In Praise of Indecency

by Paul Krassner

  Snoop believes that the hip-hop/porn connection benefits both industries. “The adult video world is so much what rap music is all about,” he says in Adult Video News, “about expressing ourselves and having fun, and a lot of times radio and TV don’t understand that so they censor us. So I feel like we’re doing each other justice by being hand in hand and working with each other. I mean, a lot of people be in the closet about it, but they all listen to rap music or watch adult videos one way or another.

  “I always wanted to do it because I felt like I had a lot of records that would never get no airplay or never get no visuals, and I just wanted to make some type of video where I could do these songs and have naked ladies in them and doing that type of shit. And then when I figured out that I could make a whole movie, I got with the right director and then put my ideas down and made it happen.”

  Speaking of his follow-up to Doggystyle, titled HUSTLAZ, Diary of a Pimp, he expounds, “It’s just basically the day in the life of a pimp, everything he’s got going on with all the ladies in different rooms in the house and different situations that occur. And videos. So it’s just like a live, put-together movie. It’s a diary. It’s like a documentary in movie fashion. We made three new records [‘Break These Hoes for Snoop,’ ‘Doin’ It Too’ and ‘Pussy Like This’] that were just specifically for this, where we could make records that was hot and we knew they were X rated and they would fit the movie, fit the theme. This shit is hot, when it’s all side by side, the videos and the acting and the music all comes together.”

  Apparently, Snoop Dogg’s family—those three kids, his wife and his mother—are all completely supportive of his current activity. And so he maintains a hard-on all the way to the bank. Snoop’s new public agenda can be summed up in four little words: “Porn, si. Pot, no.”

  PORN AND

  THE MANSON MURDERS

  PORN AND THE MANSON MURDERS

  The recent TV movie, Helter Skelter, perpetuated the myth of Charles Manson. In 1969, when the news broke about the massacre of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and her house guests, there was a sudden epidemic of paranoia in certain Hollywood circles. Actor Steve McQueen fled to England, for example, and I wondered why. After the trial of Manson and his brainwashed followers, I began my own private investigation, if only to satisfy my sense of curiosity about the case.

  I corresponded with Manson, visited Charlie’s Devils in prison, including Susan Atkins, and—in a classic example of participatory journalism—I took an acid trip with a few family members, including Squeaky Fromme, who is now behind bars for the attempted assassination of then-President Gerald Ford.

  Ed Sanders’ book, The Family, had mentioned that Los Angeles police had discovered porn flicks in a loft at the crime scene, the home Tate shared with her director husband, Roman Polanski (who was in London at the time of the murders). And yet, the prosecutor in Manson’s trial, Vincent Bugliosi, denied in his book, Helter Skelter, that any porn flicks had been found. It was possible that the police had indeed uncovered them but lied to Bugliosi.

  I learned why when I consulted the renowned San Francisco private investigator, Hal Lipset, whose career had been the basis for an excellent film, The Conversation, starring Gene Hackman. Lipset informed me that not only did Los Angeles police seize porn movies and videotapes, but also that individual officers were selling them. He had talked with one police source who told him exactly which porn flicks were available—a total of seven hours’ worth for a quarter-million dollars.

  Lipset began reciting a litany of those porn videos. The most notorious was Greg Bautzer, an attorney for financier Howard Hughes, together with Jane Wyman, the former wife of then-Governor Ronald Reagan. There was Sharon Tate with Dean Martin. There was Sharon with Steve McQueen. (That was a silent Aha! moment for me, since one of the victims was Jay Sebring, Hollywood hair stylist and drug dealer to the stars.) There was Sharon with two black bisexual men.

  “The cops were not too happy about that one,” Lipset recalled.

  There was a video of Cass Elliot from the Mamas and the Papas in an orgy with Yul Brynner, Peter Sellers and Warren Beatty. Coincidentally, Brynner and Sellers, together with John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, had offered a $25,000 reward for the capture of the killers.

