Titty Fucker

I'll never understand how anybody in this industry (even th Rich guys) could possibly vote for Dubya?




The Strip Club Vote

By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet

Posted on October 18, 2004


When a few officials of the local Republican party in Cleveland, Ohio

decided to treat themselves to a good old-fashioned boy's night out

at a strip club, they were greeted with an alarming sight: a Fox News

television crew.


"They asked me why Fox was outside," says Angelina Spencer, The

Circus club owner, "and I told them they were doing a story about our

voter registration campaign."


"They all scrambled and fought over the back door. One guy even got

his tie caught in the door," she laughs.


Who can blame them? Strip clubs are hardly synonymous with political

activism. Unlike every other industry in America, the adult

entertainment business tries to stay as far away from Capitol Hill as

possible. In the skin trade, discretion has mostly trumped politics -

until 2004.


In this presidential election, everyone from strip club dancers to

CEOs of live porn sites are encouraging their customers to get

involved and vote.

Spencer, who is the executive director of ACE National, a trade

association of adult nightclubs, says her political wake-up moment

came when Kristin Kritzler, a 20-year-old who strips at The Circus,

was sent to Iraq earlier this year.

"That opened a lot of entertainers' eyes and got them involved in

politics," she says. "At that point, I realized that we were dealing

with an untapped constituency."


In April, Spencer sent out 800 voter registration kits to adult

nightclubs, lingerie stores and adult bookstores across the country.

Approximately 160,000 customers filled out voter registration cards

on the spot, but many took the cards home to mail in. "This was more

successful than we ever anticipated," she says. "We never expected to

get this much publicity."


Since May, 800 of the roughly 4,000 adult clubs in America have

launched voter registration efforts, registering an average of 200

voters per club.


"This is the most important time to be active. There will never be a

more important election," says Spike Goldberg, CEO of

Homegrownvideo.com, an amateur porn streaming video site that

receives 100,000 unique daily visitors. "Until now, no one has

harnessed that power. This is merely the beginning."

Homegrownvideo.com's "Get Out the Vote" banner ads link to the Rock

the Vote web site. Rock the Vote doesn't tally new voters

specifically from porn sites, but overall, the non-partisan

organization has registered 1.3 million new voters.


A week before the election, Goldberg plans to post a letter to his

members highlighting the differences between President George Bush

and Sen. John Kerry on issues including free speech, healthcare, the

military, education and the war.


"We're not in the business of telling people who to vote for, we just

want them to vote," he says.

While Spencer, a registered Republican, emphasizes the fact that

ACE's registration drives are also nonpartisan, she - like many

others in her industry - openly expresses concern about the Bush

administration, especially its Attorney General John Ashhahahahaha's

hostility toward pornography.


During a speech in 2002, Ashhahahahaha said pornography "invades our homes

persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet,"

and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast."


"Ashhahahahaha used to care more about pornography than terrorism," says

Scot Powe, professor of law at the University of Texas. "The guy is a

throwback to the early 50s; maybe that's being too generous."



Over the past four years, Ashhahahahaha's office has launched dozens of

investigations of adult content businesses and filed obscenity cases

against porn firms.


David Wasserman, a first amendment attorney who defends adult web

site operators, says those actions are the tip of the iceberg. "My

fear is that a second Bush administration will unleash a slew of

prosecutions against adult entertainment web sites, video stores and

producers of adult films."


Dave Manack, editor of Exotic Dancer magazine, agrees. "Another four

years with George W. Bush could be damaging to the adult industry,"

he says. "We're not necessarily rallying behind Kerry, but the Bush

administration makes no bones about the fact that they don't support

the adult entertainment industry."



Many in the adult entertainment industry say another reason why

they're encouraging customers to vote is because unlike the Clinton

administration, the Bush administration makes no distinction between

child pornography and adult entertainment.


President Bush's 2005 budget provides increases of $13.8 million to

fight crimes against children and obscenity, lumping the two together

both in funding and policy. The Department of Justice

describes "efforts to help state and local law enforcement protect

our communities from crime, pornography, and obscenity with several

key initiatives to protect our children from pornography and

exploitation; stop Internet crime against children; and prosecute

adult obscenity offenses."


"We donate thousands and thousands of dollars a year to Adult Sites

Against Child Porn. We want nothing at all to do with child porn,"

says Greg Clayman, president of Videosecrets.com. Clayman is doing

his part as a member of Internet Media Protective Association, a

trade organization of adult webmasters. The IMPA has asked all of its

members to offer links to the Rock the Vote site.


Attorneys who defend free speech say all citizens should be concerned

about the government's crackdown on the adult entertainment industry,

even those who are opposed to pornography. "Anytime you start

allowing the government to draw lines about indecency, they'll

continue drawing them to put as much speech as possible out of the

reach of the average citizen," says Marv Johnson, legislative council

for the American Civil Liberties Union.


Johnson says 70 percent of Americans say free speech is important,

but that support begins to drop drastically when it comes to

pornography. "You'll always find a certain segment of the populace to

stop speech with which it disagrees and the government would love to

do the same," he says.



Over the past year, Hustler magazine publisher and author of "Sex,

Lies and Politics: The Naked Truth" Larry Flynt has repeatedly drawn

a connection between post-9/11 laws such as the Patriot Act and

Ashhahahahaha's anti-pornography crusade. In an interview with Wired News,

he said, "A lot of Americans think, 'I'm not Arab, so it doesn't

affect me.' But the Patriot Act has no color barriers. They just used

part of the Patriot Act to bust a strip club owner in Las Vegas."



The target of anti-porn activists for years, Flynt is still going

strong, currently touring the country promoting his book and

vociferously attacking Bush. Flynt is a member of the "anybody but

Bush" camp and his web site is chock-full of information about

everything from gay marriage to the latest polls.



Scot Powe has no doubts that the Bush administration will go after

the adult entertainment industry if it is re-elected for another four

years. The question is: how successful will they be?



"Given the way obscenity laws are drafted, it's almost impossible to

get a conviction," he says. "Even the Supreme Court has been pretty

good when it comes to free speech rights."



Still, if Bush wins the election, Powe says we should expect a flurry

of anti-obscenity bills and legal actions to strengthen the

administration's family values platform and please its conservative

base. Those who are targeted will face costly and lengthy

lawsuits. "If the government decides to fight, they'll fight all the

way to the Supreme Court," he says.



With Americans spending around $10 billion a year on adult

entertainment, the industry clearly has an opportunity to influence

the outcome of the election. "A few Republicans have politely asked

me to stop," Spencer says. "Anytime you get strip club owners

involved in the political process, you know it's going to be quite an

election."

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