Posted 10/28/09

Is it true that LAUSD Super Ray Cortines plans to lay off 50% of the LAUSD elementary arts teachers next year and the other 50% the year after? That’s the word on the street.

Library assistants who have been laid off (riffed) are reported to contend that Cortines is proposing "book fairs" instead of their services. Book fairs are characterized as fairs held in schools where children can PURCHASE books. That does not sound like a very viable replacement for library services where books are free. It sounds like it might put a lot of school kids who aren’t so wealth at an even bigger disadvantage.

In fact, the giant book publisher and retailer "Scholastic" that Cortines sits on the board of, lists "Book Fairs" as one of it's prime retail activities, right on their web site.

This blog asks, is it true Mr. Cortines, that you get $150,000.00 a year for sitting on the board of "Scholastic"? Please tell us that all the benefits your job at LAUSD, a big customer of Scholastic's  products, could possibly bring that company, is in no way any kind of conflict. Is it? How much is spent on Scholastic products at LAUSD Mr. Cortines? Inquiring minds want to know.

Did you catch NBC's (Channel 4) report on October 21st on AIDS Healthcare Foundation's protest against the porn industry endangering the health and lives of performers by not using condoms in the making of hardcore porn? The protest was held against the Marriott Hotel Chain for selling hardcore, explicit porn on pay per view at their hotels and took place inside and outside the downtown Marriott in Los Angeles.

I had gotten the job of going to various major hotels and checking out the pay per view porn to see if, indeed, it was both explicit and condom - less. Stereotypes can be true, when I told female friends what I was doing, with one exception, they all expressed some degree of  disinterest or  "yuck" like comments. They usually expressed sympathy to me for having to watch the stuff. To a man, my male friends were green with envy and thought I was lucky to get the assignment. My reaction - it was kind of boring. Being a middle aged Lesbian and checking out the many varieties of porn that could involve condoms, or not…well almost all of that wouldn't involve me either. I was probably a good choice, since I am shock proof and not inclined to get carried away on the assignment.

I have to say, with all the talk of porn I had to wonder at Kimmel’s fascination with my hair and clothes. Is there something you aren’t telling us Jimmy? Do you secretly want to be a middle aged Lesbian in a loud shirt with a lot of hair? Get in touch with me, I’ll clue you in on my hair and wardrobe people. The Lesbian part is trickier and might involve a lot of expensive nips and tucks...ouch.

Just to clue you in, that’s a “Jazz Fest “ shirt you are ‘dissing,  Kimmel . (I don’t care if he ‘disses me - get in line Jimmy... and it’s a long line), but don’t mess with Jazz Fest. Every year there is a jazz festival (where else) in New Orleans and a company based there makes a different shirt to commemorate it each year. I buy them because I love jazz, I love New Orleans and I like the specially designed and very well made and detailed shirts. They are made by a New Orleans’ company called Art 4 Now,. They also make lots of other great New Orleans centric products, like Jazz Fest posters. Visit their web site and consider supporting them, New Orleans businesses really need us after what the twin disasters of Katrina and Bush did to that great city. The shirts will look better on you, I promise - besides don’t you want something that seems to irritate Kimmel ?

NBC TV channel 4 did a pretty

comprehensive report on the demonstration.

They interviewed AHF president Michael

Weinstein who made it clear that “our issue

is not pornography, it is the spread of

disease” and former Adult Film Industry star

Shelley Lubben, founder of PinkCross

Foundation, who shares her story of AFI

caused health and life problems to

help others.

Back to the dirty business of unsafe porn, known in the biz as “bare - backing” (don’t ask me - I didn’t make it up) and the even dirtier business of self righteous religious proselytizing (a Book of Mormon by every remote control to help through your long porn filled nights or maybe it’s the other way around) corporate monoliths making profits off of endangering people’s health.

Marriott was a target begging for an arrow for several reasons, not least of which is it's Marriott family ownership. CEO and Chairman Bill Marriott, son of the founder, is a high ranking Mormon leader. Their chain cultivates an "aw shucks" family values image. Seems they are having their family values and selling their porn too.

Plenty of Mormon money went into fighting Gay marriage here in California. Marriott himself has tried to “finesse” the issue when faced with a boycott, but there is no evidence he tried to use his clout within the Mormon monolith to tone down their opposition or slow down the millions they sent to support prop 8. Seems Marriott can't support Gays getting married, but they can't sell enough dangerous sex Gay porn to fatten their bottom line. Some family values.

Now if they really want to put an end to Gay sex, everyone knows they should promote Gay marriage, after all it's well known nothing puts a damper on sex like marriage. Okay, a few yuks from the Catskills humor files.

The truth is, as a colleague said, "when you watch a porn movie where the actors did not wear condoms, you really don't know if you are watching a snuff movie, do you"? Adult Industry actors suffered 5000 Sexually Transmitted diseases - ten times the rate in the rest of the population. And those are only the ones we know about. How many cases of HIV have been transmitted, some reports say around 20, but we really don't know. AHF is currently struggling to get oddly reluctant State and county officials to enforce public health regulations to protect workers.

It is well known that Los Angeles is the porn capitol of the world. Right here in Los Angeles County more porn is made than in any other single place in the world. It is, unfortunately, mostly made without condoms. A recent two part documentary, “Hardcore Profits” on the BBC, indicted LA porn as a major culprit in HIV transmission and violence against women in Africa, focusing on Ghana. Listen to a short feature on that by NPR, it is well worth a few minutes to hear how amazing the connection is.

When the Industry says they test and that means it's safe. It's just not true, scientifically it's not possible to guarantee that the way they do it. No one knows what someone has done between their test and when they film and what they may or may not have contracted. HIV can have a "window period" and not show up if the test is done too soon after infection, but if that person has another sexual encounter between contracting the virus and the next test where it shows up they can pass it on, and on and on… people do have sexual lives off screen as well.

The nature of filming screen sex also makes it a more likely activity to pass disease than the type of sex most people engage in. Performers may have to have sex with multiple partners in a short time, in some cases dozens. The sex may be prolonged and go on for hours, all of which creates ideal situations for transmission. Viagra and other drugs that allow men to maintain erections for very long periods of time only increase the likelihood of transmission.

Read more Pointed Views at the Pointed View Archives

Describing my hotel porn sleuthing work assignment for NBC landed that clip on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show...of all places. Kimmel did a little schtick on my scktick of seeing condom-less “Gay porn, Bi porn, Tri porn, Heterosexual porn...” so we were all schtiked up. Kimmel professed to not know what Tri porn is...but hey, Jimmy - I’ve heard otherwise, if you know what I mean - not quite a unicorn - but plenty of corn none the less. In answer to his questions about hair and wardrobe (it is Hollywood after all), yes Jimmy, that is my real hair, people have asked me that question all my life. No, I don’t do anything to get it to curl, it just came that way. And I will still have all of it when yours’ is just a memory covered in a bad wig - which, come to think of it, it kind of looks like it is already.