One of my great regrets about this website – and believe me, they are legion – is that we give so much of our time over to Rick Santorum. Sure, the former Pennsylvania senator and current joke candidate for the Republican nomination demands attention because he’s so ass-backwards and endearingly hateful, but from time to time I feel bad about devoting so much of our time and bandwidth to mercilessly and gleefully mocking him.
Then he goes and does something incredibly fucking stupid. Again.
Yesterday, Rick was speaking at a town hall meeting in Iowa (you know, because Iowa is the only goddamned place in the United States that matters until after their primary) when he was asked what he would do about the Occupy Movement if elected president. And he responded exactly the way you would expect Rick Santorum to respond to such an obviously loaded question:
“In all due respect, nothing because that’s not really the role of the president,” Santorum replied. “This is a First Amendment right, but a First Amendment right isn’t an absolute right.”
Wait, what?!
I must have fucked something up here, that doesn’t sound like Rick Santorum at all. That sounds…well, that sounds downright reasonable. Let me check my sources here, and…no…no, that’s the actual quote. Well I’ll be damned. Looks like even a functionally brain-dead clock is still right twice a day. Well guys, I guess I should apologize – I promised you some more Santorum bashing, and there’s nothing to bash him over.
What’s that? There’s more to the quote? Well, by all means, let’s hear it. It must be relevant, intelligent and insightful.
He added: “I’m a big believer in the First Amendment. I think the court has gotten it wrong on some cases, particularly with respect to pornography and their rulings on that.”
“But with respect to the Occupy Wall Street people, they-
Hoooooooooold on…
Back that up a little, did he just name-check porn?
So, here in the midst of this discussion about Occupy and the First Amendment right to assemble and protest, Santorum decided to air his grievances about fucking pornography? In what insane sex-obsessed world is that relevant? Oh right, the insane sex-obsessed world of a man who signed a pledge to stick his nose into everybody’s private sex lives if elected president. (Sidebar: recently, serial adulterer and all-around de-sanctifier of marriage Newt Gingrich also signed that pledge, which led to bales of laughter around the Fatal Downflaw offices.)
Now, in my delightful fantasy world (which is called Andytopia and where rivers of bourbon wind their way through the sausage groves) the court ruling that Ricky-boy is referring to is Miller v. California, the 1973 decision in which SCOTUS decided that obscene material (defined as being material that “the average person” would find appeals to prurient interests, that graphically and specifically portrays sexual acts and that has no “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”) is not covered under the First Amendment. If this were the case, I would be in full agreement – obscenity is not only the greatest gift that a benevolent deity could ever bestow upon mankind, but it is also super fun. In fact, though I am not currently running for any political office (and the mere existence of this website all but guarantees I never can), I can assure you that were I to do so, I would regard it as one of the most important planks of my platform that obscenity is not only a right, but a duty.
However, though the statement was ambiguous, given what we know about Santorum he was more likely talking about Stanley v. Georgia, the 1969 ruling that declared that states cannot outlaw the possession of pornographic materials. Can you imagine what the world would be like today had the court ruled in favor of Georgia? We would have no internet!
Aside from just being a fundamentally dickbag thing to bring up in a totally unrelated discussion, this assertion of Santorum’s serves to illustrate yet another of my favorite hypocrisies of the Right: they are constantly clamoring for smaller and less intrusive government out of one side of their mouths while calling for more restrictions on freedoms out of the other. It’s the “government should have no say in our personal lives except to legislate this list 
of things I don’t approve of” attitude that we see so often, and it drives me absolutely fucking bonkers. You don’t approve of porn? Then don’t consume porn and be sad, Rick Santorum, I don’t give a flying fuck. Me, I love pornography and I think that if you raised Thomas Jefferson from the grave and explained to him what internet porn was, he would think you were absolutely fucked in the head to try to ban such a wondrous and life-enriching invention. And don’t get me started on your need to legislate abortion, gay marriage and about a dozen other things that your twisted version of morality forbids.
In light of these sentiments coming from Mr. Santorum, I am pleased to announce a new, upcoming column that will premiere here at Fatal Downflaw as soon as Zac makes a banner for it: Rick Santorum Memorial Parody Porn Reviews, in which I will watch terrible and hilarious pornography in memory of Rick, and his opinions about my right to do so. Suck on that, First Amendment!
