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SF Weekly Shows Its Prudish Side Toward Kink.com
In a piece that SFBG's Tim Redmond has already called "remarkable for its prudishness," SF Weekly's Matt Smith has written an indictment this week against S&M; porn producers Kink.com for being able to send their video editors to state-funded classes at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). Why? Because kinky shit grosses him out and he feels taxpayers shouldn't be funding the training of Kink's workers, despite their being employees of a legitimate, taxpaying California business.
To wit: "California taxpayers have paid $46,791 so that employees of the San Francisco pornographer Kink.com might produce more perfect web-based depictions of motorized dildo impalements on www.fuckingmachines.com..."
Smith was a whistle-blower, essentially, submitting an inquiry to the state's Employment Training Panel, which provides funding to the BAVC, letting them know that Kink's parent company Cybernet Entertainment LLC was in the business of "torture-based pornography." The state quickly responded and got Kink's employees kicked off the roster of BAVC's classes. Smith even goes so far as to invoke the 1998 Supreme Court case National Endowment for the Arts vs. Finley, which stemmed from the late 80s conservative brouhaha over "obscenity" in NEA-funded artworks started by one Jessie Helms. That's a hellava model to follow, Matt!
Kink, in turn, has vowed to fight to get this subsidy back for its employees, saying that they are "training San Francisco's workforce for the film and televison industry" and that some of their former employees have gone on to win awards at film festivals.
The original piece is here. You can read Redmond's brief diatribe here, and The Sword (NSFW) has weighed in angrily as well.
UPDATE: Violet Blue has also thrown in her three cents and called Smith's piece "malfeasant journalism."