First, a little back story. Mike Thevis was a porn mogul who once described himself as “the GM of porn”.

If that was a reference to the fact that Thevis or his second bananas would take guys who fell out of line for rides in a car, then that description was pretty accurate.

Thevis, who headed up a porn publishing empire worth hundreds of millions, is currently serving a life sentence at the Oak Park Heights Correctional Facility in Stillwater, Minnesota. In his colorful resume, Thevis was convicted of 9 counts of sending obscene materials through the mail and for that he was shipped off to federal prison.

Then, in 1978, Thevis made national headlines when he escaped from a New Albany, Indiana prison and quickly landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

While a fugitive, Thevis’ crime spree continued and he was eventually convicted of tax evasion, bombing, extortion, attempted murder, and the murder of a witness who testified against him in an earlier trial.

In other words, you didn’t screw around with Thevis or his ilk. You think Fabian Thylmann and Manwin, what with all the allegations of porn piracy and other monkey business, would have lasted long in the Thevis ecosphere? I don’t think so.

In porn’s robust history, there are many blood curdling tales of fire bombings and one-way rides in Cadillacs, but the point is pretty obvious. Manwin has existed to do its damage simply because the porn industry which used to pride itself on being “outlaw” has become neutered and feminized beyond the capability to handle its internal problems.

If the Mary Poppins population among you saw light at the end of the tunnel with the Fox News Business report authored by Charlie Gasparino [pictured] last week, you are sadly mistaken.

Like a Don Quixote, Gasparino began connecting the dots, painting a picture of Wall St. involvement with Manwin finances. Some blog sites indicated that Gasparino was riding to the rescue. How silly.

If this were a 1970’s movie about Woodward & Bernstein, something might have come out of that report. Only we’re living in a different climate.

As I stated this week, one of the principals in the Manwin deal, Jason Beckman of Colbeck Capital, is the son-in-law of Veronica Hearst as in Hearst Publishing.

Now this is only a guess, but I imagine something like this. Someone from Hearst places a call to someone in the Rupert Murdoch organization. Two words: lay off.

So much for the Charlie Gasparino expose, for which, by, the way, there’s been no follow up. I wonder how that happens.