LOS ANGELES—One has to wonder why Steve Poizner is so desperate to become the governor for the broke state of California that he would actually scrape the bottom of the political barrel by playing a long shot “porn card” in his primary battle with former eBay exec Meg Whitman. With the June primary less than a month away, however, both sides seem to be sliding on their promise to conduct campaigns with a semblance of decorum. Go figure.
For her part, Whitman—with the help of new BFF Dick Cheney—is branding Poizner with one of the few labels worse than pornographer: namely, liberal. Unable to retort along the same lines, Poizner has grabbed some equally slimy mud to sling back at her, in a new campaign ad with the title "Adults Only" (Meg Whitman's eBay).
“When Meg Whitman joined eBay, the company sold everything, from guns to genuine paintings by famous artists for five bucks, to hardcore pornography,” says the narrator. “Whitman cleaned up the site. No more guns, no more fake paintings, but pornography? Whitman started a separate division that only sells porn. Under Whitman’s leadership, the porn site became one of the largest on the internet. That’s Meg Whitman. From Goldman Sachs deals to porn. It’s all about the money. Meg Whitman. Bad judgment. Wrong values.” (Note how the ad refers to Ebay as a “porn site.” You can’t buy that sort of double-speak. Oh wait, yes you can.)
Tough stuff, to be sure, but you don’t run for political office these days unless you’re eager to be tarred and feathered as a porn-loving aider and abettor of corporate theft, at the least! Poizner has to know that he, too, is just as vulnerable on this score.
According to his Wikipedia page—if we can believe the porn-loving bastards at Wikimedia!—Poizer, as a California businessman, founded SnapTrack, Inc. in 1995, “which pioneered technology that put GPS receivers into cell phones. Poizner served as its chief executive officer until he sold the privately held company to Qualcomm in 2000 for a reported $1.0 billion.”
Now, as everyone knows, GPS receivers in cell phones have been nothing but a boon to the pornography industry. In fact, if it weren’t for GPS, Grindr could not exist, much to the consternation of cruising men everywhere, and neither would PinPointsX, which enables people to 'locate & interact' with erotic partners and facilitators in their “immediate, changing and real-time location.”
The latter product, by the way, specifically promotes itself to adult performers as a way to stay in very close contact with their fans. Now, how considerate is that? These and other GPS-based products and services bring porn- and sex-loving people together in a way that would never have been possible had not companies like Poizner’s SnapTrack pioneered the very underlying technology that has ushered them into existence.
So while the adult entertainment industry may indeed owe a certain level of thanks to Whitman for not preventing legal content from being sold on eBay, it is as much if not more indebted to Poizner for developing the very tools that have allowed porn to blossom beyond the limited confines of the DVD toward a future in which we are all connected to pornography.
Thank you, Meg and Steve! You have each served the consumer well and have earned at least an honorable mention at next year’s AVN Awards, if not induction into the AVN Hall of Fame. If you’re really lucky, Betty White will be the host. (You might want to join the Facebook page.)
