Santorum Backpeddles His War on Porn

well, he's a politician, what did you expect ?

Cockroaches scurry when the lights come on. Just a random observation.

lol too late
go against porn..and you lose a large percentage of the male vote...no one will admit it but come on...whos going to vote for the guy to take away porn...lol

I dont think he is going to drop. I think he is going to win.

That means Obama would win.

You know, reading his words closely, I'm not sure he has backed down.

Saying "to suggest I?m running on this issue is sort of bizarre" and "All I said in that post was, I would enforce the law" is not quite the same thing as backing off the "war on porn" rhetoric, given that Santorum clearly accepts the Morality in Media interpretation of the Miller Test (which is to say "hardcore = obscene = illegal").

To me, he's just done what any and every politician does: Seek to have it both ways.

Among members of the Christian Right, many of whom believe that all hardcore porn is already illegal under the law and that the government is simply not enforcing the law, he's hoping his words will continue to be interpreted signal that he's going to aggressively prosecute the porn industry.

To more moderate folks, many of whom think prosecuting pornographers is a waste of time and money (even among those who don't much approve of porn), I think Santorum is hoping his statements about the media making a mountain out of a molehill will resonate, and make him less frightening a prospect for those voters.

Where more liberal and libertarian voters are concerned.... well, I suspect Santorum knows he has no real chance of swaying such voters, and he doesn't give a rat's ass what they think, but he's hoping to tamp down some of their criticism by downplaying the statement on his website about his intent to ramp up enforcement of obscenity laws.

All .xxx domains will be seized

Your thread would need a flashier title to get the views. Too much logic.

Exactly.

Thats why I think he will win.

Still, his original comment that the Obama admin. favors pornographers over families and children is such a load of shit, he should have to answer for it daily. Of course he blames the media for asking him about it. Sans scrotum...

I bet he jerks off to gay porn.

The interesting thing is that he jumped back in his first reaction, distancing himself from a war against the porn industry. I think he's afraid of the affections/attractions of mainstream people. People want their porn and he knows it. I think he knows how fringe it makes him look to take on Porn Valley kinda porn, and he's afraid of the mainstream backlash.

Like the writer above said, the men want their porn. But it's broader. The females under 35 want their porn, too, and even the older women have grown much more tolerant about it because they are immersed in the same culture that accepts the vibrator ads on TV, whether they like it or not. Now, there's a whole generation of kids coming up who saw as much porn as they wanted courtesy of the tubemasters. Who make homemade porn. Who do the Original Amateur Hour stuff on computers with built in cameras. Male and females under 19 are watching porn as often and for as long as each other according to the National Academy of Science. The whole dynamic has shifted, and that entire generation under 25 is desensitized to porn and will never have the same visceral and often emotional reaction that earlier generations did, and to them, it's lost its stigma.

It's a whole tapestry woven of many fibres. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton are part of it, the tubes are part of it, and the jokes on late night TV are part of it too along with chat roulette. Too early to tell what the tapestry will look like in its entirety, but when a presidential candidate of the far right distances himself from a war on the porn industry and says that making this a central theme of his campaign would be "bizarre", something BIG has shifted in our culture. What once looked like the future, not so long ago, is our Now.

LOL

ADG

I would so love to see Santorum try to take porn down, and love love love to see Joe Obenberger rip Rick a new one. I'd buy tickets to that.

Joe O rocks BIG time, and IMO always has!

I can honestly say his stance on porn is one of the things that worries me the least about any potential Santorum Presidency. Being persecuted for pornography, having a multibillion dollar industry ruined, losing our rights to privacy - those are some VERY big negatives, but I am confident this asshat would also do far worse than that in other regards.

Other than GWB trying to run for office again, I can't think of too many people I'd rather have LESS than Santorum.

That tapestry is hanging on the wall of change.

Drinking alcohol? That muslim sucks at being muslim.

Steps for running for office...

1) Make big promises.
2) Back pedal.
3) Repeat.