In Praise of Indecency

by Paul Krassner

  In November 1977, Larry Flynt was flying with Ruth Carter Stapleton, the evangelist sister of President Jimmy Carter, in Flynt’s pink-painted private jet, which, when it belonged to Elvis Presley, had been painted red, white and blue. Up in the air, Flynt had a vision of Jesus Christ. Flynt’s entire body was tingling, and he fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer. Thus was he converted to born-again Christianity.

  The next month, at Hustler’s Christmas party, Flynt announced that I was going to be the new publisher. This was the first that I heard the news. Before, I had been wondering how the magazine would change, and now it turned out that I was the answer to my own question. For Flynt to bring me in as redeeming social value was an offer too absurd to refuse.

  Now that Flynt has evolved from a con artist into an authentic First Amendment hero—in July 2000, he spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco—I recall what a pariah he was in 1977. In Los Angeles, at the building in Century City, which housed his office, Hustler was not allowed to be listed in the lobby.

  At the time, I was writing a syndicated column for alternative weeklies. Specifically, I was working on my “Predictions for 1978,” leading off with this: “Since Larry Flynt has been converted to born-again Christianity, the new Hustler will feature a special Scratch-’n’-Sniff Virgin Mary.”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea,” said Flynt on New Year’s Day at Nassau Beach in the Bahamas. “We’ll have a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and when you scratch her crotch, it’ll smell like tomato juice.”

  He was rubbing suntan lotion on my back.

  “I’ll bet Hugh Hefner never did this for you,” he said.

  Flynt wanted to know who would be an appropriate person to write an article for Hustler that would expose the Pope as gay. I suggested Gore Vidal, who had already stated in an interview that Cardinal Spellman was gay. So much for our first editorial conference.

  There was an unwritten agreement among men’s magazines that human female nipples would not be clearly visible on a cover. I was also learning to accept certain arbitrary rules then governing the inside pages. An erect penis must not be shown. Semen must not be shown. Penetration must not be shown. Oral-genital contact must not be shown.

  A few months later in Georgia, Flynt was shot during a lunch break in his obscenity trial. I flew to Atlanta and went directly to the hospital. Althea brought me to Larry’s room. It was extremely unsettling to see such a powerful personality so helpless, kept alive by medical technology, with one tube feeding him and another breathing for him. He appeared bug-eyed with painkiller. Althea lifted the sheet and showed me his gaping wounds, a truly awesome sight.

  “Oh, God, Althea,” I said, “he’s showing pink.”

  “I’m arranging for a photographer to come in here,” she said.

  “We’re gonna publish Larry’s wounds in Hustler. I want people to see what they did to him.”

  I sat down in a chair by Larry’s bed. I didn’t know what to say, We simply clasped hands for a while. Finally I broke the silence. “Larry, tomorrow is Good Friday,” I said. “So, uh, you don’t have to go to work.”

  I glanced toward Althea to reassure myself that I hadn’t indulged in irreverence that was too inappropriate, but she said, “Oh, Paul, look,” gesturing toward Larry—“he wants to show you something.” Above the oxygen mask, Larry was blinking his eyes over and over again in rapid succession.

  “He’s laughing,” Althea explained.

  It was a moment of unspeakable intimacy.

  Althea had transformed the Coca-Cola Suite of Emory University Hospital into her office, where she was studying the slides of a “Jesus and the Adulteress” photo spread, including a semi-life-sized poster in the form of a centerfold pull-out. There was a generic barbershop-calendar Jesus, looking reverently toward the sky as he stands above the prone Mary Magdalene— almost naked, her head bleeding from the stones that have been cast upon her—and, just as the Bible says, he is covering her, but not quite, and she is, inadvertently, still showing pink. Sweet, shocking, vulnerable pink. This was a startling visual image, unintentionally satirizing the change from the old Hustler to the new Hustler. The marketing people were aghast at the possibility that wholesalers, especially in the Bible Belt, would refuse to distribute the magazine with such a blatantly blasphemous feature.

