Josh Barro: “I write on fiscal and economic policy. And I like porn!”

Over at Forbes, a site I don’t visit too often, Josh Barro, who helms “The Barrometer” (Get it?) gets his knickers properly in a knot over Righteous Rick Santorum’s promise to shut down the “pandemic of harm from pornography” currently plaguing the United States, said pandemic having gone completely unnoticed by everyone but Rick until now.

According to Josh, the Bush Administration only concentrated its firepower on “small-time producers who made porn with extreme content,” which is to say, they had no intention of hassling anyone with enough cash to be considered “respectable.” But, again according to Josh, Santorum intends to be no respecter of respectability, and that’s the part that gets Josh’s knickers a-knotting.

Says Josh, Santorum plans on “going after pornography that is distributed not just on the Internet, but also on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV. Perhaps I am not staying in the most interesting hotels, but my impression is that porn distributed through such channels is almost definitionally not extreme.” Which, if I unpack Josh’s meaning correctly, is to say “the porn I watch is OK! So leave me the fuck alone!”

Afterwords
I don’t know if Josh and I stay at the same hotels or not, but I did stay at very family friendly resort hotel in Orlando last year,* and every time I turned on the TV I was hit by two ads for Kim Kardashian’s sex tape (which, on my employer’s dime at least, I was too prudish to watch).