Drugs and government grifters are giving porn a bad name, just when we need the adult industry to provide a helping (and hopefully well-washed) hand.
First it was the Securities and Exchange Commission, distracted from snaring the billionaire free market looters because they were too busy surfing porn. Now the Inspector General has issued a report and we know the criminally mismanaged Minerals Management Service -- up to their oily eyebrows in the Deep Water Horizon disaster -- had inspectors accessing x-rated sites and using crystal meth when they should have been ogling the safety of offshore drilling instead.
Now, ironically named "Blue Law" moralists will surely tell us that catastrophic oil spills and general degradation of society go fist-in-latex glove with dope and the sex that's freely available in the ecosystem of full digital, multi-platform, interactive pornography. Back end -- as they like to say in the tech world -- and front end.
I'm not a proponent of crystal meth, or other corrosive drugs. Bad things can happen. Police in Humbolt County are warning the considerable number of LSD fans up there about a bad batch of acid. Violence, more than the usual addled-headedness, and one guy who castrated himself have ensued. Ouch.
It's unlikely, though, that the 327 million web pages of porn -- which account for 12 percent of all online visits and 35 percent of downloads -- push people as far as self-neutering.
So let's not pollute the possibilities of pornography with the distraction of drugs and other criminal behavior.
There was a lull between the time the rig blew and the cables went hysterical about impending doom and the past few days, when oil started seriously invading marshes and shorelines. In addition to porn diets, which also account for 25 percent of all web search requests, people's attention drifted back for a few weeks to things like tea party politics and a seriously slumping European economy. When calamity watchers had to stretch to find dead birds, there was a brief assumption that maybe all that muck was going to get successfully evaporated in clumps of human hair -- was blond better than brunette, body better than head?
Today every TV anchor worth a Dan Rather Afghanistan medal is now wading into the Louisiana swamplands, dressed in wader boots and a muscle t-shirt, recording the sad and destructive saga. People are suddenly refocused and royally pissed.
Which brings us back to porn.
Here's an idea. While the exact numbers are as hazy as Philippe Cousteau's video in deep Gulf waters, best estimates put the revenue from pornography at around $97 billion a year. And that was in 2006. Free sites have cut into the take, same as in the newspaper business. But adult business probably still out earns Yahoo, Apple, NetFlix, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and eBay combined. Every second they bring in anywhere from $38 to $3,000, depending on which research you read, and 28,258 users. Now that's change that matters. And some great mobilization (among customers, not performers).
Time for the perennially shadowy porn entrepreneurs to step out and up, and what better cause to do it for than the down-home, sometimes randy, hard-working and often fun-loving folks of the Gulf.
Forget a Google guilt tax to save newspapers (more porn ads might have helped). It's porn that can pitch in some serious money and hard-core expertise at making the most out of basics in Louisiana.
We need a Franklin Roosevelt, New Deal-style, bootstrapping Public Works Administration. Except it's the Porn/Private Works Administration.
BP? Forget British Petroleum. They couldn't find their rig plug with two hands. We're Americans, so we believe enough money, rigid goals, strong direction, and powerful toys can accomplish anything. Let's support Beneficent Porn.
Anyone with me on this?