Capitalism, Porn and Mildred Kranz.

Recently my company sent out a message to all drivers that going to adult bookstores in company trucks was forbidden. Apparently there are a few places in the States where local busybodies have set up surveillance and are taking pictures of men (and women I suppose) who frequent these stores. The busybodies have contacted the company and complained.

Pornography does not interest me as a form of entertainment, but my first desire after reading this message was to find an adult bookstore and park their truck right in front! I didn't, but I wish I had. I didn’t because I respect the owners right to determine where and how I use his equipment. However, I do not respect the reasons for this particular regulation.

I was told, when I asked, that the company was simply protecting its reputation. When I asked what porn had to do with a company that transports machine parts and soda crackers I got no response. I was told that the company wanted the public to view them in a good light. When I asked if these Church Ladies ever shipped a product I was told no. When I asked if the company could possibly suffer financial loss due to driver/porn activity I was told maybe.(!)
"They [the Church Ladies] don't want to see our trucks at these places and don’t want these places to be their either," I was told.
"Do you think that Mildred Kranz and the Church Women's League really care who brings them something? No, as long as the pumpkin pie filling is on the shelf they don't give a damn!" was my reply to this Mr. Mowen. We went back and forth and each time the answers I got were a mix of loose moralism and mushy sentimentalism.

I was through with this nonsense by then. Sitting in my truck that afternoon I wondered how long it would be before my next load. Some of the drivers have slacked off and our trucks keep breaking down losing important accounts for the company so these loads are taking longer to get and are shorter to run. Then I wondered if I should take my truck to the shop. It really does need things fixed on it, but I know when I get there I'll have to wait behind the twenty or thirty other trucks that also need fixing. And while all of this needs looking into the company I work for is concerned with Mildred Kranz and her disgust toward the reading habits of truck drivers.
(Edited by Steve on 12/07, 3:51pm)

Post 1

Friday, December 7, 2007 - 3:03pm

Who is Mildred Kranz?

Post 2

Friday, December 7, 2007 - 3:51pm

I forgot to mention that she is my fictional Church lady/busybody/do-gooder.

Post 3

Friday, December 7, 2007 - 3:57pm

She's the church lady, Luke! Sakes! Funny post, Steve.

Post 4

Saturday, December 8, 2007 - 6:48am

Could it be Satan? :-)

Jim

Post 5

Sunday, December 9, 2007 - 1:39pm

Steve,

What the truck drivers need is a job delivering porn to adult bookstores! Then the company COULDN'T be opposed to their going there.

- Bill

Post 6

Sunday, December 9, 2007 - 2:50pm

Right on. Right on!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 5:40pm

Were you thinking of Gladys Kravitz?

Post 8

Saturday, December 15, 2007 - 7:57pm

Christine Smith is a peace activist who is seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party to run for President in 2008.
http://www.christinesmith.us/id67.html

Post 9

Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 4:18pm

I have this friend who, for good reasons, has to carefully watch her behavior, as her culture and family place all kinds of restrictions upon how she can meet with men.

So, if she wants to get together and talk with me or any man or - in this case - exchange minor gifts for the season, she has to set up a meeting in a public place, such as a parking lot with lights all over so that it is obvious that nothing is going on...

So, recently we met under the glaring lights in a mall parking lot. I leave my motorcycle to sit in her warm car and we sit and talk, and I give her a couple of small presents. After a while a couple of vans pull up opposite us and just sit there.

Finally I spot this guy in the driver's seat of one of the vans holding his cell out the window, apparently filming us. When I look at him, he pulls the cell back in. About twenty minutes later, the mall security shows up, parks two spaces away and just sits there as well, until I leave. Note that we - both adults over 40 years old - were simply holding hands or putting our hands on each other's shoulders.

I recall as a teenager discovering that the cops apparently think that it is their job to break up private trists, on grounds of public indecency or some such nonsense, even if the meeting is inside a car way out on some backroad, and even if the parties are only holding hands.