  I always felt the executioners had a prior connection with their victims. I finally tracked down a reporter who had hung around with police and seen a porn video of Susan Atkins with one of the victims, Voytek Frykowski. When I asked Manson about that, he responded: “You are ill advised and misled. Sebring done [sic] Susan’s hair and I think he sucked one or two of her dicks. I’m not sure who she was walking out from her stars and cages, that girl loves dick, you know what I mean, hon. Yul Brynner, Peter Sellers...”

  Meanwhile, Charlie has become a cultural symbol. In surfer jargon, a “manson” means a crazy, reckless surfer. For comedians, Manson has become a generic joke reference. I asked him how he felt about that. He wrote back: “I don’t know what a generic is, Joke. I think I know what that means. That means you talk bad about Reagan or Bush. I’ve always ran poker games and whores and crime. I’m a crook. You make the reality in court and press. I just ride and play the cards that were pushed on me to play. Mass killer, it’s a job, what can I say.”

  But Manson has apparently been moonlighting, because his new CD, All the Way Alive, was recently released. He was discussing with the producer of his album the notion that people’s public images can be vastly different from the way they behave in their private lives. As an example, Charlie mentioned “the sex movies Steve McQueen and Peter Sellers were doing with Sharon Tate.”

  RAPE AND PORN

  RAPE AND PORN

  The month of May is not only National Masturbation Month. It has also been designated as Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month. Isn’t it encouraging when different causes can work together with such perfect symbiosis? And yet, the late, ever-provocative novelist Norman Mailer—fearless in the face of political correctness—was opposed to both birth control and masturbation. Here are a few excerpts from my 1962 interview with him:

  “The fact of the matter,” Mailer was saying, “is that the prime responsibility of a woman probably is to be on earth long enough to find the best mate possible for herself, and conceive children who will improve the species. If you get too far away from that, if people start using themselves as flesh laboratories, if they start looking for pills which prevent conception, then what they’re doing, what really at bottom they’re doing, is acting like the sort of people who take out a new automobile and put sand in the crank case in order to see if the sound that the motor gives off is a new sound.”

  “You’re forcing me to the point of personalizing this,” I said. “Do you use contraception? Do you put sand in your crank case?”

  “I hate contraception.”

  “I’m not asking you what your attitude toward it is.”

  “It’s none of your business. Let me just say I try to practice what I preach. I try to.”

  “Then you believe in unplanned parenthood?”

  “There’s nothing I abhor more than Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is an abomination. I’d rather have those fucking Communists over here.”

  At one point, Mailer said that “a native village is bombed, and the bombs happen to be beautiful when they land; in fact it would be odd if all that sudden destruction did not liberate some beauty. The form a bomb takes in its explosion may be in part a picture of the potentialities it destroyed. So let us accept the idea that the bomb is beautiful. If so, any liberal who decries the act of bombing is totalitarian if he doesn’t admit as well that the bombs were indeed beautiful.”

  “Aren’t you implying that this beauty is an absolute?”

  “Well, you don’t know. How do you know beauty is not an absolute?”

  A little later, I asked, “Is it possible that you have a totalitarian attitude toward masturbation?”

  “I wouldn’t say all people who masturbate a
re evil, probably I would even say that some of the best people in the world masturbate. But I am saying it’s a miserable activity.”

  “Well, we’re getting right back now to this notion of absolutes. You know—to somebody, masturbation can be a thing of beauty—”

  “To what end? Who is going to benefit from it?”

  “It’s a better end than the beauty of a bombing.” “Masturbation is bombing. It’s bombing oneself.”

  “I see nothing wrong if the only person hurt from masturbation is the one who practices it. But it can also benefit—look, Wilhelm Stekel wrote a book on auto-eroticism, and one of the points he made was that at least it saved some people who might otherwise go out and commit rape.”

  “It’s better to commit rape than masturbate. Maybe, maybe. The whole thing becomes difficult.”

  “But rape involves somebody else.”

