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May 12, 2015

Is It Still Too Early To Start Porn-Bashing Republicans?

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The 2016 presidential election is still 19 months (translation: a lifetime, in political terms) away, and there are already more Republican candidates, both announced and un-, than you can shake a stick at—so it must be time to winnow the field a bit, right? We guess that's the reason why The Hill, a conservative D.C.-based daily (at least when Congress is in session)—whose columnists include former NRA and American Conservative Union president David Keene, disgraced former pollster and political consultant Dick Morris, Fox News regular Juan Williams and former Republican political strategist and Dick Cheney staffer Ron Christie—went for the jugular with a recent article titled, "Did Jeb Bush invest taxpayer money in porn?" See, many years ago, there used to be a lot of stores that rented videotapes, and later DVDs, and among them was Movie Gallery, once the second largest movie and game rental chain (after Blockbuster) in North America—until it went bankrupt in 2010, just as the economy was really tanking and the online-viewing revolution was taking off. But it seems that at some point while Jeb Bush was governor of Florida—he was first elected in 1998—some of that state's pension funds were invested in Movie Gallery stock—47,633 shares of it, to be exact, out of 8.25 million shares issued. The Hill's reporter Tim Devaney attributes the decision to make the investment to Bush himself—he was the pension board's "highest-profile trustee"— though Devaney's source material, a "report" in the conservative International Business Times (IBT), suggests that Bush was in fact opposed to the investment, but was too chicken to stand up to "the Republican Party's pro-businesses sensibilities—even at the cost of right-wing ideals." Nonetheless, the investment set off the usual fireworks among religious conservatives, most notably the American Family Association's Rev. Donald Wildmon, who in 2005 wrote to constituents that, "Movie Gallery shades hundreds of its stores with 'back rooms,' filled with thousands of videos and magazines exhibiting morbid depictions of sex. By investing in Movie Gallery stock, the state of Florida is giving its stamp of approval on hard-core porn. Tell the Florida Board of Administration to get out of the porn business by divesting itself of Movie Gallery stock." Almost needless to say, Wildmon's screed and the website he created, StopMovieGalleryPorn.com, sparked a lot of comment and signatures on petitions to the Florida State Board of Administration (SBA), demanding that the Board sell its Movie Gallery stock. "Have you people lost your minds?" the IBT reported that one outraged voter wrote in an email to Bush and the SBA. Another emailed that pornography was "enslaving men and women to its addiction." The SBA's response? "[T]he SBA’s director told an angry Floridian that the state could not take investment advice from 'various constituency groups.' The Bush administration would not let political ideology shape pension decisions, the director explained, saying the state's pension trustees were 'required to act solely in the best interest of the [pension] beneficiaries.'" Yeah, that's just the sort of response that gets your (former) boss bounced from the speakers' lineup at the Values Voter Summit. At last September's summit, the head of a main sponsor—Family Research Council president Tony Perkins—claimed that Bush (and NJ Gov. Chris Christie) were "not on the top of the list in terms of what they are doing right now and whether or not it was relevant to the values voters and who they want to hear from." The IBT strongly implied that the Movie Gallery dust-up was the reason for the Bush snub. BTW, Bush wasn't the only conservative to have "porn problems" in his past. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry also bought some Movie Gallery stock, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was criticized for accepting campaign contributions from Philly-based cable company Adelphia Communications, which went bankrupt in 2002 after its founder, John Rigas, and some other company officers were charged with (and eventually found guilty of) bank fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud for embezzling millions from the company. Toward the end of Adelphia's life, you see, the company planned to add some porn to its movie offerings—a move that gave rise to much controversy on conservative religious websites since Rigas himself had been held up by them as a paragon of virtue for not having porn on Adelphia. Anyway, Florida ditched its Movie Gallery stock in 2006 after its price plummeted, and Bush was voted out as governor a year later—but as any conservative politician can tell you, once you get on the bad side of the hellfire preachers, your career as a politician is just about over. Good luck in 2016, Jeb! (You'll need it!)

 
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