When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, America's first responders, the brave men and women of the police and fire departments, risked life and limb to save trapped innocents. Then, just weeks later, when another miscreant scattered anthrax dust through the postal system, bringing fear and havoc from Gotham and Washington to Main Street USA, our frightened nation put its trust in another group of unsung everyday heroes: the Postal Inspectors. We who live and work in the Land of Liberty have continued to show our support for our first responders -- but during the eighteen months since the guys in plastic suits Hoovered out the halls of Congress, we have forgotten all about the House that Franklin Built. And it's a crying shame, too, because the Postal Inspectors have been working night and day to keep us safe.
A recent article describes obscenity charges brought by the Justice Department against the West Virginia-based purveyors of some very specialized, amateur adult videos sold online at a website called "girlspooping.com." A main supporting element of the Justice Department's case is the very extensive and thorough investigation of the girlspooping.com web site and its operators, Michael and Sharon Corbett, conducted by a US Postal Inspector: one Mr. Thomas W. Svitak.
After a Kentucky Postal Inspector notified Svitak that the Corbetts, who resided in Svitak's community, might be implicated in a violation of Title 18 of the United States Code, section 1461 (which interdicts the mailing of obscene materials), Svitak wasted no time in gathering evidence. In a 15-page affidavit, Svitak describes how, on three separate occasions, he ordered three videos from the girlspooping.com web site. Svitak further describes how he diligently viewed each of the nine videos in its entirety, verifying that the tapes portrayed the precise obscene acts described in the marketing verbiage on the girlspooping.com web site.
What citizenship! While a single order of a single videotape might have proven sufficient to press charges against the Corbetts, Svitak displayed a rare charity and faith in the doctrine of "innocent until proven guilty" -- refreshing, to be sure, in our nation's present climate of suspicion and doubt. Svitak judiciously held off his judgment, daring to question that a single videotape might have been a fluke, an outlier; perhaps the other tapes might have featured the Video Professor providing guidance about Microsoft Word, or Alvin and the Chipmunks singing Eastertide Favorites?
What investigatory prowess! One must admire Svitak's healthy suspicion of Internet marketing and his earnest desire to prevent mail fraud. After all, why should the videotapes contain scatological pornography simply because the website said they would?
What protection of the citizenry! Let us not overlook Svitak's indignant defense of the little man, the ordinary consumer all too often cheated by the dishonest butcher leaving an ounce of sliced ham out of every pound. By viewing each tape all the way to the end, Svitak made sure that each and every advertised act did indeed transpire, dutifully providing inventory in his affidavit.
In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart memorably defined pornography by stating, "I know it when I see it." Accordingly, Inspector Svitak must know it nine times better, which is useful knowledge. Thanks to Svitak's work, the Justice Department -- the long arm of the Ashcroft Superstars -- surely will have few difficulties in sending Mr. and Mrs. Corbett to the Big House.
A cynic might suggest that Svitak enjoyed his work. Accordingly, law enforcement authorities might reply to this truly unpatriotic, unappreciative citizen that it is important for undercover agents to "know thine enemy." The cynic might respond that the difference between a cop and a criminal is nothing more than a moustache and a badge. But any debate of Svitak's ethics merely distracts from the bigger question here, namely: why is it wrong to buy videos of an attractive woman masturbating while she drops a big shit?
Yes, gentle reader, Svitak's investigation revealed that the tapes primarily depicted women shitting and masturbating at the same time, although sometimes they took their shits before they masturbated, and sometimes the shitting and masturbation were preceded or followed by urination; and in very rare scenes, the women shit interactively with one another or into the mouth of a man who didn't seem to mind eating shit. While many of us prefer to watch Stallone movies or to play video games, in a world of such generous diversity, there will always be customers for "fringe" topics.
But perhaps scat porn isn't such a fringe topic, either. Svitak's investigation revealed that the Corbetts moved more than $70,000 of product in approximately three months! If one puts one's faith in the idea that, more than simply a mechanism for exchange, the free market is a de facto rating system for the popularity of goods and services, this small statistical survey suggests that scat porn must enjoy a significant measure of social acceptance.
It feels good when you shit. It feels good when you beat off. Presumably it must feel good when you shit while beating off, and, by transition, it seems reasonable that one might feel good watching another person shit while beating off, too. So if consumer preferences reflect a curiosity about (or infatuation with) diddling, piddling and pooping, then why should our US Code forbid the shipment of videotapes depicting such topics across state lines?
It's not as though any animals or children were harmed in the production of the videos; nor are these behaviors particularly self-destructive. We all know that former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders validated the health benefits of masturbation; and no responsible health professional would dare condemn as unhealthy the act of taking a dump -- indeed, we are encouraged to eat an ever growing bulk of fiber and vegetable mass to ensure that we move our food smoothly through our systems. So if masturbation is okay and pooping is okay, then surely masturbation while pooping must be okay!
(In all fairness, eating shit doesn't seem to be particularly okay, but in a nation where 60% of the population is overweight and a third of the population is obese, the health risks of eating shit seem somewhat lesser than the health risks of eating food. And shit can't taste much worse than tofu, wheat grass, or any of the $50 billion in dietary supplements the nation's fatties consume each year in a desperate hope to control their ballooning bellies.)
(Plus, recycling.)
The framers of the US Constitution built a nation that permits religious freedom, a principle borne out in the not-for-profit, tax-exempt status recently conferred to the Church of Scientology. If we Americans are willing to acknowledge as legitimately divine a race of aliens who purportedly dropped frozen people into a volcano, then why are we not willing to acknowledge as legitimately sexual a person who busts a nut watching a chick pop a squat? Why should the same government chartered to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness waste scarce resources on the interception of poop tapes?
In the final analysis, bedroom proclivities are much like sports. Some people enjoy "gear" sports, like golf, rock climbing, mountaineering or ice hockey -- activities that require participants to purchase pricey equipment. And some people enjoy "simple" sports, like jogging or soccer -- where a person can get started with virtually no gear whatsoever. To extend the analogy, people who enjoy "gear bedsports" can purchase any number of swings, ball gags, vinyl garments and motorized devices to enhance their pleasure. But the autoerotic scatologists of the world are the simple sportsmen of the bedroom -- a wonderfully earthy (and early Freudian) cadre of Luddites who can reach nirvana with nothing more than nature provides.
And so it seems unfair that the government should divert the Corbetts from their profitable and satisfying pursuit, and punish them for yet another victimless crime codified by a minority of anachronistic moralists. On the other hand, given the amount of public defecation and public masturbation that occurs in the nation's lock-ups, a brief incarceration might provide them with creative inspiration for their next oeuvre. If nothing else, we can sleep easy knowing that even in their jail cell, Mr. and Mrs. Corbett come equipped with everything they need to keep one another happy.
-- Mastercrapper
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