Jeb Bush. Porn Investor???

- Coleen Singer, Sssh.com Porn For Women and Couples

From where I sit, it’s not really accurate to say we’re “entering election season” or “the next race for the White House has officially begun,” because the truth is we’re never not in the election cycle in this country anymore. The sitting president doesn’t even have a chance to leave a lasting impression of his ass on the (Oval) office chair before the speculating has begun about who might be the next to fart into its cushions.

This is why during Hillary Clinton’s stint as Secretary of State, I’m not sure a single story about her failed to mention the expectation she would run again in 2016, or to speculate as to how her conduct at the time might be in part calibrated with her future campaign in mind.

That said, there’s no question the media is even less able to shut up about presidential campaign politics when the election is fewer than 24 months away, particularly before the field of candidates has been narrowed down to the three or four least interesting people the two major parties have to offer – along with at least one third-party candidate who is probably far more interesting, but who the mainstream press will dutifully ignore like the one super-creepy uncle everybody hoped just wouldn’t show up at the quadrennial family reunion.

As such, we should all probably just get used to being offered recycled non-stories with headlines like “Jeb Bush Administration Invested Florida Pension Money In Porn Purveyor.”

To sum up this ludicrous pile of semantic-stretching, the story goes something like this: During his tenure as Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush and others in the government there who oversaw the state’s pension program invested $1.3 million of those funds into Movie Gallery, a company which at the time was the second largest video rental business in North America, behind Blockbuster. 

Like Blockbuster, Movie Gallery has since gone bankrupt. Unlike Blockbuster, Movie Gallery had an adult movie section, which is how the International Business Times, various socially conservative organizations and others justify saying Bush invested state funds in a “porn purveyor.”

Like so many “scandals” which pop up during election cycles, this story is not at all new. Back in 2005, the American Family Association founder and chairman Don Wildmon sent out a mass email to AFA members decrying the fact Florida tax money had been invested in “morbid porn videos.”

“Movie Gallery shades hundreds of its stores with ‘back rooms,’ filled with thousands of videos and magazines exhibiting morbid depictions of sex,” Wildmon’s email stated. “By investing in Movie Gallery stock, the state of Florida is giving its stamp of approval on hard-core porn.”

That’s odd; despite having given hardcore porn its stamp of approval, Florida is the same forum where the government went out of its way to prosecute a fellow named Max Hardcore on federal obscenity charges and managed to get a jury to convict him despite the prosecution never exactly showing Mr. Hardcore knew or intended his movies to be distributed into the state. 

Whatever else it might be, that’s one pretty fucking ambivalent “stamp of approval.”

At any rate, evidently Mr. Wildmon and the AFA have nothing to say about Jeb Bush and porn purveying now, probably because it’s not entirely unlikely Bush will be the eventual Republican nominee, and the AFA likely doesn’t relish the idea of being seen as contributing to the demise of the last right-winger standing, the alternatives being who and what they are.

Look, I’m no Jeb Bush fan (I vastly prefer the work of his sister, Kate) but to describe him as someone who “invested” in “morbid porn videos” is to do serious, scarring violence to the English language. 

Even if Bush was the person who made the decision (which I sincerely doubt; Governors tend to delegate damn near everything that doesn’t involve a press conference or the use of a special commemorative pen), what he invested in was a movie rental business – and not one located at the heart of 1980’s Time Square.

Frankly, whatever I might think of the guy if this is the stickiest mud Jeb Bush’s critics have to sling at him, I’d say he’s in pretty good shape.

Maybe the real question should be what kind of “investor” worth the term was, by 2005, still sinking money into stores which rented and sold movies on physical media? What’s his hot stock tip these days, Fax Machines ‘R Us, Inc.?

About Coleen Singer:

Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen), where she often waxes eloquent about Female Friendly Porn, sex, pleasure products, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes porn.

Visit Coleen at Sssh.com for more kinky sex news, original movies and h