Far be it for me to try and out-feminist Jezebel, but this defense of Joe Francis seems, well, wrong. Among the Bush administration's many peculiar obsessions, collecting revenues with which to fund government hasn't exactly been among them. Pandering to social conservatives, by contrast, has been way up there. So I'd take an assault on Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild at face value: Francis is a loathsome prick who runs a quasi-criminal pornography company that happens to also be an electorally rich political target. It's not an accident that they're getting him under "Project Safe Childhood." He runs a business model based off finding women in a state of uncertain or compromised consent. On the one hand, he gets some women who are too drunk to say no, or drunk enough that they forget they should say no. On the other, he gets underage girls who lied for some time on camera. For GGW, this is all a feature, not a bug. It's what the empire is built off of. He may not be "a kiddie porn producer," but he's a producer of porn where the whole selling point is "young girls who wouldn't ordinarily be doing this, but are currently drunk and being egged on -- or scared into acquiescence -- by a bar full of screaming guys." In conclusion, fuck Joe Francis. And if you need more ammo for that sentiment, read this.
