This week’s social-conservative self-gratification comes Wednesday morning, when Representative Isaac Latterell (R-6/Tea) comes before House State Affairs with House Bill 1277, his proposal to regulate porn profits. Representative Latterell proposes to require that all revenue from obscene material distributed or exhibited in South Dakota go solely to the people whose faces are shown in said obscene material.
Now I’d like to praise Representative Latterell for his bold support of labor. Just as in farming and manufacturing, the profits of porn should go first and foremost to the hard-working Americans who actually put out the product people want, not the middlemen and CEOs and other wealthy layabouts who don’t add true value in the marketplace. With HB 1277, Representative Latterell clearly recognizes that working man and woman should always be on top!
But uff da—someone needs to help Isaac get over his obsession with porn. He worked himself into a lather last year coming up with an utterly unworkable plan to block and tax porn. Now in his fervor to be seen as a champion of decency, he tries to reach around the Commerce Clause and regulate business transactions that happen far outside the jurisdiction of any South Dakota cop or judge.
Even if there were any chance that South Dakota could enforce HB 1277, this silly bill ignores the fact that the creation of cinema, obscene or otherwise, involves the efforts of many people supporting the two folks bouncing up and down on the bed. Check out the earth-shaking bedroom scene in Eddie Murphy’s Dolemite Is My Name, which pays tribute to the camera, sound, and set people who made Rudy Ray Moore’s Human Tornado love scene a towering paean to passion. What little shred of pro-labor merit HB 1277 may have requires that Representative Latterell move to amend his bill to share the love with all the blue-collar workers who make the work of the no-collar stars possible.
Even then, HB 1277 would be far too easy to work around. Require that you have to show your face on screen to get a check, and every porn film will start with a shot like this:
Maybe that’s Isaac’s plan: force every porn production unit to include a group shot in its products, so Isaac can then run the screen caps through Google Image Search and identify and shame every person involved in making such filth. But somehow I don’t think the production company staff and management will care, any more than the folks in the picture above care about having their faces associated with the filth they produce.
Maybe some porn producers will even get creative. They’ll cast the CEO and everyone else on the team as extras, show them jogging past the house as the plumber arrives or racing past the office door carrying rubber chickens to the copy machine as the intern goes in for his interview. HB 1277 could inspire a Dolemitian revolution in creative porn that involves the community and helps everyone in the industry feel more invested in their art.
Or we can just watch HB 1277 get laughed down in committee Wednesday as poor Isaac heads for another premature climax.
One thing I noticed when I was lobbying in Pierre was that when bills like this and abstinence education were up for committee hearings, they would bus in the Christian high school kids. I expect those kids will have a great time reading this bill. If I were a committee chairman, I might request Rep. Latterell to read his master–um-piece to the committee. That might be enough to dissuade him from another such effort next year.
You can bet some porn producer will make a porno about South Dakota’s wingnut party and I am sure they have just the actress to portray Noem. I can just imagine Noem asking if she can add some fluff to the production.
“DOLEMITE” 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 – Isaac Latterell … closet dweller w/ too many double letters in his porn name.
What the heck is wrong with these people? He sounds just like one more GOP “values” guy with a “wide stance.” GeezLouise!
Can we do the same at McDonalds? At the end of the shift, the counter workers clean out the tills, put ALL the cash into their pockets (previous credit card payments were automatically deposited to their personal bank accounts), and go home — paid.
I can also just pay the UPS guy for my Amazon order; I see him, not Jeff Bezos or the warehouse workers.
Maybe Latterell’s issue is object permanence: just because he does not see someone or something does not mean it does not exist.
Latterell is just another “Christian” who lusts after guilt and shame while eschewing acceptance and forgiveness. Suppression of one emotion leads to oit manifesting as a distorted version in some other emotion. Suppressed love -> comes out twisted into hate, or envy?
Actually, given the obsession of some state legislators with peeking at the genitalia of little boys and girls to decide which bathroom they can use, and their desire to examine the genitalia of pregnant women who only seek medical help to deal with pregnancy dangers or difficulties, coupled with the bragging of their cult leader, Donald Trump, about looking at naked children through his unannounced visits to teen beauty pageant dressing rooms, and his bragging about grabbing the genitalia of beautiful women, it is somewhat surprising that this bill doesn’t read:
Perhaps a committee or floor amendment will correct this obvious oversight.
