Perversion for Profit
Perversion for Profit

Author: Whitney Strub

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0231148879

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Perversion for Profit traces the crucial function of pornography in constructing the New Right agenda, which has emphasized social issues over racial and economic inequality. Whitney Strub vividly recreates the debates over obscenity that consumed ACLU members in the 1950s and revisits the deployment of obscenity charges against purveyors of gay erotica during the Cold War, revealing the differing standards applied to heterosexual and homosexual pornography. He follows the rise of the influential Citizens for Decent Literature during the 1960s and the pivotal events that followed: the sexual revolution, feminist activism, the rise of the gay rights movement, the "porno chic" moment of the early 1970s, and resurgent Christian conservatism, which currently shapes public policy far beyond the issue of sexual decency. Strub also examines the ways in which the Left failed to mount a serious or sustained counterattack to the New Right's use of pornography as a political tool. As he demonstrates, this failure has put the Democratic Party at the mercy of Republican rhetoric for decades.

Lost Rights
Lost Rights

Author: James Bovard

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1250109647

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From Justice Department officials seizing people's homes based on mere rumors to the IRS and its master plan to prohibit the nation's self-employed from working for themselves to the perpetrators of the Waco siege, government officials are tearing the Bill of Rights to pieces. Today's citizen is now more likely than ever to violate some unknown law or regulation and be placed at the mercy of an administrator or politician hungering for publicity. Unfortunately, the only way many government agencies can measure their "public service" is by the number of citizens they harass, hinder, restrain, or jail. James Bovard's Lost Rights provides a highly entertaining analysis of the bloated excess of government and the plight of contemporary Americans beaten into submission by a horrible parody of the Founding Fathers' dream.

The Democratic Constitution
The Democratic Constitution

Author: Neal Devins

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-08-26

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0190291109

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Constitutional law is clearly shaped by judicial actors. But who else contributes? Scholars in the past have recognized that the legislative branch plays a significant role in determining structural issues, such as separation of powers and federalism, but stopped there--claiming that only courts had the independence and expertise to safeguard individual and minority rights. In this readable and engaging narrative, the authors identify the nuts and bolts of the national dialogue and relate succinct examples of how elected officials and the general public often dominate the Supreme Court in defining the Constitution's meaning. Making use of case studies on race, privacy, federalism, war powers, speech, and religion, Devins and Fisher demonstrate how elected officials uphold individual rights in such areas as religious liberty and free speech as well as, and often better than, the courts. This fascinating debunking of judicial supremacy argues that nonjudicial contributions to constitutional interpretation make the Constitution more stable, more consistent with constitutional principles, and more protective of individual and minority rights.

Freedom and Entertainment
Freedom and Entertainment

Author: Stephen Vaughn

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780521852586

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This is a story that Jack Valenti has long tried to keep secret. Freedom and Entertainment is the first book to offer a behind-the-scenes account of the motion picture rating system and the Motion Picture Association of America under Valenti's leadership. The book is based on the private papers and oral history of Richard D. Heffner, who headed the Classification and Rating Administration for two decades, from 1974 to 1994, and who was once called 'the least-known most powerful person in Hollywood.' The story chronicles the often tense working relationship between Heffner and Valenti, and the sometimes bruising encounters Heffner had with such Hollywood heavyweights as Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas, George C. Scott, Lew Wasserman, Arthur Krim, Jerry Weintraub, and many others.