PORN

By Bill Monson

A week ago, I watched the PBS series "Frontline" as it presented a program on "American Porn."

As the picture which usually accompanies this column should make clear, I’m getting on in years; so I was unaware of what’s been happening lately. I suspected pornography was big business, but I never would have dreamed that among its profiteers were American industrial giants like General Motors and AT&T.

That’s right – GM and the telephone company. Both own satellite services which pump porn directly into American homes. The program said that AT&T makes over $20-million a month from its porn channel.

Now, I may be elderly, but I don’t consider myself a fuddy-duddy. I’ve been aware of porn since junior high. And even in a 1950 Galesburg of 28,000 people and many churches, one could find porn playing cards, "8-page bibles," and French postcards. I remember the impact of PLAYBOY when it appeared. I never saw the first issue with the famous nude centerfold of Marilyn Monroe, but I heard about it. And I obtained a copy of the second issue from a college chum to see for myself what the fuss was all about. From that issue on, I had only to walk two blocks from home – to the Tobacco Shop at the corner of Main and Fulton – if I wanted to get a copy of my own.

When the Navy sent me to Los Angeles in 1958, I found myself in the porn capital of America. LA imported porn from around the world, then began to produce it in the 60s. Soon, there were "art houses" where you could see nudie films. Soft porn flicks by producers like Russ Meyer followed. By the 70s, hardcore XXX-rated films like "Deep Throat" were playing regularly in "adult theaters," and Hollywood was doing hardcore shorts on 8-mm. film for the home projector. When video tape came along, porn was reproduced on it. Sex shops opened, and porn-meisters like Larry Flynt turned out raunchy magazines like "Hustler" for the local 7-11. Even Galesburg had its own store of "adult" videos and magazines out on Henderson Street.

Government seemed unable to stem the tide. Prosecutions were attempted, but the expanded use of the First Amendment to cover porn made them difficult. With the arrival of satellite TV and the internet, the Bill Clinton White House put Federal prosecutions on the back burner; and the porn business went into unharrassed high gear.

Now, according to "Frontline," the pendulum may soon swing back. President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft want to resume Federal prosecutions. And in Los Angeles – of all places –a local case goes to trial to see if we can still have "community standards" in an Internet Age.

Larry Flynt and other High Poobahs of Porn are worried –and when Larry worries, that’s an omen. He doesn’t want to spend his millions defending what made them.

Does Ashcroft (who spent thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to put up a stage curtain at the Justice Department so a naked statue of Justice won’t be peering over his shoulder when he does press conferences there) really stand a chance against this huge industry, against GM and AT&T? Maybe, maybe not.

The FBI is kind of busy right now with terrorism.

But the deputy D.A. of Los Angeles County is a woman, and she thinks she can make her case by just showing a jury of local housewives the kind of ugly trash being produced in the "City of Angels."

I wish her luck.