Liberal talker Ron Reagan (son of the president, brother of the right-wing wacko talker) rarely evokes the bullshit moralism traditionally associated with the political party of his now-sainted father, but today was another story all together.
Today Reagan had Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment on to discuss Vivid's offer of $1,000,000 to Nadya Suleman for being in a single pornographic movie. The question Reagan intended to get answered was
"is Hirsch being a good [sic]humanitarium and helping this woman or is he a sleazeball who is out to make money off of someone's unfortunate circumstances?"
But frames it in such a way that no one with any possible amount of self-respect would do pornography. Fuck you, Ron Reagan.
"How would you feel," Reagan asked Hirsch, "If you found out that your mother had done a porno when you were a child?" Hirsch answers thusly: I would respect my mother for doing what she needed to do in order to take care of her family; then talks about how Suleman needs to be able to take care of her family and needs a job to do it.
"But she would have to have sex with a bunch of strangers," Reagan chides, then gets up on his high horse about how the children will react, "what if they see it?", and how Hirsch is exploiting Suleman, closing the interview with "don't take this the wrong way, but I hope you will someday be ashamed of what you're doing here." (That's not a direct quote, mind you.)
Fuck you, Ron Reagan.
First of all, regarding the children: IF Suleman decides to do this movie, gets her million bucks and raises her children with that income, I'm pretty sure someone is going to have the mind to tell her that there's no shame in doing pornography (which is essentially what Reagan is pushing), and would teach the kids that mom did what she "had to" and that there's no shame in doing some work in order to provide for your family. Moreover, what child would ever want to have anything to do with a porn movie that their parents were in? I realize, Ron, that with so many people so morbidly obsessed with your father that you might have a hard time with the idea that not everyone has parents with whom society is obsessed, and regardless of whether Suleman makes this movie or not, her 15 minutes are up.
Secondly, about "exploitation": I realize that having sex on camera is a little different from sitting down on every talk show in the nation to tell people about why you had 8 children at one time, but it's completely ridiculous to chide one person who is taking advantage of a good business situation (that is, an obsession with a woman who had 8 children at once when she has no partner, no job and lives with her parents), while talking endlessly about that woman and how she's been on every talk show in the country. Really? You really don't see the disconnect?
Finally, about shame: Doing pornography is not shameful in and of itself, and the idea that it is comes from the idea that sex is shameful, which is stupid and anyone who continues to push this asinine idea aught to be forced into abstinence for an entire year (at the very least). There are some shameful aspects of the porn industry, just as there are in every industry in the entire capitalist world, however, it is not your place, Ron Reagan, to decide who is moral and who is not, and saying that someone should be ashamed of themselves is anathema to liberalism.
After Hirsch's segment, Reagan took calls, and right before I turned off my radio said "there are some things that are more important than money, like self-worth" (again, not a direct quote), implying that to do pornography means a person's (a woman) lacks self-worth. I'm not talking about Nadya Suleman here, he said; no, you're talking about any and every woman who has ever sullied herself by having sex, for free or for money.
Fuck you Ron Reagan. Fuck your whole family.
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