When Gene Ross takes a notion, he can write and today he hit the nail square on the head, echoing what I have been saying, that porn needs a PR person like Michael Weinstein.
This is a good read
PR 101 As Taught By Michael Weinstein
–Gene Ross
Here’s the whole Michael Weinstein-thing in a nutshell. Weinstein’s the type of leader the adult industry wishes it had, but doesn’t.
Weinstein’s a chess master, and his game with the adult industry has been nothing but pure Kasparov.
Weinstein’s scheme is attack, attack, attack. Bitch slap, bitch slap, bitch slap. Knights, bishops, queens, rooks in the person of downtrodden former porn stars with sad sack stories, coming at you from all corners of the board.
When was the last time you saw a chess master pull an En passant? Weinstein will resort to lowbrow board tactics if needs be.
Back when the Free Speech Coalition first formed, it used to hold golf tournaments and testimonial dinners.
Rather than hunt down politicians relentlessly like the way Larry Flynt used to do and find skeletons in the closet to manipulate into wins in the courtroom, Free Speech became a contest to see who could kiss Ruben Sturman’s ass the fondest during the “closest to the hole” awards presentations at industry golf banquets.
The FSC used to have balls, except the word “Spalding” was generally stamped on them.
With an aggressive sales pitch about building a legal war chest to fight obscenity cases, The Free Speech Coalition raised money, alright. Except I bet you’d be hard pressed to find any of it nowadays. Like the fabled treasure of the Knights Templar, it simply doesn’t exist.
With the occasional personal check written by Russ Hampshire made out to the defendant, I don’t exactly remember Free Speech backing anyone’s legal play with a financial endowment. But that was what the FSC was supposed to do – with the money you so generously donated.
Where was a Michael Weinstein, rabble-rousing, pain-in-the-ass, gadfly-type standing up for the little guy when this industry needed one?
Proof of the strength of Weinstein’s game is how quickly he maneuvered the LA mayor into signing a condom mandate into law.
The only time Antonio Villaraigosa’s acted that fast was when one of his media girlfriends was on Line 2 and his ex wife was in the office.
A cynic might also suggest that Weinstein possesses compromising Polaroids of LA City Council with farm animals for them to have ramrodded this condom issue like a John Wayne cattle drive.
The beauty of Weinstein is that he’s got you backed immediately into the corner. Is a politician going to come out against fighting AIDs and socially transmitted diseases?
He might as well come out against Santa Claus and Jerry’s Kids. And the best this industry has shown so far in battling the Weinstein onslaught is a sniveling soundbyte about fleeing Atlanta with Sherman on the march.
If you haven’t noticed, mayors like Bob Huber of Simi Valley www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=52667 are on to that one and getting proactive real quick about the possibilities of porn checking out of Hotel LA and registering at their front desk.
Proactive and aggressive are concepts this industry never figured out. Instead of hiring PR savvy strategists to do the job against Weinstein, it’s got former high school council presidents playing grown up and talking to the press. In the PR game, that’s a forfeiture of the dice, a loss of down, a 15 year penalty and a called third strike.
Michael Whiteacre had the idea, and his attack ad on Weinstein www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9MOWF94_II was a gallant attempt at a message which, unfortunately, very few people saw.
[At least in terms of YouTube stats: something like 3200+ views.].
Now if it was a webcam girl striptease show, it would have been a whole other story with twenty times the audience.
But that’s the way to fight Weinstein. He’s going to bend the truth so you have to break it in half. He’s going to play Hearts and Flowers on the violin, so you’ve got to sing Hit the Road Jack with the Ray Charles singers.
While the adult industry was absorbed with porn parodies, partying in Vegas and winning meaningless awards, Michael Weinstein got this condom mandate signed, sealed and delivered. You think the timing of that was coincidental?
It’s called hardball, and Weinstein just showed you his heater.
