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Email Luke Luke Ford Dennis Prager Aug 13 Rabbi Wein Luke's Uncle Ron Phones A few weeks ago, I left my Uncle Ron a message asking him to call. Wednesday at 11:13PM, he finally called me back. Ron: "I didn't wake you up, did I? I'm sorry for calling you so late. Things have been so hectic, I finally wanted to take care of some phone calls I hadn't returned yet. I didn't want to be a stuck-up little bastard. How's it going? How's the website doing?" Luke: "I sold it. I'm out." Ron: "What? Get out of here. To who?" Luke: "Netvideogirls.com." Ron: "Are they going to report about the business? Are they going to be on sets and stuff?" Luke: "Yes." Ron: "I'm very unsavvy about computers. I don't even have one. I'm living in the dark ages. No computer, no cell phone. Didn't you have a lot of hits?" Luke: "Yes." Ron: "Isn't your site largely based on your personality?" Luke: "Yes." Ron: "So what are you going to do now? Ignore the industry?" Luke: "Yeah." Ron: "Were people giving you a hard time?" Luke: "Yeah, my synagogue." Ron: "You're a converted Jewish boy." Luke: "Yeah." Ron: "Why, there are Jews in the business." Luke: "They tossed me from my synagogue." Ron: "Did they say you could come back in if you sold the site?" Luke: "Yeah, but it looks like it will be a long time before they do let me back in." Ron: "Are you Conservative or Orthodox or Chasidic?" Luke: "Orthodox." Ron: "I don't understand. I can belong to a synagogue and I'm in a lot worse shape than you're in. Why can't you just go to a different synagogue?" Luke: "I will. But I've been banned from two of my favorite synagogues now." Ron: "Why wouldn't they look at it as 'Our son needs help. He got involved in a very strange business. Now he wants to come over. He dropped his entire living...' Why wouldn't they look at it as a good sign? Jews are known to be more liberal. If it was a Catholic church, you'd have a much bigger problem. They've got God and the Devil and Heaven and Hell and all that stuff. "You were controversial. You even gave me a couple of good slams. But I liked that. You can't always have the positive press." I last ran into Ron Jeremy in August, 2000, while winding down a date at Jerry's Deli on Beverly Blvd. While walking out, I heard a familiar voice, 'Hey Luke.' It was my Uncle Ron surrounded by some slutty looking girls. I left my date behind and walked over to chat with Ron. My date later wondered why I didn't introduce her to my friend. Luke: "A few weeks ago, this Israeli pop culture magazine Blazer wanted me to interview you. And when you didn't return my call right away, I just wrote up something from previous talks with you." Ron: "That's fine. How am I going to look? Pretty good or am I getting slammed?" Luke: "It's pretty down the middle." Ron: "You're always honest. There's a great documentary coming out on me, you can see the trailer at RonJeremy-themovie.com. Eddie Murphy's in it. "I've been opening for many acts, huge of course. Run DMC, B52s, Kid Rock, Metallica, Corn, Motley Crew. And I've been on stage with a lot of big names too such as Gene Simmons of Kiss. "You still enjoy looking at things, right?" Luke: "I don't have as much enjoyment looking at things anymore." Ron: "I was never a big connoisseur of it. I've often been told that when someone converts, they're often more religious than those around them. My brother's wife converted too. Were you Catholic?" Luke: "No, I was raised a Seventh Day Adventist." Ron: "Oh, is that Lutheran? No, is that Mormon?" Luke: "It's like Mormon in some ways." Ron: "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Some scholars say that if Jesus did come down to earth, the first place he'd want to go was a synagogue. Because they're doing the religion the way he planned it. A rabbi, a cantor, a guy who sings, a guy who speaks. The first place he'd hate would be a Catholic church because it is all statutes, exactly the stuff he was against. Am I correct?" Luke: "Probably." Ron: "Isn't that an interesting thought? All these Catholics going 'Jesus, Jesus.' He'd look at them and say, 'Idiots, the Jews are doing it the way I planned.' He wasn't into praying to different saints. It's funny how Jews are doing Jesus more than the Catholics are. "Remember what Sam Kinison used to say - the last thing Jesus would want to look at is the cross. He'd say, 'Who the f--- made that the corporate envelope?' If you love John Kennedy, are you going to wear a .36 bullet around your neck. 'Hey look John, we love you.' The cross was a means of extermination. That's like, if you love the French, put a guillotine around your neck." Rabbis Invoke Biblical Curse NEW YORK -- A group of Hasidic rabbis gathered at New York's City Hall on Wednesday to invoke a biblical curse against New York officials for endorsing legislation giving gay and lesbian couples the same rights as married couples in the eyes of the city. The group of about two dozen men -- 10 makes a minyan or quorum -- used candles and a ram's horn known as a shofar to invoke the curse. They also took some time out to pray for the safety of New Yorkers. The novelist Doris Lessing yesterday claimed that men were the new silent victims in the sex war, "continually demeaned and insulted" by women without a whimper of protest. Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a "lazy and insidious" culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men. "I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday. "Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation. "We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men? "I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men. "You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives." Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish". She added: "This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing. "It has become a kind of religion that you can't criticise because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not. "It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests. "Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did." Don't Try to Jew Me Down the way Luke Did Chaim Amalek writes quasarmn@pacbell.net: Q, I am excited about our new partnership. VERY excited. (I feel like a Zionist Pioneer of the 19th century; you must feel like a nomadic muslim passing through between Egypt and Damascus.) But I don't want to be chiseled out of compensation the way Luke Ford did. I don't want to be Jewed down to working for less than I am worth. Can you so compensate me? Or are you some sort of antisemite? I think you should start your work for me on the right foot, don't you? From Porno To Pyrotechnics - Luke Works On His Memoirs Rumdar writes: Is this going to be a book like someone would write who went through rehab. About the bad old days when their lives were spinning out of control. The book "Papa John" comes to mind. The lead singer from the Mamas and Papas. May I suggest the opening chapter of your book begins with your death (faked or real)? it would go something like this. A lone man walked into the cafe with a sense of purpose. The 30 or so Arab men huddled in groups sipping mint tea barely looked up as the strange figure strode to the middle of the establish- ment and paused. Although he was dressed similar to the other customers, a more careful inspection would have revealed a noticeable difference in attire. Under the man's traditional garb he appeared to be wearing shorts. But that was not all. His socks were white and his footwear did not resemble that of the others. He had American Klodhoppers on. Suddenly their was a collective vibe in the room that all was not right. Before any alarm could be sounded the Klodhoppered stranger took his cheroot from between his lips and said with a sneer. 'I have a message for you guys from King David.' The switch was flicked and 400 lbs of TNT ignited sending all to a rendezvous with virgins in paradise. Thus X American porno writer Luke Ford became the first Hebrew suicide bomber in history. What events shaped this man's road from porno to pyrotechnics........ something like that buddy. Then begin your story. Luke Gets Mail Roy writes: Who will stir the stench? Mix the mench? Trap the souls, uncover the ghouls? Who can guide these lost angels into the light without the moralistic torch of lukeford.com? How can you without conscious go on? I know that you roll in your sleep and the torture is too much to bear in the light. When will you evade us again with your humor and spirituality? Guilt... a useless emotion. What man (even Luke Ford) has the qualifications to judge your soul or any others? How do you know, or how can you know, if what lukeford.com did for porners or yourself was less than ungodly? I would like to quote an anonomous text "our sex powers were god-given, therefore - good". you just may miss the moment Luke, whilst you shine the brightest in your life, so bright that it blinds you to see that your standing in shit... and you walked to there. Ari writes: Luke, here is a true story. You may be able to relate. A few years ago, I was dating a Nice Jewish Girl. And she was going to come over one day to watch a movie, and my friend Mickey was here. I had been buying porns here and there over the years since high school, and I had amassed probably about 80 of them. Anyway, my friend was teasing me and threatening to tell my Nice Jewish Girl about my porn collection. So I took ALL my porns in a big box, and took them out to the trash dumpster, and threw them away. When I came back into my condo, I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I no longer had anything to hide, nothing that I would be embarrassed for someone to accidentally come across. I felt "new". You may feel the same about getting rid of lukeford.com. You are still the same Luke. But now, you have nothing to be ashamed of. nothing to hide. You can show your Jewish dates your website and have nothing to fear. Lynne writes: Religion doesn't have to morally discipline people. People need to morally discipline themselves. Religion is one tool they can use to help themselves with the process. Social ostracism is another. You, Luke, can pay lip service to all the religions in the world but there's no sign any religion has ever made an impact on your behavior. You are crude, voyeuristic, self-centered and exploitative. You observe the rituals but never follow the precepts. Like the Chabad quote I sent you this morning: "You cannot reach deeper within another than you reach in your own self," and that includes reaching into religion. "If you love yourself for your achievements, your current assets, the way you do things and handle the world - and despise yourself for failure in the same - it follows that your relationship with another will also be transient and superficial." PERFIDY: Pollard & The Secret War Against The Jews Neal writes: Howdy Luke--- I don't know if you were in the States when Jonathan Pollard was arrested, or