Given the extraordinary state of persecution of what has to be termed normal human behavior that goes on today without comment, the idea of forbidding employees from going anywhere near a porn shop fits right in. A gun store would be ok, I'm sure.

Another case of the weird values of a culture run on the basis of a loving God who insists that one believe in him without evidence or risk eternal torture.

Post 10

Monday, December 17, 2007 - 10:43am

"Parental Advisory" a website about music censorship in America.
http://www.ericnuzum.com/banned/incidents/

PE: Local citizens in Cincinnati have effectively limited pornography, both on cable TV and in video stores.
KIRK: Cincinnati has done far more than that. Since 1983, the Cincinnati coalition has closed down all adult bookstores, X-rated theaters, X-rated videos and escort services in 16 of 17 counties. The coalition is still the strongest in the nation and 95 percent of “soft-core” pornography has been eliminated.
"Battling pornography" ffrom Today's Pentacostal Evangelist: http://www.pentecostalevangel.ag.org/conversations2004/4683_kirk.cfm

Pornography is illegal in Minneapolis:
http://www.hhh.umn.edu/img/assets/22794/radical_teaching_note.pdf
According to the Minneapolis city council, pornography differentially harms women:
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/other/ordinance/newday/AppA.htm

According to his homies, Mitt Romney was remiss in not fighting pornography because it limits women from pursuing careers in science:
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,680197653,00.html

Although Utah law does not recognize the "client privilege" of a Catholic priest who hears a confession, the Roman Catholics, nontheless find a receptive audience in Salt Lake City (sort of like Republicans on Objectivist websites):
SALT LAKE CITY — Saying pornography now generates more annual income than all three major professional sports combined, “and causes as well the world’s fastest growing addiction,” San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederaur urged Americans to beware of statistics and concentrate instead on the damage pornography does to the human dignity and the sexuality of its victims.
http://www.icatholic.org/indstory/2007/200719p03.html

Post 11

Monday, December 17, 2007 - 8:03pm

PDA

"I recall as a teenager discovering that the cops apparently think that it is their job to break up private trists, [sic] on grounds of public indecency or some such nonsense, even if the meeting is inside a car way out on some backroad, and even if the parties are only holding hands." -Phil Osborn

Actually, I have a little sympathy with the police. I was once canoodling with my girlfriend in my car in a parking lot of a public riverside park in Piscataway NJ. The windows were quite steamy. We were startled by the police rapping on the windows, luckily we we not yet in flagrante delicto (although that might have been fun too, as I think back) and we were asked to exit my car separately.

The police explained that (1) a public parking lot is not our private property and (2) I might have been raping her, they had no way of knowing without questioning us separately, and there was probable cause to believe that there was sexual activity going on.

This is why adults get their own homes, and why people reject restrictive traditional "values" as soon as they turn 18, mentally or physically.

Ted Keer

Post 12

Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 8:31pm

And I might be packaging a bomb for mailing to your home addresss right this very minute!!!

Think of it. Surely you should turn me over to Homeland Security, along with the other 300 million odd Americans, any one of whom might be planning or actually doing something objectionable. And if the cops burst in upon each and every one of them then we would be safe and secure, right?

Except from the cops, of course.

And you and your girlfriend might have been plotting to kill the president and only pretending to be necking. Wow! So should the cops have water-boarded you until one of you confessed?

Is there anything more important in life than romance? As an objectivist, I consider romantic love and true friendship among the most important of my values and two of the main things that make life worth living.

So... Canoodling?

Sure, sex and romance can be funny and ought to involve all kinds of joyous and hilarious fun. But the idea that simply because one's windows are steamy and perhaps one can hear soft giggles or moans that this gives the cops the right to assume that a crime is being committed and demand that you cease and desist and exit your vehicle???

My response to someone doing that to me and my lover is not likely to be pleasant.

I could understand the police response a little bit if you were in fact parking on someone else's private property and there was a complaint or the owner had specifically made his intent clear beforehand or posted the property or some such thing that implied that your parking and necking were actually violating someone's rights.

