Paul Little, a.k.a. “Max Hardcore” was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for producing dirty movies. While I’m sure that the ghost of Andrea Dworkin is doing backflips of joy, the founding fathers are rolling in their graves.
Glenn Greenwald had this to say in Slate:
So, to recap, in the Land of the Free: if you’re an adult who produces a film using other consenting adults, for the entertainment of still other consenting adults, which merely depicts fictional acts of humiliation and degradation, the DOJ will prosecute you and send you to prison for years. The claim that no real pain was inflicted will be rejected; mere humiliation is enough to make you a criminal. But if government officials actually subject helpless detainees in their custody to extreme mental abuse, degradation, humiliation and even mock executions long considered “torture” in the entire civilized world, the DOJ will argue that they have acted with perfect legality and, just to be sure, Congress will hand them retroactive immunity for their conduct. That’s how we prioritize criminality and arrange our value system. (source)
I am constrained by the rules regulating the Florida Bar from commenting on the Judge in this case. However, the Tampa Bay Online reports that she seemed to have a lot of trouble differentiating between acting and the real world. (source)
