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Subject: Dave Barry: Pornography
Message-ID: <53100130@trsvax>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 17:45:00 EDT
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Posted: Mon Sep 30 17:45:00 1985
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 		The big problem with pornography is defining it
 
							 By: Dave Barry
 
  The big problem with pornography is defining it. You can't just say it's
pictures of people naked. For example, you have these primitive African tribes
that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot, and they have to go around
largely naked, because, as the old tribal saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui
mali," which means, "If you think you can catch a wildebeest in this climate
and wear clothes at the same time, then I have some beachfront property in the
desert region of Northern Mali that you may be interested in."
  So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic publishes color
photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest naked, or pounding one rock
onto another rock for some primitive reason naked, or whatever. But if National
Geographic were to publish an article entitled "The Girls of the California
Junior College System Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it
pornography. But others would not. And still others, such as the Spectactularly
Rev. Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
  So this is a very confusing situation, and what makes it even worse is, our
standards keep changing. Take Playboy magazine. Back in the 1950s, when I
started reading it strictly for the articles, Playboy was considered just about
the raciest thing around, even though all it ever showed was women's breasts.
Granted, any given one of these breasts would have provided adequate shelter
for a family of four, but the overall effect was no more explicit than many
publications we think nothing of today, such as Sports Illustrated's Annual
Nipples Poking Through Swimsuits Issue.
  Gradually, however, Playboy began to get raunchier, as a result of some
disturbing shifts in the American psyche, the chief one being Hugh Hefner's
sudden urge to print his entire philosophy of life. Remember that, veteran
Playboy readers? All of a sudden, Hugh started spewing philosophy all over his
magazine, as though millions of readers had written him letters saying: "Hey!
Hugh! Enough of these girls named Cyndi with the giant garbonzos! We want your
philosophy of life!"
  The problem was that Hugh's philosophy made for the kind of reading you'd
give to people if you had to remove their gallbladders but had run out of
anesthetic. So to keep its readers from switching over to National Geographic,
Playboy had to start publishing photographs where the women got increasingly
naked, if you know what I mean, and thus the floodgates were opened. Today we
are awash in explicit sexual material. You can't avoid it. It's on your
television, it's in your mail, it's deposited in your sock drawer while you
sleep. At least that's what all these televised Christians keep telling me,
although I personally have not received any of this material to date despite
the fact that I recently installed a new antenna.
  The question is, what should we, as a nation, do about this? Where do we draw
the line between pornography and art? Is it right that small children should
see former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby discuss her innermost deodorant secrets
on nationwide television? Right now, the responsibility for answering these
questions lies square on the shoulders of local "district attorneys," which is
a legal term meaning "lawyers getting ready to run for Congress." They learn in
District Attorney School that there are two sure-fire ways to get a lot of
favorable publicity:
  1. Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and confiscate
53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a pile and hold a press conference
where you announce that they have a street value of $850 million. These raids
never fail, because ALL high schools, including brand-new, never-used ones,
have at least 53 marijuana cigarettes in the lockers. As far as anyone can 
tell, the locker factory puts them there.
  2. Raid an "adult book store" and hold a press conference where you announce
you are charging the owner with 850 counts of being a piece of human sleaze.
This also never fails, because you always get a conviction. A juror at a
pornography trial is not about to state for the record that he finds nothing
obscene about a movie where actors engage in sexual activities with live snakes
and a fire extinguisher. He is going to convict the bookstore owner, and vote
for the death penalty just to make sure nobody gets the wrong impression.
  Unfortunately, these convictions always get thrown out by the Supreme Court.
Here is the problem: for many years, the Supreme Court wrestled with the issue
of pornography, until finally Associate Justice John Paul Stevens came up with
the famous quotation about how he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it
when he saw it. So for a while, the court's policy was to have all the
suspected pornography trucked to Justice Stevens' house, where he would look it
over. "Nope, this isn't it," he'd say. "Bring some more." This went on until
one morning when his housekeeper found him trapped in the recreation room under
an enormous mound of rubberized implements, and the court had to issue a ruling
stating that it didn't know what the hell pornography was except that it was
illegal and everybody should stop badgering the court about it because the
court was going to take a nap.
  This is where we stand now. At an impasse. Fortunately, however, it appears
that we are about to make some progress, because a federal pornography
commission has been formed by Attorney General Edwin Meese, who as you recall
was never convicted of anything. Ed has ordered the pornography commission to
issue, by no later than June of 1986, a report weighing no less than 40 pounds.
Already the commission has begun the difficult task of reviewing all the back
issues of Playboy and Penthouse, obtained by the Defense Department at a cost
of $60,000 per issue. We should feel very good about this, as a nation. The
only person who has any reason to be upset about it is Henry Kissinger, because
HIS commission got stuck with Central America.


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