While I don’t want to devote too much time to something that both Dave and M. Simon have already had fun with, what annoys me even more than Rick Santorum’s call for a crackdown on pornography is the crackpot thinking behind the idea. From the Santorum website:
America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography. A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences. Addiction to pornography is now common for adults and even for some children. The average age of first exposure to hard-core, Internet pornography is now 11. Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.
Sigh. What no one seems to get except me is that you can make an equally logical claim that pornography causes abstinence. And decreases sex. (See Glenn Reynolds’ TCS daily article on the subject.)
The “profound brain changes” claim is neither new, nor is there any valid scientific research to back it. The idea is the brainchild of one Judith Reisman, who is more obsessed with pornography than the porn “addicts” themselves. I have discussed Reisman’s claims in several posts, but the gist of her argument is that pornography is “erototoxic“:
Reisman has postulated a physical mechanism to account for the dangers she ascribes to pornography: when viewed, an addictive mixture of chemicals which she has dubbed “erototoxins,” floods the brain, causing harmful influences to it. Reisman hopes that MRI studies will prove porn-induced physical brain damage and predicts lawsuits against publishers and distributors of pornography similar to those against Big Tobacco which resulted in the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Further, if pornography can “subvert cognition,” then “these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure.” Finally, individuals who have suffered brain damage from ‘pornography are no longer expressing “free speech” and, for their own good, shouldn’t be protected under the First Amendment.’ [17][18][19][20][21]
Similar claims have been made about music, and I suppose they could be made about religion. Except we live in a free country, right?
Not if Santorum has his way.
However, annoyed though I am by Santorum’s crass promotion of crackpot theories, it has to be remembered that we have a president who, while he is widely considered some sort of scholarly intellectual, has no problem promoting and disseminating dishonest crackpot claims, the latest being his gratuitous smear against President Rutherford B. Hayes.
“One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: ‘It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?’” Obama said. “That’s why he’s not on Mt. Rushmore.”
Except not only did Hayes never say that, he was the first president to have a telephone (patented only the year before) installed in the White House.
New York magazine looked into this, and spoke to the curator of the Hayes museum. It turns out to be another one of those fake Internet claims:
We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama’s ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.
“I’ve heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from,” Card said of Hayes’s alleged phone remark, “but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it’s out there.”
Wait, so Hayes didn’t even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? “No, no,” Card confirmed.
She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes’s delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, “a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, “looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, ‘That is wonderful.’”
The article points out that Hayes was also the first president to use the typewriter, and he had Edison demonstrate his phonograph at the White House. In short, he was precisely the opposite of the doltish Luddite Obama makes him out to be.
So much for the idea that we have an intellectual in charge at the White House. Not only was it stupid of him to launch an unfounded attack using a fake Internet quote, but it might backfire. Especially if political junkies start researching the Hayes era, which serves as a reminder of an very major but often suppressed historical difference between the two parties. While a number of historically literate Americans are aware of the Tilden-Hayes election (in which Tilden won the popular vote and Hayes won the electoral vote), they tend to forget the reason the Democrats finally acquiesced to Hayes entering the White House. The Compromise of 1877:
The Compromise of 1877 refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election, regarded as the second “corrupt bargain“, and ended Congressional (“Radical”) Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The compromise took effect even before Hayes was sworn in, as the incumbent president, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, removed the soldiers from Florida.[1] As president, Hayes removed the remaining troops in South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many Republicans also left (or became Democrats) and the “Redeemer” Democrats took control.
[…]
In exchange, Democrats would:
- Accept Hayes’s presidency.
- Respect blacks’ rights.
And we know how well the latter turned out, don’t we?
Hayes, however, continued to be guided by what he said in his acceptance letter and reiterated in his inaugural address. He would be willing to remove the troops upholding Republican governments in Louisiana and South Carolina if leading Democrats in those states pledged to uphold the civil and voting rights of black and white Republicans. The pledges were made, Hayes removed the troops, but the promises were soon broken. Over the next two decades, southern blacks were systematically disfranchised until virtually none could vote – a situation that persisted until well in the twentieth century. In addition, despite Key’s appointment and his distribution of post office patronage, any hope of winning moderates to the Republican party quickly evaporated. The color line prevailed and racism kept virtually all southern whites in the Democratic party.
Bear in mind that Hayes was a distinguished Civil War veteran who believed in racial equality, and said so. Frederick Douglass was one of his supporters and was appointed to an important federal office by Hayes. Hayes felt betrayed by the Democrats’ failure to implement racial equality, but it was not politically possible for him to do much about it.
If we consider the historical reality of the two parties on the race issue during Hayes’ time, I think Obama’s smear is especially unwise.
Politically, he’s looking at least as silly as Santorum, and maybe sillier. Santorum is pandering to anti-pornography conservatives, and it may help him get some votes. Obama is pandering to ignorant Democrats, but he has made such a patently false claim that he only looks like a fool. And who knows? He may have even helped expose the racist history of the Democratic Party (which I believe is every bit as infected with racial toxicity now as then).
Perhaps I’m abnormal, but I find studying history to be infinitely more addictive than perusing pornography. It gives me a better rush (and a better “brain change” dynamic) than do the “erototoxins” which are supposed to be changing my brain.
It ought to be my right as an American to enjoy either.
Comments
4 responses to “Hands off my “erototoxins,” and stop screwing with history!”
I was wondering why my Twitter feed was suddenly full of Rutherford B. Hayes jokes yesterday, thanks…
In response to Obama’s Hayes-telephone joke, quite a few are crowing that Ronald Reagan told one with the same story. Which is true. I think Reagan’s joke was much wittier however, as he ended the tale: “I thought at the time that he might be mistaken.”
[…] got so excited by Rick Santorum’s war on my erototoxins that I got all distracted from what I really ought to be thinking about. It’s not as bad as […]
Very interesting posts! Yup, Santorum has been the gift that keeps on giving to the Dems lately. I have to say, though, that I personally am not a fan of porn–and I also would never ever want the government having power to limit or ban it.