Op-Ed: Is Morality in Media's Motto 'Ignorance Is Bliss'?

JESUSLAND—Morality in Media, one of the longest-running pro-censorship groups operating in the U.S. today, noticed that fetish video producer Ira Isaacs had his appeal rejected a couple of weeks ago, and their crack team of legal analysts laid out the meaning of that Ninth Circuit decision for their dozen or so readers. "This week’s decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirming the conviction of hardcore pornographer Ira Isaacs serves as a reminder that distribution of hardcore adult pornography is still illegal under federal law in Amerca [sic]," MiM's press release began. Of course, the moron intellectually challenged person who wrote the above sentence apparently has never visited a video store or found him/herself (by mistake, of course) on an adult website, or s/he might have noticed that "hardcore adult pornography" is still selling (or being downloaded) like hotcakes pretty much all over the country—a strange situation if the Isaacs decision spelled doom for that material. Of course, it didn't. The decision merely reaffirmed that there are still a few subjects that could be dealt with in a sexuallly explicit manner that even courts and juries in Los Angeles might take offense to—but Isaacs wasn't the real point of MiM's press release. ("Real point" other than fundraising, that is...) "Not one new adult obscenity case has been initiated under President Barack Obama despite the fact that America is suffering a pandemic of harm at the hands of pornographers," said MiM president Patrick Trueman, while noting that the Isaacs case was initiated under the (hardly-ever-to-be-mentioned-by-Republicans) George W. Bush administration. Trueman concluded by asking, "Why is the administration protecting the pornography criminal syndicates instead of women and children?" Well, Pat, it might have something to do with the fact that even the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the vast majority of "hardcore adult pornography" is perfectly legal in "Amerca," and of course, anyone who knows anything about the business knows that the adult industry is pretty much all above-ground these days, with the era of organized crime making and distributing the movies having vanished at least four decades ago—and that situation, in any case, never had anything to do with "protecting... women and children," neither of whom are harmed by the production of adult entertainment. The press release concludes with the usual bullshit about porn "leading to life-long addictions for children and adults, to increased demand for trafficked women and children, to violence against women and increased child sexual abuse and child pornography," but let's face it: if Trueman and his ilk were any better informed about the realities of the modern adult industry, it'd be more difficult for them to beg their supporters for the big bucks they need to fight against us—so why would they bother? It's just so much easier to rail against an unseen enemy that most of MiM's supporters will never come in personal contact with—an enemy in which it is just as easy for MiM's followers to believe as the unseen deity whose "good works" they claim to be doing!