A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

Department officials say they will send "ripples" through an industry that has proliferated on the Internet and grown into an estimated $10 billion-a-year colossus profiting Fortune 500 corporations such as Comcast, which offers hard-core movies on a pay-per-view channel.

That's a lot of money.

It is unclear, though, just how the American public and major corporations that make money from pornography will accept the perspective of the Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Cable television, meanwhile, which has found late-night lineups with "adult programming" highly profitable, is unlikely to budge, and such companies have powerful friends.

Money, again. Am I the only one who gets the feeling that those with such high moral principles will bend knee to the almighty dollar like the rest of us?

In February, the Bush campaign honored Comcast President Stephen Burke with "Ranger" status, for agreeing to raise at least $200,000 for the president's re-election effort.

This seems strange. Maybe I was wrong about the ethics of this Administration. Maybe they will not be stepping aside for friends when pursuing its ideals, a world without porn being one of them. On the other hand, we don't know what kind of deal they will actually work out, and it will look bad if Comcast is hurt Comcast after they paid to be a "Ranger".

Obscenity cases came to a standstill under Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's attorney general, who focused on child pornography, which is considered child abuse and comes under different criminal statutes. The ensuing years saw an explosion of porn, so much so that critics say that Americans' tolerance for sexually explicit material rivals that of Europeans.

Tolerance for this stuff rivalling that of *shudder* EUROPEANS (didn't they spawn Hitler??)!! Well heaven for-fucking-bid.

Either way, Nguyen, father of a 2-year-old girl, and his co-workers spend their days scouring the Internet for the most obscene material, following leads sent in by citizens and tracking pornographers operating under different names. The job wears on them all, day after day, so much so that the obscenity division has recently set up in-house counseling for them to talk about what they're seeing and how it is affecting them.

"This stuff isn't the easiest to deal with," Nguyen said recently while at his computer. "But I think we're going after the bad guys and we're making a difference, and that's what makes it worthwhile."

This is easy to understand, but I seriously think that Mr. Nguyen is fighting a pointless battle, and he is suffering needlessly.

Obscenity laws are supposed to be based on the community's general view of the material. I like the idea that since we are often talking about the Internet, the community should be the world at large. Perhaps.

And they want to take on Larry Flynt, the father of Hustler magazine (yes, this is a link that is NSFW) and all its spinoffs. The man who survived an assassination attempt and all their tries at silencing. I hope they try and fail miserably. Actually, for the sake of the taxpayers, I hope they leave him, and all the rest, alone. I'm glad I don't live in a country that has this waste of money happening. We have other ways of wasting money, no doubt.