at the time of the AIWACS vote in the house and senate, that Reagan pushed through in favor of Saudi Arabia (this was 1983). Or if you were old enough to follow the events. It was a time when there was a shift of US policy to favor the Arabs, and one of the prime movers was Casper Weinberger, who although Episcopalian, was actually of German Jewish stock ( various administrations like to use "court Jews" like Weinberger to stick it to the rest of the Jews). I happened to work at Chevron shortly before this period, and was in the habit of reading oil industry magazines. I can recall that the gist of several articles about how Arafat had to be sort of baptized anew and made clean.....in order to assure the US (read oil company) interests in the Middle East, as all the alternatives to Arafat were thought to be extremist Islamic nut cases. When Reagan came into office a lot of anti-Semitism was unleashed all over the country. This was the time of the white Christian patriot movements and the militias, and also the time of the State department and the White House lining up against Israel, at least for public consumption. The British foreign secretary was Lord Carrington, who was to my mind a paid shill for Saddam Hussein. I sent him a telegram to that effect and it looked like thereafter I was put under surveillance ! I think a lot of Jews came under scrutiny at that time, especially those working in defense. I was living near San Luis Obispo and going to Cal Poly then, whenever I went to school, a white plainclothes car with 4 plainclothes goons would pull in behind me and follow me all the way to campus. I was living on a farm in See Canyon, which is near Diablo Canyon. A white van with a big circular aerial was parked at the top of the hill, near where I lived. Finally I went up and knocked on the back door and two surveillance technicians came out and gave me dirty looks - shortly after that the van was withdrawn. Anyway this whole shift-----from supporting Israel, to supporting the Arabs and the Arabist line - would make an interesting story, along with the manipulations of Casper Weinberger. Amazingly some Jews like Elliot Abrams (a guy with very far right views regarding communism) not only were in high positions all through this era, but thrived..... A Conversation With John Douglas Ultra indy: So I was glad to hear that you chickened out of going over
to the Middle East. I have no doubt at all that you would be dead in no
time at all there. Why is it with you that you must choose an extreme?
Moving from porn to holy war? Is there no gray area for you? Someplace
nice safe (and warm) in the middle? Luzdedos1: gary looks like me The Wandering Jew Chaim ("The Wandering Jew") Amalek writes quasarmn@pacbell.net: I am but a Wandering Jew, looking for a new home now that my internet beit hamigdosh Lukeford.com has fallen. (If you were a jew like Luke Ford, you would know that this is a potent allusion to the High Temple where countless sheep were slaughtered and from which Jesus is said to have expelled the money changers.) Does this personal wandering presage the fall of the Third Temple beneath the Arab boot? (Again, LUKE would know what this means.) Quasarman, your site can never be for me the Internet Zion that LukeFord.com was when a jew ran it, but you might be an OK sort of gallut (exile), like Poland in the 17th century. In fact, already I want to sell you alcohol and collect taxes on your web site. If you say the word, I and a large assortment of Wandering Jews and Mexicans will make camp in your bosom for as along as we are tolerated as the special characters that we are. Mordecai Richler came and saw Israel - but wasn't conquered by it This Year in Jerusalem, by Mordecai Richler. Alfred A. Knopf; 293 pp.; $ 23. Sheldon Teitelbaum writes in the 11/3/94 Jerusalem Report: The first time I interviewed Mordecai Richler, in 1984, I had a hard time getting him to discuss Israel. He had visited in 1962. But the country confounded him. He couldn't understand how one political leader could have asked him to move his base of operations from London to Israel. Mostly, Richler couldn't fathom why anyone could make such a big deal of the place. Thirty years later, Richler returned to Zion for a second look around. The visit doesn't appear to have enhanced his appreciation of the country. After a two-month stay, he still doesn't quite know what to make of it. But this time, his befuddlement didn't leave him so reticent. As travelogues go, "This Year in Jerusalem," Richler's account of his visit, has a wackier starting point than anything I've seen in the genre since Mark Twain showed up in Jerusalem in the 1860s looking for a 5-star hotel. It's a look at Israel through the eyes of a Canadian visiting other Canadians who gave up a berth by the mighty St. Lawrence River for another west of the trickling Jordan. And this makes it a bit of a sideshow of a sideshow, a search for insight among sources whose perspectives are unlikely to be representative. As a teenager in the mid-1940s, Richler joined the socialist-Zionist Habonim youth movement. Its major attraction seems to have been the potential it held for the occasional feel copped from young women who might be counted on to take pity on a future kibbutz comrade. But, in 1952, when Richler dropped out of Sir George Williams University in Montreal, he headed not for Kfar Blum but for Paris. He ended up in England, soaking up sophistication for 20 years before returning to Canada. Several of