from www.adultcybermart.com – The loquacious Bill Margold, www.billmargold.com is not only pretty talkative, he also has the gift of gab. And if you’re smart, maybe you listen.
The Catholic Church teaches that the Pope speaks “ex Cathedra” which means he cannot err in doctrines of faith and morals.
No one’s ever asked the Pontiff why the church, after teaching you that you’re going to hell for eating fish on Fridays, did a complete about face and began recommending items on the Ruth’s Chris steakhouse menu. Some say it was the powerful beef lobby behind it, but that’s only a guess.
Like popes of old who actually got on horseback and led charges into battle, I’d rather listen to Margold talk about porn any day, then any Pope talk about the catch of the day.
Margold’s take on what I refer to as “Condomania” this week in Downtown LA [a complete run down on the meeting will be featured on Cyber Mart this weekend] is pretty amusing and refreshing. But the impression you also get from talking to Margold is that Tuesday’s meeting was too contentious to accomplish anything to write home about.
I ran some of Margold’s comments in yesterday’s post but only those pertinent to the subject at hand: whether it’s feasible or foreseeable that the adult industry will move lock, stock and barrel out of California.
Margold and I are both in agreement that the industry will stay put. And the more you understand what went on at that meeting, the more you’ll realize Cal/OSHA is very open to a peace accord.
Margold chuckles because the LA Daily News in its report of the meeting identified him as the former Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition.
“I was on the board for 15 years. God forbid I was the director. Things would have been completely different. [Attorney] Jeffrey Douglas somehow bulled his way into that after we lost Gloria Leonard [now living in Hawaii]. He’s welcome to it. That’s a little too grown up for me.”
Margold did,however, voice great “empathy” for Cal/OSHA inspector Deborah Gold who was on the panel Tuesday.
“She doing her best to hold this together,” states Margold.
At one point in the meeting, amid outcries from some of the performers, Gold said to the hecklers “I care about this industry, I care about every one of you!”
Margold believes Gold meant what she said.
A couple of times Margold referred to the hecklers as “over medicated and under educated.”
“I wrote Gold an email thanking her for all her concern, telling her that I was a lot more frightened back in the Seventies than I am now,” says Margold.
At one point in the meeting, he got up and even hugged Gold.
From the gist of his conversation, it sounded like Margold would give Shelley Lubben a hug as well.
“I don’t know what your feelings are about her, but I don’t like her being isolated and attacked,” he says.
“Shelley Lubben should get a reality show. I refer to her as a three-legged dog, and in many ways I think she’s a great entertainer. I laugh when I watch her, and her cause way down deep is well based.
“She’s just nuts, and you don’t go after a crazy person because that makes you look like a bully. And that’s not what we should be doing. I think a lot of her stuff is well founded, and what she wants to do. I’m just more concerned- and she is too- about the mental stability of the adult performer. We’ve got to heal ourselves from within in the family of X.”
Margold also recounted stories of always looking over his shoulder for vice cops and referred to Tuesday’s showing of porn performers as “Independence Hall”.
“But we have in our business a certain amount of blowhards,” he states.
“And two of them were at their best. They both wear earrings and I’ve never understood why a man would wear earrings. But Eli Cross out blah-blah-blah’ed every one, pointing his finger and leading a tirade. Cross gets up and goes, ‘we’re going back underground!’ There’s nowhere to go underground. All the man hole covers have been sealed.
“This is one of the things AVN was guilty of,” continues Margold.
“It yowled for so long about wanting to be legitimate. Well, guess what? We are legitimate, and there’s a price to pay for legitimacy. That price is something that makes me want to bite my tongue. That means we’ve got to grow up and if you want to be an adult, then you have to act like one.”
“And it’s the one thing I hate about the rabble rousers. They can’t back up a thing they say, but they’ll be happy to sacrifice for their own attention. That’s not the way to do it. They’re spewing lighter fluid into an organization that has much more fire power than we do.”
It’s also Margold’s opinion that the Free Speech Coalition should have “absolutely nothing to do” with the medical end of the adult industry.
“They are a 1st Amendment activist organization and they’re welcome to hide behind the American flag and fight against the 2257’s and the XXX.com’s.”
The FSC did some shout-outs on its blog to those who were particularly vocal at the meeting. One of them was John Magnum, a male performer and Margold agrees.
“He never wasted any words when he spoke, and I was very taken with him wanting to rally the troops. At least if you can organize the talent with some set of Bill of Desired Rights maybe that would work.
“Another kid I’m impressed with is this Danny Wylde, sort of a goofy-looking kid but he makes a lot of sense. If you listen to him he’s a lot of fun. He’s all excited about being in the business and has big wide eyes. He wants to help and that’s what we need so I basically challenged both of them to find five or maybe seven more people to put together something.
“You have to get performers to come back in a more serene atmosphere and present their wishes. That’s what this meeting was supposed to be about but it never got off the first page.”
“As it is, even with a splintered family of X, the kids are starting to rally. Even if the battle is futile, I would try to lead one of the charges. If we go out with a bang I’d sooner go out that way than with a whimper.
“If we can make deals, compromise and work with these people than against them, we’d discover these are not our enemies. These kids don’t even know what administrative vice was like.”
“Talk about evil, absolute obsession,” says Margold.
“When Lloyd Martin arrested me a second time and I told him he was going to lose the case, he had me at that moment with my hands behind my back, handcuffed. He could have pushed me down the stairs of that building and said it was an accident.
“He was so mad because I told him he was going to lose. He arrested me after I had busted my hand and my wrist playing football. I showed him my hand. It was all the colors of rainbow sherbet, and he was, ‘I won’t put handcuffs on you,’ and he did and tightened my hand to where it looked like a ruptured watermelon.
“And it’s never really been the same. He lost, by the way, and he really was the worst. He was the monolith, a scary, scary man, and they hated us.
“Vice were unbelievable zealots. They weren’t just doing their job. They were doing their cause. Those were scary times. These kids don’t even begin to know that.”
Another thing Margold rues is that today’s performers will never get to see themselves on a 70-foot screen.
“Oh boy was that fun, that’s my dick!! That’s all we get is the immortality, the thrill, the ego satisfaction.”
In the same long breath, Margold voices his admiration for FSC’s head Diane Duke.
“She’s one of the most politically correct people I’ve ever seen in action. Because when the kids started attacking the poor people on the panel she told them to calm down and said they were doing the best they can do.
“But this is not a Free Speech issue. Free Speech’s primary motivation is economic, and their program APISS or APHSS (Adult Performers Health and Safety Services), there’s nothing there. That’s a false hope to go nowhere at all.
“AIM, unfortunately, became absolutely interested in money; and Mitchell, maybe, stayed around too long. I have no answers.”
Margold got the same impression from the meeting that I’ve heard voiced by several others that Cal/OSHA doesn’t want to punish the business.
“But if you keep sticking your tongue out at these people, they’ll wait for the appropriate moment to grab that tongue with a red hot pincher then what are you going to do.”
Margold is also convinced that given time, this is all likely to go away because Cal/OSHA will get tired of playing the game.
“If you want to enter this game you pay to play.”