Porn Police

Really, can’t we leave this kind of culture vulture bullshit to the GOP?

More than a week after news of its existence leaked, a bill seeking a 25 percent excise tax on adult entertainment purchased online and the imposition of mandatory, “certified” age verification of adult website visitors was introduced Wednesday by nine Democratic Senators. Concurrently, two members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced companion legislation there.

Blah blah blah. When is America going to grow up and get out of the sandbox? I’m sick to death of bickering about boobies and condoms.

Just whatever.

First it was Clinton and her idiotic video game nonsense, and now this. I’m so glad to see all the Dems tripping over each other to sound holier than thou, each other, Rick Santorum, Gary Bauer, and Jesus himself. With the Democratic Party having been relegated to near-complete impotency after losing both Houses of Congress, the White House, and—coming soon—the Supreme Court, they need to do better than becoming the porn police. The Bush administration is undoubtedly the most corrupt, disingenuous, opportunistic, hypocritical, morally bankrupt, and probably criminal administration in the nation’s history, and the Dems can barely eke out a remotely favorable rating in national polls. They are lambasted as a party with no new ideas, and if this is the best they can come up with, consider me convinced.

The thing that really annoys me about both Clinton’s Grand Theft Auto campaign and this new porn bill is that they’re ostensibly of concern to “protect children.” (As an aside, I’d be more impressed if the Dems went after this stuff citing concerns about the exploitation of women; I still wouldn’t support either one, but at least I’d respect their argument a little more.) Somehow, I’m just not moved to support grand gestures and sweeping legislation to protect children from video games and internet porn, considering that’s supposed to be the job of the people who birthed them. I don’t particularly enjoy seeing my elected representatives spending their time on protecting children from things that any parent with two brain cells still knocking together could easily keep their kids away from sans a debate on Capitol Hill about it.

And if Dems are really so fired up to protect kids (oh, and I’m sure they are; I’m sure this isn’t just cynical vote-whoring), perhaps the best thing to do is turn their attention to saving the fucking country. I’m sure those kids they’re so desperate to protect from seeing exactly what those kids want to see anyway (and every kid probably should see at some point if they don’t want to turn out a self-loathing mulefucker Republican), if sentient about such things, would tell the Dems to just make sure America is still America when they grow up, okay?

Allegedly, the Dems have brilliant and viable strategies to counter the GOP’s fiscal irresponsibility, multiple national security disasters, emphasis on the reduction of civil liberties, and insistence on pandering to corporate interests. If they do, then they need to hire some halfway decent bloody writers to make those strategies easy to communicate, and then they need to start communicating them. And while they’re at it, they could cease feasting on taxpayer pork, throwing their support behind follies like the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and snuggling up in the cozy pockets of corporations and lobbyists themselves, all while moving rightward on social issues, and running away from the word liberal like it’s a rabid howler monkey with an ax to grind.

You want to protect kids? Protect their country as they know it. They don’t need porn police; they need someone who will do whatever it takes to make sure America isn’t destroyed by those who seek to protect no one but themselves.