Libertas Launches A Broadside

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT

It's been a while since we checked in with Libertas, the perpetually frowning film blog of the culture-warrin' right wing. Not that we want our dear readers to think we're getting lazy, it's just that usually, you don't actually have to read the site to know what Jason Apuzzo and company are panty-knotting about: the filth coming off of our screens is a perennial favorite (usually in the form of homo-, or at least metro-, -sexuality), second only to their incessent blare about how Hollywood is full of treasonous terror-abetting monsters who want to weaken our resolve to win in Iraq. (This is usually accompanied by a similar, if slightly contradictory, bit of crowing about how out of step these al-Q'aeda-loving movie producers and/or directors are, with Exhibit A being the allegedly dismal performance of some anti-war documentary that played on eight screens. If these guys are so powerless and out of touch with the heartland of America, who cares that they won't make pro-war propaganda? Do we really need the rah-rahing of 38 people on the Upper West Side to achieve final victory in the global war on terror?)

But it just goes to show you: with right-wing crazies, as with the Jerry Lewis telethon, you miss a little and you miss a lot. Jason has a new complaint about the world of moviemaking: there are no good roles for women. But unlike some people, who would blame this on rampant ageism, sexism, the flattening of available roles, the narrowing demographic focus of blockbuster movies, or even the fact that movies, as a rule, tend to kind of suck, thus leaving no good roles for anyone. No, Jason knows where the real trouble lies: with feminism. Or, to put it another way, with women themselves. "As far as I’m concerned the complaining needs to stop at '…more female executives in Hollywood than ever before'," he says, making it clear that there is no need to look any further for the cause of sexism in Hollywood than the obvious fact that women are bad.

Apuzzo then launches into a flat-sounding back-in-MY-day litany about the Golden Age of Hollywood, in which female movie stars were treated with the utmost respect and honor (no one thought of women as sex objects back then, goodness no!, and sexual harrassment was unheard of and thus nonexistent). None of the blame, of course, lies with the American people, because "we're certainly not a more sexist nation than we were", he reckons, having somehow missed the "Girls Gone Wild" phenomenon, or, more likely, blamed it on women. The problem as he sees it, is that once women got power, they became morally confused, and now they are all trying to be like men instead of super classy like they were in the liberated 1930s. The article ends, as predictable as clockwork at high tide, with the usually beefing about movie stars who "cuss like sailors, show us their tatas, or take whomever to bed in a fit of some twisted definition of empowerment".

It's all very salutory, and if, as Roy Edroso points out, Apuzzo himself is plenty guilty of glorifying cheesecake in the same way he accuses confused, power-mad female executives of doing, so what? He's performing that most valuable of all public services offered by the right: absolving himself and everyone like him of any role in making our culture a cesspool, and placing the blame where it always belongs: with the victims. Well done, Libertas! Way to fight the good fight!

Jailbait to Jailbird: Catching Up with Joe "Girls Gone Wild" Francis

Phil Nugent — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Joe Francis, the man behind the Girls Gone Wild videos, is the contemporary king of softcore, though he's had trouble lately being left alone to enjoy his ill-gotten booty. (Take it away, Beavis and Butt-Head!) Francis managed to spend most of the past year in a prison in Reno, Nevada, basically for having pissed off a judge. Francis had been charged with some seventy counts, but when the charges started dropping off and the smoke cleared, all that was left standing were a couple of felony charges and a couple of prostitution charges that stemmed from a Girls Gone Wild cameraman having filmed a pair of seventeen-year-olds with fake I.D.s Joel Stein reports that "When the underage girls sued Francis for $70 million and a judge, in a bizarre move, ordered the parties to go to mediation, Francis arrived at a hearing and made only one offer to the girls’ lawyers: 'Suck my dick'...Finally, he was thrown in jail for contempt; his jailers later caught him carrying sleeping pills, cholesterol medication, and $700 in cash. This time the judge refused to grant Francis bail." On April 11 of last year, a Reno grand jury indicted him on to counts of tax evasion. Last month, in an agreement with prosecutors, he pled no contest to the minors-in-a-shower-related charges and was sentenced to time served. Last week, the courts agreed to move his tax evasion trial from Reno to his home base in Southern California.

Stein, who has written about Francis before for GQ magazine, visited Francis in the jug recently before his release, and found one unrepentant pornhound waving hello to him from behind that plexiglass shield. "“People want remorse from me? They’re retarded. For what? For fighting for my First Amendment rights? Fuck you.” Words to bring Tom Paine up out of the rave saluting, to be sure. (It's not so clear that Paine would point at a female guard and exclaim, "What a rack!") Francis professed to find his stay at the crossbar motel not so bad--"Nothing will ever happen to me in jail. I’m a god. I’m the cool Girls Gone Wild guy. I’m revered. I’m a rock star”--but unlike Malcolm X or George Bluth, Sr., there is little evidence that the experience has expanded his political consciousness. Certainly he has not bonded with his fellow prisoners: “The one thing I fear is one of these fucking people showing up at my house.” Will things go more smoothly at his trial in Los Angeles? Joel Stein, who has spent a certain amount of time observing the bad boy, believes that his "real passion"--what drives him, over and over, to demonstrate his ability to sweet-talk women into anything- "is dominating other men." And that includes men in black robes who have the power to deprive him of his personal liberty if they get tired of having him look at them cross-eyed. Stay tuned for Part The Next.

The Screengrab : girls gone wild

Libertas Launches A Broadside

Jailbait to Jailbird: Catching Up with Joe "Girls Gone Wild" Francis