  Faced with a crucial decision, Althea made her choice on the basis of pure whimsicality. She noticed a pair of pigeons on the window ledge. One was waddling toward the other. “All right,” she said, “if that dove walks over and pecks the other dove, then we will publish this.” The pigeon continued strutting along the window ledge, but stopped short and didn’t peck the other pigeon, so publication of “Jesus and the Adulteress” was postponed indefinitely. And the poster would instead remain on my wall as a memento of my six-month stint at Hustler. Maybe I should try to auction it off on eBay.

  As for Larry Flynt’s born-again conversion, he now attributes it to “a chemical imbalance” in his brain.

  PEE-WEE HERMAN

  MEETS PETE TOWNSHEND

  PEE-WEE HERMAN MEETS PETE TOWNSHEND

  Name two famous people who were both born on August 27. And the answer is: Pee-wee Herman and Mother Teresa. Okay, now, what was the reference to Pee-wee Herman that was censored out of the 1991 Emmy Awards? And the answer: Comedian Gilbert Gottfried’s observation that, “If masturbation is against the law, then I should be on Death Row.” This was, of course, a reference to the arrest of Pee-wee for playing with his wee-wee as he watched Nancy Nurse in the darkened privacy of a porn movie theater.

  The bust for that victimless crime took place later in the lobby. Yes, the cops caught him coming and going. Inquiring minds wanted to know, did they force him to wash his hands before they fingerprinted him? It all seemed to be straight out of an old Lenny Bruce bit, where just such a hardened criminal must ultimately be rehabilitated by going “cold jerky.”

  The arrest of Pee-wee Herman might not have occurred today because, although he would undoubtedly be performing that same dastardly act of masturbation, this time it would most likely happen while he was watching porn on the computer screen in his own home. That is to say the arrest would not occur if he were watching an adult video.

  But now he has been charged with possession of kiddie porn. How did this come about? A teenager had registered a complaint about Pee-wee and a friend, actor Jeffrey Jones. The complaint was dismissed, but detectives had already searched both of their homes. As a result, Jones was accused of taking pornographic photos of a juvenile, which is a felony, whereas Pee-wee faced the lesser charge of possession. If convicted of the misdemeanor, he could have been sentenced to a year in prison.

  Then came the legal troubles of Pete Townshend, famed British rock guitarist and co-founder of The Who, who has admitted to downloading child pornography from the Internet for the purpose of researching the autobiography that he’s writing. What follows is the transcript of my imaginary conversation between Pee-wee and Pete, based on the actual facts of their respective cases.

  Pete: It’s so ironic. Not only am I not a pedophile, but I have been a high profile campaigner against child pornography on the Web. I mean, my own grandmother sexually abused me when I was six years old. I even offered to have the hard drive of my computer analyzed by police so they could ascertain for themselves that if I did anything, which is technically illegal, it was purely for research.

  Pee-wee: That’s your smoking gun, silly. See, I didn’t download anything, because then your credit card number becomes a matter of record. Me, I’m just a collector of vintage erotica, like those classic physique magazines that were published in the 1940s. I have 100,000 items in my archives, but none of them are from the Internet. The detectives spent a whole year studying every single one of those images, and the district attorney finally said there was no case. But then—only one day before the statute of limitations would have expired—the Los Angeles city attorney issued a warrant for my arrest.

&n
bsp; Pete: Why? What did they find?

  Pee-wee: At first they were going to charge me with possessing a tape of the actor Rob Lowe doing an underage girl, but since he was never charged with child porn, they changed their minds about charging me with watching it.

  Pete: And you don’t have any child pornography among your collection?

  Pee-wee: Oh, there are a few minutes of grainy footage of teenage boys masturbating or performing oral sex. But I wasn’t even aware of that.

  Pete: Well, in England, if you possess images of children engaged in sexual activity, it’s against the law, and even if you view those images accidentally, without really possessing them, it’s still illegal.

  Pee-wee: It’s the same thing in the United States. If someone anonymously e-mailed child porn to me, I could be arrested for possession. Even if I immediately deleted it, that would not be acceptable as a defense.