  “Just talking about it on the basis of violence: one is violence toward oneself; one is violence toward others. Let’s follow your argument and be speculative for a moment—if everyone becomes violent toward themselves, then past a certain point the entire race commits suicide. But if everyone becomes violent toward everyone else, you would probably have one wounded hero-monster left.”

  “And he’d have to masturbate.”

  “That’s true.... But—you use that to point out how tragic was my solution, which is that he wins and still has to masturbate. I reply that at least it was more valuable than masturbating in the first place. Besides, he might have no desire to masturbate. He might lie down and send his thoughts back to the root of his being.”

  Mailer concluded that “The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity.” He didn’t mention anything about going blind or becoming a hunchback or growing hair on the palm of one’s hand.

  But now I have a question for myself. Since I oppose government interference in the content of pornography, how do I feel about such things as virtual rape on the Internet?

  Although the California Supreme Court has declared that a man may be convicted of rape if his sexual partner first consents but later changes her mind and asks him to stop, a victim of date rape is unable to take advantage of that ruling. As a preventive measure, there’s a new product on the market—paper coasters which theoretically test for date-rape drugs—ringing up more than $20-million a year in revenue. These coasters have test spots, which are supposed to turn dark blue in thirty seconds if a splash of alcohol contains drugs that are often used to incapacitate victims.

  When Andrew Luster, the millionaire great-grandson of cosmetics tycoon Max Factor, was on trial for date rape, his defense attorneys attempted unsuccessfully to prove that he was actually an aspiring porn producer who was merely practicing his craft when he directed films in which women were only pretending to be asleep while he had sex with them, and that Luster actually intended to sell his porn flicks on the Internet.

  The lawyers were foiled in their attempt to show excerpts of Luster’s home-made movies in order to counter testimony from women who would testify that they were drugged and raped at his beach house. Ironically, there are actual porn producers who merchandise rape videos, and they too claim that the women who are sexually assaulted are merely pretending to be raped. They may really be raped, who knows, but these companies are simply attempting to cover their own asses.

  Scream and Cream includes this blatantly misspelled disclaimer on their website: “All models herein depicted were over 18 at the time of depiction and were copmensated [sic] for their play. We do not condoce [sic] nondone [sic] non-nocensual [sic] sex. This site is forced sex fantasy only.”

  Another site, Forced Girls, can’t even spell their own name, as they promote “The #1 forsed [sic] site on the net.” And here’s their come-on: “Tired of seeing teens all over the net that look older than your mom? We are too, this is why we created this jam packed with only the youngest, barely legal girls forced to fuck and suck, prosecuted [sic] by their capturers and brutally punished.”

  The Shocking Extreme site states, “Warning: Exclusive Content,” as though exclusivity were something kinky and forbidden. “She has no hope of escape,” they boast. “These guys are pro’s [sic].”

  Uncensored Russian Rapes describes itself as a “Unique Russian rape site with fully exclusive Russian content. Different rape situations, pictures like rape with weapons, rape in the cars, gang rape, amateur rape plus hundreds of real rape movies.”

  There is an urban legend in Russia that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. This dangerous myth has resulted in an epidemic of HIV-infected males violating virgins, especially teenagers, because of their insane belief that the younger the virgin, the more potent the cure.

  “Do you want to rape a virgin too?” asks the site. “Enter at your own risk.”

  Although I don’t believe that those who download sexual-assault pornography should be arrested, I do think that those who produce rape porn should get busted—but only if it can be proven that the sex was non-consensual, and that ain’t easy. In fact, it’s virtually impossible.

  In The Village Voice, Johnny Maldoro wrote about a video by porn director Lizzy Borden: “Part fictional snuff, over-the-top gore, and violent hard-core porn, Forced Entry won’t be taking home any AVN [Adult Video News] awards, and might even force the mainstream media to momentarily focus on our country’s largest entertainment industry.... To prove that her actresses knew what they were signing up for, Borden tacks a bunch of bloopers onto the end of Forced Entry. Veronica Caine’s wig comes off! Other wacky antics on the set prove the non-exploitative and even friendly relations between cast and crew members! For instance, Taylor St. Claire is totally ‘not pregnant.’ Those guys weren’t jumping on a real fetus.”

