Yesterday's fun news of the afternoon was the $5 billion adult entertainment industry bailout proposed by Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild and Larry Flynt of Hustler.
With Congress was going wilder than any of the barely legal spring breakers has Francis caught on film, the Porn bailout is well timed. The case they lay out similar to the Detroit automakers': Flynt and Francis (the F&F boys?) argue that thanks to the internet, people just aren't buying smut in the form of magazines and DVDs anymore. Rather than adapt to the new technology, they argue that the government should fund an old business model - a model which, if not fatally flawed, will certainly never be as profitable as it once was.
Some actually took it seriously: as the story unfolded, the Huffington Post used the occasion to point out how the recession has affected porn. Which goes to show just how ridiculous the concept of corporate welfare is: eventually, the government has to pick and choose which industries to subsidize and which to turn away. As Francis and Flynt show, any industry can claim to "need it so bad," but Congress has to draw a line somewhere.
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