But, a public parking lot, paid for with taxpayer money? And it's ok with you that the police are going to search out people who might be privately and invisably doing something that might offend some insane repressive religious cult? Come ON.

Post 13

Friday, December 21, 2007 - 7:44pm

Be fair, Phil- the fact that a piece of property is publicly owned does not give every taxpayer the right to act as if it were their own. Enforcing curfews and public decency laws on public property is a far cry from warrantless searches and torture. The rape justification might seem far-fetched to you, but I have heard stories of girls being abused in identical situations (public place, private car, foggy windows). Granted, I would encourage women take preemptive steps to protect themselves (and that they be allowed gun ownership as one of those steps), but public lots are public jurisdiction. So for my money, good job policemen.

More on topic:

Whenever companies make PR a priority, they often make bad decisions. Though I don't consider pornography a useful tool for sexual development, empty pressure on a business seems like a lousy way for Christian women to encourage truck drivers to behave morally.

I did get a big laugh as a high schooler when I saw two Billboards, one on top of the other. The top one read, "XXX Venue, next exit." The bottom one? "Porn destroys lives."

Post 14

Saturday, December 22, 2007 - 4:09pm

"Be fair, Phil- the fact that a piece of property is publicly owned does not give every taxpayer the right to act as if it were their own. Enforcing curfews and public decency laws on public property is a far cry from warrantless searches and torture. The rape justification might seem far-fetched to you, but I have heard stories of girls being abused in identical situations (public place, private car, foggy windows). Granted, I would encourage women take preemptive steps to protect themselves (and that they be allowed gun ownership as one of those steps), but public lots are public jurisdiction. So for my money, good job policemen."

Au contraire. If something is "publicly owned," then what you are really saying is that it is owned by the state. Treating the state for a moment as a legitimate organization of persons, and using the objectivist concept of the state only having legitimacy in acting to defend the rights of the citizens, then where does the state acquire the right to enforce someone's religious concept of "public decency?" And even if I were to bend over backward here and accede that there might be something that would be so inherently offensive that merely seeing it might cause some kind of trauma or damage or disturbance of the piece to the point that someone could claim injury, that certainly does not apply to a situation in which no one can even see what is going on. Oh, they might be doing something that might be offensive if we could see it does not qualify for anyone to initiate force.

As far as the liklihood of rape being committed, I suspect that a lot of rapes are committed in houses or other buildings, perhaps more than in cars in parking lots. Either way, the mere fact that the cops cannot see what is going on justifies them in initiating force is absurd. They have no more right to impose force on a couple in a car than they do to invade someone's house on the pretext that a rape might be being committed, without any specific evidence of such.

Post 15

Monday, December 24, 2007 - 7:40pm

Only You Can('t) Make You Happy

"Grown ups" move out and eff in the privacy of their own domiciles. They also quit their jobs and get better ones when they don't like their employers of 16 years. We've already heard enough about Phil's love life and job situation to decide whether he approaches these issues on an adult level. It's his evil, foreign-language-speaking employer's fault that he doesn't like his job. It's his girlfriend, her family, their values, the police, or society as a whole that keeps him from happily getting laid.

Life is just so damn unfair!

Ted Keer

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/24, 9:57pm)

Post 16

Wednesday, December 26, 2007 - 9:02am

Luke wrote: "Who is Mildred Krantz?"

Mildred Krantz, daughter of an Ohio garage mechanic and brilliant social engineer.

"I will stop the motor of the vibrator!"

Post 17

Wednesday, December 26, 2007 - 9:20pm

Working in security (as an Objectivist opposed to government intervention in the markets for protection and adjudication) I have twice been employed by college campus safety forces.

The steamy car on the back lot is a known problem. On the one hand, we all sympathisize with the empassioned couple. Yet, we remain cognizant of the vulnerability of the female engagee. My own operating policy was taught to me by a younger peer now with the federal Capitol Police. Shine your light on the female and ask if she is all right. "All you all right, Miss?" If she is all right, leave them alone.

Post 18

Wednesday, December 26, 2007 - 9:38pm