his Habonim mates, however, and some relatives, settled in Israel. On this trip, Richler decided to track them all down. Indeed, by the end of his stay, he appears to have located nearly every ex-Montrealer who ever left the Great White North for the Promised Land. The only non-landsman types who do appear in this book are those intellectuals, cab drivers, bartenders and other background extras Richler chanced upon during his sojourn - these, and the people Richler culled mostly from the pages of The Jerusalem Post. The Post feeds Richler's penchant for the absurd while gleefully providing him with the almost pornographic descriptions of terror incidents he uses to frame the accounts of his encounters and reminiscences. By doing this, Richler makes the not-so-subtle case that life back home is obviously more civilized, gracious and less taxing upon flesh and psyche. As he writes toward the book's end: "I was raised to proffer apologies because my ostensibly boring country was so short of history, but now, after five weeks in a land choked by the clinging vines of its past, a victim of its contrary mythologies, I considered the watery soup of my Canadian provenance a blessing." Where the book soars, it is in Richler's comic portraits of a triumvirate of pals from his St. Urbain Street days in Montreal's Jewish ghetto circa World War II. One of them is a thief who not only rips off the Habonim pushke, la Woody Allen, but returns decades later to loot a friend's silverware too. It's vintage Richler territory, and no doubt contributed to the book's having become Canada's No. 1 best seller in recent weeks. Unfortunately, Richler paints the ones who, like himself, stayed behind with more color than the ones who took the idea of aliyah seriously. The weary and seemingly humorless old socialists Richler visits in "This Year in Jerusalem" built their state according to the principle of "another goat, another dunam." Most admitted to him they never got the kind of country they had hoped for. And though most insisted they had something to show for the effort, Richler is largely incapable of seeing beyond the tacky furniture in their homes and the bad food on their kibbutz tables. As a consequence, his book ends up offering as much insight into what life in Israel is really like as one might find in a portrait of Southern California as seen through the eyes of expatriate Newfoundland fishermen. As for its form, "This Year in Jerusalem" is a mess, really, a lumpy stew in which autobiographical tidbits rub up against jaded and surprisingly incoherent journalism. When another Montreal native, Saul Bellow, undertook a similar stint in Israel, the result was the thoughtful memoir "To Jerusalem and Back." But when Richler piles his bits of reportorial cod on the racks to dry into something approaching a point of view, what we are left with in the end is the reek of fish turning nasty in the sun. Reading a book I badly wanted to like, I began to understand why so many French Quebecois head for their bunkers every time Richler publishes a portrait of his native Quebec. In his Quebec essays, Richler poses as the insider whose Jewishness and caustic disposition render him outrageous enough to provide the straight goods about life in La Belle Province. But as you progress through the material, you begin to realize that Richler's idea of reporting is to sift through clippings from the Montreal Gazette, the Canadian Jewish News and the like. Or to hang out at the three or so bars he favors. Unfortunately for Richler, whereas few of his U.S. readers may know or care enough about Quebec to notice his sloth, few places have been as extensively mapped out as Israel. And even when relying on previously published material, Richler sometimes gets it wrong. Not necessarily the big things. But when enough of the smaller ones run awry, you begin to suspect just how badly the entire portrait may be askew. Referring, for example, to Israeli journalist Matti Golan's book, "With Friends Like You: What Israelis Really Think about American Jews," Richler bemoans Golan's "insatiable appetite for Diaspora funding." But Golan's thesis is the opposite: that any such funding is too much for Israel's own good. And there's something irritating about reading a vignette of Hebron Rabbi Moshe Levinger, another example of the kind of Jewish nut cases Richler would have you believe Israel breeds or attracts to the exclusion of normal folks, when the author didn't even go to the trouble to meet Levinger, relying exclusively on journalistic descriptions of him. "This Year in Jerusalem" has its moments. Mostly, though, it barrages the reader with a jumble of images reminiscent of the bizarre bar mitzvah movie Duddy Kravitz premiered to dumbfounded patrons in the 1974 film adaptation of Richler's early novel. Unlike Duddy, though, I don't think Richler will find many people pretentious enough to pronounce this particular venture a masterpiece. The Fall Of LukeFord.com Cindi writes for Xcitement magazine: My all time favorite website Lukeford.com has been sold. This means it no longer contains the eloquent, but sometimes cynical and skewed musings of Luke Ford. Also absent are the tirades and lurid gossip spewed by the various pornographers (myself included) who frequent the site. Frankly, those were the two best things about going there. The site is now a shell of it's former self and an empty one at that. I’m afraid as they say, all good things come to an end, and this site will shortly be