  Pete: One would think that if you happen to be an anti-porn investigator, you will be considered immune to prosecution, but unfortunately, I was not working as a government pervert.

  Pee-wee: Hey, maybe you could prove in court that you didn’t enjoy looking at those photos. That you hated the images, but you felt it was a necessary evil.

  Pete: Look, the bottom line is that I am simply an innocent victim of the puritanical urge to punish.

  Pee-wee: I know you are, but what am I?

  SATIRICAL PROPHECY

  SATIRICAL PROPHECY

  In my capacity as a stand-up comic, several years ago I did a line on stage about a Fundamentalist Christian who had tattooed on his penis, “What would Jesus do?” Recently, that metaphorical concept which I had made up in the recesses of my warped mind came literally true. A Sunday School teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota advised one of his students to write on his penis, “What would Jesus do?” I must be careful not to let this power fall into the wrong hands.

  It was a case of satirical prophecy.

  In March 1991, I published in The Realist a satirical article by Lenny Lipton, titled “Computerized Kiddie Porn.” Lipton described his meeting with a character he called Harvey, who had created—and now sells for big bucks— special computer-generated images, such as “a pretty little girl engaged in an unspeakably bestial act with an adult male who looked very much like Harvey.”

  Lipton wrote, “I was particularly startled by an image of a homosexual act performed on a male baby.”

  He asked Harvey how, in the face of a Supreme Court decision that made child pornography illegal, he nevertheless gets away with running a one-man child pornography cottage industry that brings in a six-figure income.

  “It was the Supreme Court that put me in business,” Harvey explained. “Justice Byron White, who wrote the majority opinion—it was 6-3, upholding an Ohio law—said that it’s illegal to possess nude photographs of children, even if they are used privately in the home. A ban on private possession is justified, according to White, because owning such photos helps perpetuate commercial demand and thus the exploitation of helpless children. If you accept the Court’s logic, then the government could intrude into the home any time a seemingly private activity is thought to perpetuate a commercial market for actions that might exploit others. This is a whole new theory of censorship, and therein lies my golden opportunity.

  “You see,” he continued, “no one is being exploited by my creations. These dirty pictures come out of my mind via a computer. No child is exploited. These images are perfectly legal, if I am to believe the Court is being up front with regard to the basis for its decision. As far as I am able to tell, you have nothing to worry about if you take one of my loathsome pictures home and hang it on your wall.”

  Back in real life, in April 2002, the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal child pornography law that makes it a crime to own or sell images of computer-created children engaged in sex. Since no actual children were portrayed in the photos and films at issue, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the government could not make it a crime to show sexual images that only “appear to be” children.

  The ruling reversed a section of the Child Pornography Act of 1996—backed by then-Senator John Ashcroft—which broadened the definition of child pornography to include any “visual depiction that is, or appears to be, a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” specifically mentioning a “computer-generated image or picture.”

  The Court’s decision served to provide immunity from the law for a whole new generation of virtual child pornographers who rely entirely on computer-generated images. As long as no real children were portrayed, or morphed into a sex scene, then the photographer or filmmaker could not be prosecuted.

  How had this all come about?

  In 1992, a man in Texas downloaded digital files from a bulletin board system in Denmark. He was indicted for “receiving child pornography.” His attorney argued that the government could not prove that the images had been made using actual children. He put on the witness stand a graphic artist, who showed how even someone with only basic computer knowledge could use a software program such as Photoshop to alter a photograph. Nonetheless, the defendant was found guilty.

  Eventually, the Free Speech Coalition, a California trade association for the adult entertainment industry, went to federal court in San Francisco to challenge the law on the grounds that real children were not being exploited. That claim was rejected, but a 2-1 vote by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that it should not be illegal to show “images of fictitious children engaged in imaginary sex acts,” and the Supreme Court upheld that ruling.