  In Pakistan, the main human rights group reveals that in 2002, at least 461 women were slain by family members in so called “honor killings.” In such cases, women are murdered to protect the “family honor” for “offenses” such as dating, talking to men, having sex outside marriage, cooking poorly— and being raped.

  Whereas, here in the United States, there was a TV documentary about a church-sponsored “Hell House”—which was intended to scare religious teenagers out of engaging in any kind of sexual activity—but one girl’s reaction is worth placing in a time capsule for future reference.

  “The rape scene is the best,” she said, “because you get to dance.”

  BIZARRE SEXUALLY ORIENTED SPAM SUBJECT LINES

  BIZARRE SEXUALLY ORIENTED SPAM SUBJECT LINES

  Every one of the spam senders in this informal survey is trying—in the hope that you won’t immediately press the delete key—to entice you into checking out their messages and purchasing their products. In that process, they will sometimes deliberately (but not always deliberately) misspell words in the subject lines of their spams in order to bypass any electronic filters you happen to set up.

  A friend writes to me, “I just upgraded to AOL 9 which has a feature that takes out spam before it gets to you. Theoretically you submit and save a list of words you don’t want in your subject line—in my case some are Viagra, Xanax, cheerleaders and mortgages—then voila! But, as always, the spammers are one step ahead. Now I’m getting spam for Viagara, Xannax, cheer leaders and mortgages—then voila! I don’t know why they think I’d do business with anyone whose spelling skills were so faulty, but I guess their target audience may not care.”

  And from another friend: “Has anyone had a problem with blocked e-mail? I have had fully one-third of my mail blocked by my ISP that is running Norton’s ‘Barracuda Spam Firewall.’ Phooey! It blocks e-mail from friends and newsletters but lets the porn, Viagra and ‘grow your penis pills’ through. I am ticked! Anyone else all of a sudden not hearing from friends?”

  Meanwhile, federal agents have arrested a man for repeatedly making death threats against employees of an Internet advertising firm. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. He had mistakenl
y believed that the company was the source of unsolicited e-mail ads he received about penis enlargement. Well, everyone has his breaking point.

  Carol Liefer observed on Comedy Central that apparently there are a lot of people who want her to have a bigger penis. And, on the all-female morning TV talk show, The View, this rhetorical question was posed: “Which is worse, a tiny little penis or a lot of violence?” As if in response, a dwarf detective on a Comedy Central promo for their movie, Knee-High P.I., observed, “Sometimes the best dick is a small dick,” though you’ll never see that in a subject line.

  Anyway, here’s a quaint selection of penis-enlarger subject lines: There’s the impress-a-female approach—“Women have always said: Size Matters!”... “No girl will give U a damn if U have little penis”... “Hey My Girl Bought Me the Patch”... “She likes my new weenie”... “I am lookin for a big man like U! C*U*M* to me!”... “Wanna be big enough to shock people?”... “You will leave her speechless”... “Make her scream OHHH YEAAA!”

  But men also like to impress other men, as in “Feal proud when your in the locker room” and “Your friends will envy you”—(guaranteed up to 4 rock hard inches).

  Plus some more choices for the road: “gipzyxdtcbidvd + yeilopcecsu”... “Keep praying eyes away!”... “Monster Cocks at Discount Price”... “impede her ybpajh”... “dont worry about ur stupid little penis, ha ha”... “do u think u still can fuck like those who has macho dick?”... “Every man wishes he had a larger penis”... “Be a man and add a third leg”... “Enlarge your Manhood”... “Increase your penis size in one day”... “my hole was bored out by the reaper”... “Be happy when you make love!”... “With these pills you can shoot cum like a porn star!”... “Penus Enlarged in 2 Hours!”