A Florida court recently convicted Paul “Max Hardcore” Little for distributing pornography—adult pornography, I should point out. No children were involved. I expect this sort of thing from the kind of backwards Islamic countries that punish men for shaving their beards and women for for driving cars, but I hoped our country had more of a live-and-let-live attitude by now.
Caution: The next paragraph contains a lot of swearing.
Fuck you, Judge Bucklew for convicting Little and sentencing him to 46 months in prison. Fuck all you jurors too. Fuck you too, former Attorney General Alberto Gonazles for starting this mess and current Attorney General Michael Mukasey for continuing it. A big “Fuck you!” to prosecutor Lisa Maria Freitas, who did the dirty work in the courtroom. And finally, a big, painful, pound-you-in-the-ass “FUCK YOU!” goes out to the entire Obscentity Prosecution Task Force.
Sorry about all the swearing. I don’t normally use the word “fuck” that much on my blog, but it seems appropriate when writing about pornography. Also, if you seriously don’t like it, you don’t have to read my blog. Which is also the whole reason pornography prosecution is absurd. No one has to watch.
Actually, that isn’t quite true. There are a few people who had to watch these videos, perhaps against their will, but no one will ever be convicted for forcing them to watch pornography. That’s because U.S. v. Paul F. Little and Max World Entertainment was a jury trial, and those twelve jurors were forced to watch pornography by the U.S. Government.
Seriously, with all the bad things happening in the world right now—terrorism, the financial meltdown, the Daley administration—is prosecuting consensual crimes really a top priority for federal prosecutors? Is this really what judges should be doing with their time?
Some people have pointed out that the Max Hardcore videos are violent and degrading to women. I wouldn’t know, never having seen one, but I’ll take their word for it. On the other hand, I’ll also take the word of the porn actresses who performed in them, who have not filed police complaints against any of the actors or producers, and who testified on Little’s behalf in court.
Really people, if everyone consented to the act, then “Ick, I’d never do that!” is a very bad reason to decide to lock people in a cage.
what i dont understand about all the attention given the porn industry is that basic television programing and cable stations produce simulated acts of sex, child pornography, murder, assaults, etc for kids and teens to watch with no end in sight. it seems our government would rather see our kids learn how to do drive by”s, gang rapes, murder, and an assortment of other crimes than for anyone including consenting adults to view 2 or more people engaging in various acts of sex. When they talk about corrupting america, what are they thinking. We have our whole economy in turmoil because these same politicians, while collecting their bribes and getting bj’s from hookers, and anyone else they can, want our resources to focus on locking up a producer who produces a sex video that someone thinks is obscene. I am thinking it is obscene what our politicians have done to the american public and would like anyone of them to stand trial with 12 jurors who are unemployed or have lost their homes. I would like us to start midway to the top, perhaps with the head of fannie may or freddie mac. I would like to know what interest rate they have on their homes. I bet america would find that obscene. i think it is obscene that alberto gonzales is not on trial for the firing of those 9 prosecutors. I think it is clearly obscene that no one has called for the resignation or impeachment of our president at this point, after all, it starts with him. I think one of the most obscene things is that at a time when the government is bailing out so many criminals in the banking, insurance and financial markets, it would focus it’s attention on an obscenity prosecution in hopes of fixing our country and making it a better safer place to raise your kids. here is a quick fix for the government today. make each bank renegotiate each mortgage instead of foreclosing, make prostitution legal, turn it into a business, regulate it, collect tax on it, create new jobs and new industries from it. spend the police time fighting real crime, get the guns off the street, get the drugs out of the schools and lets prosecute some of those who have crushed the american dream with their greed. That might end the obscenities for most of america.
Not that you want to get off on a rant :)
I don’t think I agree with everything in your comment, but yeah, our federal government has more important things to worry about than whether some porn producer makes videos that disrespect women.
I couldn’t help but notice you mentioned you’ve never seen a Max Hardcore video. Perhaps you should. Once you have, you may understand how a jury could find his work obscene, based on the old Miller three prong test, and therefor not constitutionally protected speech. The outcome may not be what you would like to see, but the jury based their decision on the state of the law, not how they–or you–would like the law to read. The judge only enforced the law as it currently exists, she didn’t make this stuff up either. If you want guys like Max Hardcore to continue to crank out their particular brand of “art,” then get the law changed and quit pissing on the people who’s only offense is doing their duty under the law and not making up their own along the way in order to get the result you would have preferred.
If you’d like to know a little more about Max Hardcore, Rotten.com did a pretty good bio piece about him a while back: http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/pornographers/max-hardcore/
It’s about the nicest thing ever written about the guy.
My response to “jt” grew into a whole post.
Couldn’t agree more, JT. The evidence of the films themselves, that showed throat-f*cking to the point of choking and repeat vomiting, and recorded women begging Mr. Little to stop anally penetrating them, was in evidence, and the jury was well within its province when it decided that those physical reactions simply could not be feigned, but depicted actual abuse. One always runs the risk, when depicting pain, of inflicting it, and the jury apparently concluded that was happening. Free speech is a good thing, and I personally would prosecute none of it, but Mr. Little was very likely justly convicted under the law as it stands. Free speech defenders would do much better to turn their attention to the stifling of political speech, the suppression of third parties, and the monopolization of speech in mainstream venues. No one is defending us on that front. Porn we will not run short of.
Remember your righteous indignation when the Obama troop comes for our guns ( 2nd amendment ) and our 1st amendment ( fairness doctrine re: talk radio )
I agree its a waste and terrible for max. But selective prosecution is in no way limited to the Bush admin and if my guess is correct Obummer is going to be very bad on these issues. If you want to keep the USA free you better not be selective about what amendments you choose to protect or you’ll eventually find your favorites being corroded too ( more that is )
Believe me, I’ve got enough righteous indignation to carry me through the Obama administration. (It’s kind of what I do around here.)
I don’t write about 2nd amendment issues much because, well, we’ve had Republicans in charge lately. They haven’t been causing a lot of trouble in that regard, as you’d expect. (Although the first President Bush was quick to sell out gun owners, so it wasn’t exactly a sure thing.)