Atlantic Asks Ron Jeremy About His Likeness to Terrorist

LOS ANGELES—We can sort of see the general resemblance between porn legend Ron Jeremy and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but we would probably never think of contacting him to find out what he thinks about it. But that's just what Atlantic writer Adam Chandler did yesterday on what was obviously a very slow news day, and then wrote about it in a piece published today titled,  "A Terrorist, a Turkish Cosmetics Company, and a Porn Doppelgänger." The story was actually created out of thin air, originating with a news item completely unassociated with the Hedgehog—or so we would have thought. "Earlier this week," Chandler began his story, "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the former al-Qaeda leader and 'principal architect' of the September 11th attacks, came back into the news in a fashion that defies the most basic ethics of reason. "As many outlets reported," he continued, "a Turkish cosmetics company came under fire after it used the image of Mohammed, currently in residence at Guantanamo, in an ad for a hair removal product." Obviously, the famous image of KSM (as his friends and the news media call him) taken following his arrest in Pakistan in 2003—unkempt and frowning in a loosely fitting t-shirt that reveals a forest of dark hair mapping his upper torso—was used by mistake, but that was hardly the gist of Chandler's interest in the image of KSM. "It is also a man who looks more than a little bit like adult film legend Ron Jeremy, an often remarked-upon resemblance," he notes. After reminiscing about meeting RJ once, but not realizing the resemblance at the time, he gets to the point of his story: "I decided to reach out to him." Why exactly is unclear, but like we said, slow news day. "In hindsight," Chandler admits, "I should have worded the email to his manager a little bit more carefully. I mentioned that I was a writer with The Atlantic and that I wanted to know if anyone had ever mentioned Jeremy and Mohammed's doppelgängerdom and if I could talk to Jeremy about it. At the bottom of the e-mail, I attached the infamous picture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." He receives an email a few hours later that reads, "Thanks and do they or you want him to play the part?" Chandler sees a larger message in the smaller one, writing, "There are a rare few moments in life when the universe explicitly reveals an unexpected path." Really? He explains, "Well, first, I sat with the e-mail for a while wondering just how Ron Jeremy's manager had so capriciously responded in approval of the idea of a porno about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. (I had specifically IDed Mohammed as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in my e-mail.) Had Ron Jeremy's manager really seen it all? Or maybe this was more about society⎯the wayward allure of the forbidden or despicable. I didn't know. "After the initial shock wore off, I found myself very ambivalently thinking about the project I'd undertaken," he adds. "Could this be a vehicle to explain...no. Maybe if I focused on....no. I didn't get very far." He says he emailed back the next day to explain that he was a journalist and "reiterated that the interview would be for a story. I still haven't heard back." But who would reply? Even the manager at that point had to know he was dealing with a strange and inarticulate request with no real purpose behind it. And because Ron Jeremy is not performing in porn anymore, which Chandler could have easily found out, it's unlikely the manager assumed the query was for a "porno," but more than likely that he assumed it was for some mainstream project. At this point in his career, it's also safe to say RJ gets more requests for mainstream theatrical or commercial work than he does for porn gigs. So, undoubtedly, Chandler's story of crossed wires and mixed signals must actually be a projection of his own internal desire to make porn, which is fine. Not a problem. But he didn't have to explain it away as the result of a "misunderstanding" when the confusion was all his. That said, look for someone to announce a porn parody of KSM, starring you know who, next week. Image: Ron Jeremy, left, and the Turkish ad featuring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.