent, or had much of a history of supporting Democrats. And one of them was just plain hilarious. He was listed as a Democratic  candidate for the governor of West Virgnia. Which is true and sound spretty impressive. Except for the fact that the sole reason that Phillip “Icky” Frye ran for the governorship was for revenge because the incumbent governor, Bob Wise, had been sleeping with his wife. Looking at Icky I find it hard to believe that he could have married a woman anyone else would want to sleep with. Here are Icky’s own words about his candidacy: "I'm not qualified to run our great state or have any hopes of winning an election" If these are the prominent democrats McCain is using to drum up support from Democrats to cross over,  I think he’s going to be disappointed.

No one completely understands how your credit rating is scored. But a recent lawsuit has peeled back the window shade a bit. And its about as comforting as accidentally peeking in on your grandparents having sex. Its not just about whether you pay your bills on time. You also need to be living the good and moral life. Have you ever gone to a massage parlour?  What about a marriage counselor? These and other supposedly private transactions are taken into account. It came out in a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission in federal court in Atlanta against card issuer CompuCredit. Critics have long suspected that purchases were factored in, but everything has been so opaque and secretive that no one knew for sure. This suit revealed just a tiny bit of what the credit card companies are doing. I wonder if your credit rating goes up or down based on which candidates you use your credit card to give money to. And apparently, that would not be illegal, as long as they disclosed it in legalese in the tiny print on the back of the application.  CompuCredit’s defense was hardly comforting. What they did was not a crime, they claimed, because everybody else does it.

I don’t always agree with Jessica at Feministing.com, but I always find her interesting and entertaining. In commenting about a quote from a radio personality who said that women vote for Democrats because they think with the hearts and not their heads, Jessica pointed out : ”Personally, I vote with my vagina. And let me tell you, pulling that lever is not fucking easy.”

That’s it for this week in political news. And don’t get mad- get active.

Entertainment

Japan has produced a robot for men. Lonely men. It’s a robotic girlfriend who kisses on command. But no tongue. And she is only 15 inches tall. According to a Sega Toys spokesman, “"She's very lovable and though she's not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend." Well, perhaps like any real girlfriend you have to buy. When you run out of money for batteries for her, she’ll completely turn off on you.

Christie Brinkley wants to make sure her divorce from husband number who the hell can keep count Peter Cook is as ugly as possible. She is a little pissed over his alleged affair with his 18 year old assistant. She wants the entire divorce to be made public. She has let out the allegations that he looks at Internet porn sites, which would put him in the select group of virtually all men. And she claims he logs onto swingers sites, which for a guy on his own would actually not do him a lot of good, as guys by themselves are not all that in demand. If she’s gone to a party or two with him, and maybe brought along the assistant for a little three way or even more way fun, they might still be together.

And in who is getting naked now, its 61st ranked tennis player Ashley Harkleroad, who will become the first ranked tennis player to appear naked in Playboy. Her reasoning: "I'm proud of my body. I was representing a female athlete's body." She will do her representing in the upcoming August issue.

And Keira Knightly is proud of her nudity in her upcoming film The Edge of Love. “I always bare my breasts. It's not like it's only in this film!” she said, explaining that she does the nudity for a very god reason, “It was very simple. It was a sex scene and I never like them when they've got bras on.” I’ve got to agree with her there. I’ve never made love to a woman with her bra on. In fact, it always seems like we are both anxious to get rid of the damn thing.

And going fore a triple, the current issue of W magazine features a long photo layout called Summer Camp shot by noted photographer Bruce Weber, with full nude shots of Kate Moss, Lancome model Daria Werbowy and Laura Stone. The cover features the three of them in bed together. The pictures in this women’s magazine are hotter than anything you’d see in Maxim.

Actually, its more the American Maxim and other so-called American men’s magazines that are so lame, fearful of showing the slightest nipplage. The current German issue of Maxim features Dita von Tease and her nipples right on the cover, with more inside. In Europe, men are not as afraid of naked women as they are here.

IFC has come out with list of the fifty worst sex scenes of all time. It must have been quite a challenge to narrow it down to just fifty. Topping the list is the buttery scene between Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. Number two is Showgirls, a movie with a horrendously bad sex scene between Elizabeth Berkley and Kyle MacLachlan in a pool, a setting which should have been hot but instead was ludicrously over the top in a movie in which your strongest desire as a viewer was to see the loathsome main character flattened by a semi so you did not have to watch her anymore. Oh, and you wanted the semi to be filled with the rest of the extremely unlikable characters and instantly burst into flame on impact.  I never saw the number 3 Irreversible, and I am glad that I missed the anal rape scene so brutal it leaves the victim in a coma. I did see the number 4 pick, Ma Mere, with many exceptionally bad sex scenes, but I agree with their pick of the main character, played by Louis Garrel, masturbating over the corpse of his dead mother. Number five, Myra Breckinridge, is in my collection and I have yet to watch it, but now I have a reason. It’s a huge 70’s misfire with a notable cast, including Mae West’s final onscreen appearance, Raquel Welch, and film critic Rex Reed. At least Reed was in it so he never had to review it.  The winning scene features the transsexual played by Raquel Welch donning a strap-on and raping Roger Harren. It also included John Huston, Farrah Fawcet, Jim Backus, John Carradine, and Andy Devine in a movie so bad that the author of the book it was based on, Gore Vidal, called it one of the worst movies ever made. I know what I’m watching tonight.

And in mainstream movies

In the first Poison Ivy film, you saw Drew Barrymore in a wet see through top and that was about it. The sequel starred Alyssa Milano and offered several topless scenes. Then the third film brought us Jamie Pressly running around naked through much of the movie. Poisin Ivy four is set for release on July 1st. starring Crystal Lowe and Lindsay Maxwell. I don’t have the particulars, but based on the progression, I’m expecting a nude lesbian scene at the very least.

Sure, the Showgirls pool scene was bad, but in the soon to be released on DVD French film Tonight I’ll Sleep at Yours, the underwater nude scene looks really hot. It has Audrey Dana in the all together with some very nice underwater photography. It a boy meets girl romantic comedy.

Fools Gold may not have done much at the box office or for the careers of  Matthew McConaughey or Kate Hudson, and sure, it came and went in a flash, but at least it had a tiny bit of nudity, including a flashing scene with Ashley Cheadle.

And on the porn side, the award winning Abbey Winters titles present natural looking young women cavorting with other natural looking young women in believable and passionate scenarios, with real orgasms. The latest is GG19: The Girl Sessions. It features Chloe B., Violet, and Anneke, with Australian girls who really enjoy what they are doing.

Teravison brings us their latest edition from the Iron Cross series, which offers fetish and bondage titles. Anal Chaos is from director Chet Brondo. It stars Rebeca Linares, Alexandra Ivy, Sabrina Rose and  Michelle Avante and includes the first double anal scene in a Teravision pic.