Utah Porn Resolution Quickly Becomes Political Boomerang

By Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Porn For Women and Couples

As Billy Idol once sneered, “there’s nothing pure in this world.”

This being the case, when it comes to shaming one’s political rivals, demanding ideological purity of them is a dangerous game to play, because what you think is an arrow may just turn out to be a boomerang.

While I doubt it will have any severe or lasting repercussions in their race, a pair of republicans are learning about the boomerang effect of using each other’s (very) indirect involvement in the sale of porn as a political bludgeon, forcing each to defend his own business interests against absurd guilt-by-proxy arguments.

Read on…

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

To an outside observer, the political porn-feuding between current Lt. Gov. of Utah Spencer Cox (Side note: Would that be a great stage name for a gay porn performer, or what?) and his boss’ opponent Jonathon Johnson, the chairman of Overstock.com, has taken on the feel of two kids rhetorically battling it out on an elementary school playground at lunchtime.

It all got started when Johnson tweeted his congratulations to the Utah Legislature for passing a (non-binding, legally meaningless) concurrent resolution declaring pornography to be a public health crisis, saying “families will be stronger societies safer when citizens realize pornography’s devastating efforts avoid it like the disease it is.”

Cox, evidently feeling his boss had been snubbed by omission from Johnson’s thank you tweet, replied with “You forgot to applaud Gov. Herbert. It’s OK. I got this” along with clapping-hand emojis. Cox also slipped in as a postscript “P.S. Really wish Overstock didn’t sell porn.”

Naturally, Johnson was a little peeved by the sideswipe at Overstock, so he trotted out his spokesperson Sasha Clark to decry Cox’s tweet as being part of a “last-minute smear campaign to guarantee his (Cox’s) next government paycheck,” while noting Overstock also sells “Christian material and books on overcoming addiction.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a modern complaint about the other side mudslinging and ‘going negative’ if it didn’t also offer some slung mud and negativity of its own – so when a programming guide from CentraCom (of which Cox used to be vice president) made the rounds showing the cable provider offered adult programming, Johnson and team were more than happy to use it to portray Cox as a hypocrite.

And so it goes; more political buffoonery and irrelevant rhetorical squabbling over something of which both sides of the argument are “guilty.” Just what their state needs!

Just What Constitutes a ‘Connection’ to Porn, Anyway?

If I were ever to run for public office (don’t worry; this will never actually happen), there’s no way I could weasel my way out of admitting a connection to the porn industry, because I’ve now spent close to 20 years marketing and writing about the stuff. Where guys like Cox and Johnson are concerned, though, one really has to stretch the definition of the word in order to label either of them a “pornographer.”

Even if you could legitimately call either of these guys a pornographer, the descriptor wouldn’t bother me, obviously – but presumably republicans in Utah don’t exactly share my politics or outlook on the role of public policy in this particular area, so association with porn might strike them as significant, whether or not it would be a deciding factor in how they cast their vote.

Johnson’s spokesperson, Clark, noted that even though CentraCom appears to have dropped its pay-per-view porn offerings, the cable company still makes money from “pornographic material” on HBO and Cinemax. (It’s not clear whether Game of Thrones counts as porn – but if Cosmopolitan does, it’s hard to see how GOT would not.)

While some members of the Johnson campaign seem to view Cox’s former VP position at CentraCom to be a porn-connection worthy of criticism, at the same time, Johnson’s campaign manager Dave Hansen wants people to see a clear and wide divide between the actions of Overstock and Johnson’s porn-politics.

“Overstock does not send the magazines to people who do not request it,” Hansen said. “That’s a corporate decision. Everyone knows Jonathan’s position.”

Hypocrisy for Thee, but Not for Me

For his part, Cox hasn’t been shy about decrying his opponent’s porn-hypocrisy, either.

“I’m not an expert on pornography, but I do believe that adult magazines and videos, and other things that are for sale at his company, I think most people in Utah would consider pornography,” Cox said. “My point is, if you really do believe it’s a public health crisis, let’s stop the dissemination of it. That’s something he could do something about.”

Setting aside the fact I think calling porn a public health crisis is hyperbole bordering on hysteria, Cox has a point: If Johnson is so sure porn is awful for people, surely as the company’s chairman he could influence Overstock to stop selling porn.

But, by the same token, don’t you figure a letter from a former vice president and current Lt. Gov. could have some impact on the decisions made by a cable company? I think it could – particularly when the company is actively falling all over itself in the wake of the Cox/Johnson Twitter battle to point out the ways it has already disassociated itself from adult content.

In the middle of all this, Clark said something with which I almost agree: “I think, at the end of the day, this mud-slinging isn’t helping anyone.”
Like I said, I almost agree. My agreement would be complete, except there are democrats running for governor in Utah, too – and they’ve got to be laughing their asses off over all of this right now.