  Eleven years earlier, Lenny Lipton had written about his imaginary acquaintance: “Harvey lifted a print off the pile, placed it in a large manila envelope and handed it to me. I put the envelope in my briefcase and after some pleasantries I bid him adieu. On my drive home I thought about Harvey, the Supreme Court and the world I lived in. As I drove toward the Golden Gate Bridge, computer-generated child pornography on the seat beside me, I felt blessed to be living in a world where technology could put an end to the exploitation of children.”

  It was another case of satirical prophecy.

  However, in February 2003, with the backing of the Bush administration, the Senate unanimously approved a revised version of the law, which would create a new definition of a minor identifiable in pornographic images as one “virtually indistinguishable” from an actual child. Moreover, defendants in criminal pornography cases would be required to provide evidence that they did not use real children to produce the images.

  I guess the time has come for somebody to write a satire about the new judicial process, where an accused person is considered guilty until proven innocent. Oops, too late, that’s already come true.

  THE MARRIAGE OF

  HIP-HOP AND PORNOGRAPHY

  THE MARRIAGE OF HIP-HOP AND PORNOGRAPHY

  Entertainment reporter Geoff Boucher wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “You might be able to imagine Garth Brooks without his cowboy hat or Britney Spears without the bare midriff... but Snoop Dogg without a joint in his hand? It may be a pipe dream, but the chronic king of hip-hop has announced that he is abstaining from marijuana as well as alcohol.

  “This is shocking news considering that Snoop was named the 2002 Stoner of the Year by High Times magazine and has made a habit of openly toking before, during and after his concerts and interviews. He has been, arguably, the most public pothead performer since Bob Marley.”

  The rapper explained in an interview on BET: “I’m 30 years old now. Three kids. A wife. A mom. Brothers. Artists. Family. Friends. They all need me. They depend on me. I’ve been leading [home boys] off the cliff for five, six years. So now I’m going slow.”

  However, then-High Times entertainment editor Steve Bloom considered the possibility that Snoop’s surprise declaration was not necessarily a true change of heart, since he had been fined and placed on probation for a pot offense in Ohio the previous year.

  “He was the biggest, baddest pot smok
er out there,” says Bloom (now editor of the online website Celeb Stoner), “and maybe he’s just stepping back because it got too hot. Maybe he really has decided he wants to take a break or not smoke any more. But all this could be a smokescreen.”

  Sort of like when Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, both of whom, after they were busted for dope, advised young people to stop taking LSD (wink, wink).

  Indeed, Rollingstone.com has reported: “In a closed-door session at the Department of Justice, Snoop Dogg engaged the attorney general in a spirited debate about medical marijuana. ‘The Doggfather and I have our differences,’ an unusually expansive [Attorney General] John Ashcroft told reporters afterward, ‘but we are both committed to relieving chronic pain.’ ‘Or at a mutherfuckin’ minimum,’ rejoined Dogg, ‘relievin’ with the Chronic.’”

  In any case, on the Internet, Snoop’s fans reacted to his announcement with both dismay and skepticism. The news also inspired commentary in Aaron McGruder’s controversial comic strip, The Boondocks. Huey Freeman, the radical African-American kid, says, referring to Snoop’s announcement, “It’s the potential impact on the global economy that I’m worried about,” and his little neighbor Jazmine responds, “Think he’ll do a benefit song for his dealer?”

  Dogg seems to have a double standard, though, when it comes to victimless “crimes.” Whereas his flamboyant image once graced a cover of High Times, he now appears instead, seated on a throne, in full pimp regalia, on the cover of the September 2002 issue of Adult Video News. Their accompanying article states:

  “While Snoop Dogg wasn’t the first rapper to make porn—DJ Yella of N.W.A. has been producing it since the mid-1990s—Doggystyle, more than any other porn/hip-hop synthesis, awakened the adult industry to the immense commercial possibilities of the genre. The tape, Snoop’s first collaboration with Hustler Video, in which he introduces the sex scenes but doesn’t have sex on camera, has sold more than 150,000 units world-wide, garnering AVN’s Top Selling Tape of 2001 Award... Largely due to the success of Doggystyle, more and more rappers are appearing in porn videos with no fear of alienating fans.”