Word: smut
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...California district attorney against an idealistic, pipe-smoking lawyer who is defending a bookseller accused of selling obscene matter. The matter in question is The Seven Minutes, a novel that records the thoughts of a woman while she is enjoying intercourse. "Filth!" cry the D.A., the church and civilian smut-busters. "Art," intones the defense and assorted experts. "Shame," says the reader who recognizes that Wallace fails to show an awareness of the 1966 Supreme Court ruling on Fanny Hill. The decision stated that a book offending community standards could be proscribed only if it was found to be "utterly...
Testifying before a House Post Office subcommittee in Washington, the silver-maned Senator urged a crackdown on the "smut peddlers" who send pornography through the mails to children. Despite "wishy-washy" court definitions of obscenity, said Barry Goldwater, "As a father and a grandfather, I know, by golly, what is obscene and what isn't." That same evening the Senator effectively dispelled any notions that he might be a prude. At a National Aviation Club reception in his honor, Pilot Goldwater fondly recalled his recent 2,100-m.p.h. flight at the controls of Lockheed's superjet...
...right, let's admit sex is great [July 11]! But when it hits you in the eye with belted monotony on the screen, in books, on the stage under the pretentious guise of the "new morality" (i.e., dressed-up smut) I find it quite tiresome. There's nothing funnier than a good dirty joke, and nothing flatter than a poor one. Seems to me, the plethora of poor ones going the rounds these days is all one hears. Who's laughing...
...Your cover story was interesting but inconclusive. You failed to point out the chief casualties of the current smut cycle: style, class and grace, which continue to be indispensable qualities of enduring art. Today's vendors of sexual kitsch have kept the dirty bath water (in some cases literally) and thrown out the baby, and with it their chances of eventual survival. Boredom will rescue us from their brand of entertainment...
Even D. H. Lawrence favored rigorous censorship of smut. "You can recognize it," he wrote, "by the insult it offers, invariably, to sex, and to the human spirit . . . The insult to the human body, the insult to a vital human relationship!" On that point, both the author of Lady Chatterley and Evangelist Billy Graham would be in wholehearted agreement...