There’s no shortage of other porn stars to write about, don’t worry

Saturday, September 6, 2008

So, I got a call today from a porn star. Seriously.

Well, a former porn star who now, in a world-weary voice, says that he is ashamed of his past career now that he is a born-again Christian.
Now, we all know what I think of born-again Christians. But I am also true to my more liberal live-and-let-live beliefs, and it's not like he called to proselytize or demonize me. Except for that moment when he made note of the fact that I must have "dabbled" in porn to have recognized who he was.

Anyway.

I wrote a blog entry about three years ago about this certain porn actor and where I had seen him in mainstream media, commenting on that dual life. It wasn't in any way an important entry, it didn't touch much on any moral issues (unless you are adamantly opposed to pornography, in which case I say get over it) and sort of showed that he was more than just a hot body. Still, I have deleted that entry now despite my slight first amendment qualms about doing so. I guess the way I look at it is this way: no one is forcing me to remove an entry from this blog, the Constitution -- such as it is these days -- is not threatened by my decision to do so, and this is certainly not a journalistic endeavor by any means. So, it's gone.

The sad thing is that he probably wouldn't ever have seen my little blog if it hadn't been linked to by another site. Such is the internet, and I'm afraid that if he believes that he'll be able to excise all evidence of his past from the net he's sorely deluded. Porn lives forever, especially in the digital realm. All those hours of footage are out there, for free or for sale, on DVD and the net, everywhere. One entry removed from one small blog -- especially a blog where no one turns to for porn in the first place -- isn't going to make a difference. Still, I don't mind removing it for him since he asked so nicely. No prob, pal. But it is my policy to inform readers (you know, like I'm an ethical journalist) that an edit has been made. I just won't disclose what or who the edit was about.

Oh, I could tell you his name, post the voice mail message, give out his phone number and all that, but I'm a nice guy.
REALLY, I am. STOP SNICKERING.

It is interesting, though. Over the years I have had a number of D list (or lower) celebrities call or email asking me to remove an entry about them for one reason or another. The first was the HGTV designer who was concerned that my blog came up first in Google when searching for his name as he was about to launch a new show. There have been quite a few ordinary people in the news doing extraordinarily stupid things then asking me to delete entries -- in those cases, I do it if they are genuinely nice people; some have threatened to sic lawyers on me which makes me laugh and then highlight how ridiculous they are even more so than if they'd kept their mouth shut. But never a porn star. Cool.

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