And, we can’t leave out Fred Deutsch who leers at teen genitalia photos on the internet and then copies/presents some nationwide anti-LGBTQ bill to cover his porn searches.
* Appropriate WORD OF THE DAY from Urban Dictionary
– PEARL CLUTCHER – An uptight person, usually but not always of conservative mores, who reacts with shock, feigned or otherwise, at other people’s violations of decorum, propriety, morality, and so forth.
IN A SENTENCE: Someone got up at the PTA meeting and suggested the school hand out condoms to teenagers. The pearl clutchers in the audience nearly went into cardiac arrest.
Bearcreekbat, the proper amendment would require the display of both face and genitalia to make money off the porn. Keep the money flowing to the people doing the real work. The director, the producer, the studio CEO, and all those other off-screen profiteers don’t get to cash in just by jumping into the group shot in the credits; if you want to make money on your porn, you’ve got to give us your full Monty.
Enforcing this statute will, of course, require an enormous expansion of the Attorney General’s office staff. We’ll need people to review every bit of porn broadcast or webcast or downloaded into our state. We’ll need investigators to identify every face, call production companies, requisition pay records….
Funny, Cory. “On top?” :)
I can see this helping the targets of revenge porn. Any gains from dissemination of the video goes to the poor woman (usually) or man victimized.
Better yet, Lattrell could simply write a good and neccessary bill criminalizing revenge porn. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Latrell can do an actual good and decent thing by criminalizing the distribution of revenge porn.
Latrell! Be a hero/good guy!
Latterell? As in permanently prostrate?
Keep your finger out of the young man’s arse, friend Bob, and focus on your movie career and the big bucks his law bill will make you as your part in the production “corporate narc checking into the slum motel with the young chick who wants a free doobie”
Debbo, I would much rather see a bill addressing that sort of cruelty than this laughable nonsense from Latterell. But this bill focuses strictly on revenue, so I have to ask: how often does some jerk make money off distributing dirty videos of his ex-girlfriend, and how often does the jerk do it for his pure debased emotional motives?
Cory, nearly always the latter. A law for revenge porn is a serious need, hence not on the SDGOP radar.
Revenge porn seems to be covered under this statute:
22-21-4. Use or dissemination of visual recording or photographic device without consent and with intent to self-gratify, harass, or embarrass–Misdemeanor or felony. No person may use or disseminate in any form any visual recording or photographic device to photograph or visually record any other person without clothing or under or through the clothing, or with another person depicted in a sexual manner, for the purpose of viewing the body of, or the undergarments worn by, that other person, without the consent or knowledge of that other person, with the intent to self-gratify, to harass, or embarrass and invade the privacy of that other person, under circumstances in which the other person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. A violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor. However, a violation of this section is a Class 6 felony if the victim is seventeen years of age or younger and the perpetrator is at least twenty-one years old.
Thanks, Donald! That same statute would seem to bust that Russian provocateur who posted the sexting images from Macron’s withdrawn candidate for mayor of Paris.
Peggy Gibson and Angie Buhl O’Donnell helped toughen that law up in 2016. Joni Cutler and Dan Sutton were the lead sponsors of the original legislation in 2004.
You know. just showing wingnuts a pic of drumpf’s plug-ugly mug gets alot of wingnuts off. They are so egregiously raptured it is pornographic and should be illegal.
Thanks Donald. That’s a good revenge porn law. I’m surprised and pleased that the SD lege, with an SDGOP majority, passed such a good bill into law. I’ll give them points for this one.
Not surprised Angie Buhl O’Donnell was a leader with it. She was an outstanding legislator. I believe she’s retired from lawmaking. Points to her and to Peggy Gibson.
Yeah, Debbo, I think it is a well-crafted statute that protects any first amendment concerns, but addresses the issue. Joni Cutler was a leader on these sorts of issues for many years. I suppose if there is some issue of ill-gotten money involved, a person could sue civilly.