Why I’m Still Bullish on Porn

Conservatives aren't the only ones with successful wedge issues.

I'll admit that I'm not very blog savvy.  Two weeks ago was the first time I realized that this site keeps track of how many hits each of our different posts get.  Naturally, I checked the tallies to figure out what had most piqued the interest of our good viewers.  I'll admit that I was a little surprised that my earlier post on "Why I'm Bullish on Porn" got more hits than my last 6 posts combined!  I figure that the reason is either that people who visit this site are very interested in the strategic value of that topic (and they should be!).  Or perhaps that title has been acting as an evangelist of sorts for faithfuldemocrats.com and getting a lot of people to visit this site who were Googling something else…   Either way, I figure I'm doing something right.  So I'll go to the well one more time and do another post on the "wedge" (view my previous post for my redefining of that term) value of porn and decency/family values. 

Internet porn is such a good issue for us because it highlights the Republican tendency to prioritize power and money over values.  The Foley cover-up has made the Republican base even more sensitive to this problem.  Although there is not a direct parallel between internet porn and the Foley scandal, the Foley situation has made the conservative religious community much more open to the "wedge" effects of internet porn.

Many Christian Republicans are secretly (and correctly) afraid that the Republican Party's heart truly lies with the business community and earthy things rather than with God and heavenly things.  I have heard Democratic candidates in public and more private settings use the porn example when speaking to religious conservatives, and as with abortion reduction, conservatives are sitting up and beginning to listen.  Conservatives, especially religious ones, are getting fed up with Republicans talking tough on values issues and then doing virtually nothing at all.  Even Dobson is now relegated to using the rather wimpy line of "Republicans haven't been delivering, but the Democrats will be worse" when trying to mobilize his base to turn out in battle ground states.

So to help further that trend, I'm going to add one more Democratic "wedge" to block the Republican family values wedge (that sentence makes sense if you've read the posts I linked to above).  Violence and sex in the media (especially TV) is a real concern to parents and something Republicans tromp out every once in a while, but Republicans tend to avoid the issue for the most part because their allies are the main culprits.  I'm sure some folks our there are saying, "What?!!  Republicans have allied with liberal Hollywood actors?"  No, of course not.  But for the most part, the liberal Hollywood actors are not the ones who choose content for what is on TV…or in the movies for that matter.

"Ok, so who is choosing the content and what can we do about it," you might be thinking.  Well, I'm glad you asked because one of the best ways for Dems to get at the problem of violence/sex in the media without running into 1^st Amendment issues is to draw the connection between indecency in the media and increased media consolidation (politics aside, reducing consolidation is also probably the best policy solution to the problem). 

Consolidation takes programming decisions out of the hands of local communities and places it in the hands of mega-corporations, which are less accountable and make decisions solely on what will shock and sell (perhaps the best example of this is FOX, which ironically many conservatives idolize because of its biased news network).  Consolidation also hurts religious broadcasters, which are being squeezed out because they tend to be locally-based and less profitable (if you have time and interest, check out this report for a lot more details on the connection between consolidation and indecency). 

What's nice about the whole consolidation argument from a political perspective is that it's not just about decency and protecting our children, although that can be the central theme.  Consolidation is also about standing up for the little guy and family business vs. the faceless multi-national corporation.  It is also about keeping control of our communities and plays in to people's fears that the Republicans are in the pocket of lobbyist and big business and are putting the interests of mega-corporations who only care about their bottom line above those of ordinary Americans. 

Finally, most people simply don't like the fact that radio stations all play the same music and bemoan the general quality of TV programming, decency aside.  So tying consolidation to decency and protecting our kids just gives them a moral reason to object to something they already don't particularly like anyway.  And so we can bring together a pretty large coalition around the idea of the need to fight continued media consolidation. 

I will conclude with the point I try to make on all policy recommendations.  We win when we align our interests with that of the American people, emphasize our policy positions that address core concerns of average Americans, and do what is right.  It's not pandering or political scheming if we are willing to take action to address these real concerns.  That's called good governing and truly being public servants.  So as I have said in the past, we need to emphasize our real solutions to internet porn and violence/sex in the media because doing so will improve our political fortunes and because it is the right thing to do.