On the very day that Donald Trump announced that, as president, he would wage war on pornography, a press release arrived on my desk from the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation. The foundation, it announced, is inviting nominations for the 2016 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards, which “honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for all Americans.”
Looking over this year’s panel of “distinguished judges”—Erwin Chemerinsky, the left-wing law professor, a “campaign and communications strategist” named Lara Bergthold, and Davan Maharaj, current editor/publisher of the Los Angeles Times—I quickly concluded that my recommendations were unlikely to carry much weight at the Hefner Foundation. There is a distinctly political tone to the whole enterprise; and in any case, the Hefner Award is not exactly the Fields Medal or Nobel Prize: Past honorees include Michael Moore, Victor Navasky, and Bill Maher.
A few things, however, struck me about this happy convergence. First, as to Trump, his pledge to enforce anti-pornography laws with vigor, and consider “appointing a special commission to explore [the] effects of pornography on Americans,” surprised me. Frankly, if there is any modern presidential candidate I would have considered unlikely to so much as mention porn in his campaign—except, perhaps, to humorous effect—it would have been Donald Trump. And how soon they forget! For it was exactly three decades ago that the Reagan administration did exactly what Trump has proposed to do: Assemble a commission to explore, in so many words, “the effects of pornography on Americans.” And the Meese Commission—so named for its chairman, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese – issued its report 30 years ago this summer. I suspect that the long-term effect of the Meese Commission’s findings may probably be assessed by the fact that otherwise respectable people now consent to serve as judges for an award named for Hugh Hefner, who did as much as anyone in his storied career to complicate matters for federal commissions on pornography.
On the other hand, Trump may be shrewder than I suspect. By emphasizing his concern about child pornography, as opposed to the sort of stuff that made Hef’s fortune, he nullifies the kind of censure and contempt from the chattering classes that doomed the Meese Commission. And maybe he’s on to something, politically speaking: Nowhere in the Hefner Foundation press release is the source of Hef’s renown described. A millennial blogger might easily conclude that the 90-year-old “Hugh M. Hefner” of First Amendment fame was a forward-thinking judge, or constitutional scholar, and not the well-known roué and reality-TV star.
