Stripped

It's hard to take sides on the "stripper issue" that confronts Missouri. Most strippers are desperate skanks that hate men more than Andrea Dworkin could have ever realized. However, single moms have a right to make a living just like everybody else. Additionally, I've never left a strip club without feeling robbed of both my money and dignity. Thing is, I hate people telling me what I can and can't do when it comes to boobies. As much as I'd like to, I haven't been over to Matt Blunt's house and told his wife how to give a lap dance.

Recently, the Northeast News featured a great article regarding the recent controversy concerning adult entertainment in Missouri and the legislative challenge posed by Matt Blunt and the rest of the show-me state prudes. Northeast is home to two of the best strip clubs in town: The Shady Lady and Gerry's Silver Slipper. However, I still don't feel that I need to stand up for this state's strip clubs because they're probably mob connected and definitely have more than enough money and power to defend themselves.

The Missouri chapter of the Association of Club Executives (ACE), the trade association for owners and operators of adult nightclubs, is preparing for a legal stand-off over the constitutionality of the law. In the meantime, ACE attorneys Jim Deutsch of Jefferson City and Richard Bryant of Kansas City will seek a restraining order allowing clubs to continue their current practices until the challenge is resolved.

And like all initiatives for morality or decency, the effort to kill the adult industry is remarkably short sighted. Social conservatives who want to "clean up" society usually just end up creating a much more lucrative and dangerous underground exchange for vice (example: Prohibition). Close down the strip clubs and you'll just send the local sluts to people's houses. I've seen "shows" at private bachelor parties that make the antics at strip clubs seem like made for TV movies. And as always, the slippery slope in this regard refers to more than a stripper's backside. If the conservative crusaders can make your entertainment plans for you, what's to stop them from also censoring your online appetite for desperate naked women.

Of course, detractors of adult entertainment always link strippers to whores and sadly the comparison is apropos. Amusingly, one of the former hookers in this article references the crackdown on Swedish whores as a good reason to legislate against titties in this state. Thing is, people see sex traded for money so often they only recognize it in its most blatant forms. Men pay for sex whenever they buy sports cars, big JoCo houses, loft apartments, engagement rings or a fancy dinner for their date. Finally, I'd have to point out that the adult entertainment industry is worth billions and I'm pretty sure that there are more than just a couple of pervs putting all that money into the hands of the men who exploit adult entertainers. My father is fond of saying that a "social conservative" is someone who doesn't drink in front of you. Likewise, it's more than likely that a few of these champions of morality have enjoyed the material they want to keep out of your hands. And don't give me that crap about the more conservative interior of the state, I'm pretty sure that the rural strip clubs off I-70 take in far more money than any of the Walnut Bowl stands. With so many other problems in the state it's so sad to see politicos charging forward with an effort to ban publicly exposed boobies and nude dancing. In a summer when our troops are at war, our roads are crumbling, our healthcare infrastructure is being willfully torn apart, most of our public schools are woefully failing to properly educate their students, murders are commonplace on our streets; the initiative to ban the display of stripper booty is downright asinine.