doing just that. Luke’s new site LukeFord.net, (as in dot NET not dot com) will be mostly religion oriented (orthodox jewish). Although I prefer porn to religious discussion, Luke’s new site is already more interesting then his old one. I wish him the best of luck, and I appreciate the e-mail Luke sent me saying that he is leaving pornography behind, but not his friends in that business. I know I speak for all your friends and fans in porn when I say, Luke we miss you already! The Pink Swastika - Homosexuality in the Nazi Party Kevin E. Abrams writes in the preface to this book: The Pink Swastika documents how the Society for Human Rights, founded by members of the Nazi Party, became the largest homosexual rights organization in Germany and further, how this movement gave birth to the American homosexual rights movement. Its influence has grown. The President of the United States now receives official homosexual delegations at the White House who expect the President to repay them for helping him into office. They expected him to "normalize" homosexuality in the American military. As for the comparison made between homoeroticism and skin color, General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had this to say in a letter to Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D. Colorado), "skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of all human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument" (Statesman Journal, June 6, 1992). American civilization rests on the basic principles of Christian morality, which have their origin in the Hebrew Scriptures. The reason why the Nazis first attacked the Jewish people and swore to exterminate them physically and spiritually is because the teaching of the Bible, both the Torah and the New Testament, represent the foundations on which the whole system of Christian ethics rests. Remove the Bible as the constellation that guides the American Ship of State and the whole edifice of American civilization collapses. For my Jewish brethren searching for a Biblical basis for the legitimization of homosexuality I refer to the words of Rabbis Marc Angel, Hillel Goldberg and Pinchas Stopler and their joint article in the Winter, 1992-93 edition of Jewish Action Magazine, "there is not a single source in all of the disciplines of Jewish sacred literature -- halachah, aggadah, philosophy, muscar, mysticism -- that tolerates homosexual acts or a homosexual "orientation." Jews who sanction homosexuality must do so wholly without reference to Jewish sacred literature, in which case their justification has no Jewish standing; or without reference to Jewish sources, in which case they act with ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. The idea, set forth by some of the non-Orthodox leadership, that the Torah prohibited only coercive and non-loving same-sex relationships, thus allowing for a contemporary, voluntary and loving same-sex relationship, is wholly without basis in a single piece of Jewish sacred literature written in the last 3,000 years." Dennis Prager, a respected Jewish radio talk show host, commented, "there were two kinds of Jews in Auschwitz, those who knew why they were there and those who thought it was just bad luck." Today Jews have assimilated ideas foreign to the Jewish perspective and many liberal, secular American Jews, in adopting a tolerance for everything, stand for nothing. As the living we owe a moral debt to that generation of Jews who were subjected to such inhumane and sadistic torture and extermination. The underlying causes of Nazi militarism are documented in The Pink Swastika. The Holocaust must be remembered for what it was, a war against the Jewish people and western civilization. From Tuesday's New York Times: Mr. Ferguson and others cite concerns including major illnesses like hepatitis, chronic fatigue syndrome and prostate cancer, as well as mental health issues, same- sex domestic violence and the relation of spirituality to health. Studies have indicated that gay men are more likely than the general population to have health problems like substance abuse, depression and some infectious diseases. No Justice, No Peace Chaim Amalek writes: This is a very interesting story - actually, there are several very interesting stories in here. We are told, from South African government sources, that South Africa has an astonishingly high rate of murder, based on an official murder rate of 22,000 killings in a population of about 40,000,000, and that certainly is a high rate. But then I whipped out pencil and paper, and guess what? This murder rate is about what it often has been over the last ten years for the black cores of a number of formerly great american cities. Why do you suppose that is so? Rivers of Blood indeed. From the Sydney Morning Herald: White South African business should "share" more with blacks or risk Zimbabwe-style seizures, the country's leading black businessman has said. Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, a senior figure in the ruling African National Congress and chairman of the TML media group, told the BBC that too much of South Africa's economy was still in white hands despite efforts at "black economic empowerment". "If we don't do anything, if we don't move quick enough, yes, [Zimbabwe-style attacks on white farms and business] could happen. That is a fair warning," Mr Ramaphosa said. "We want the white private sector in this country to heed that warning. Let us all be aware of the responsibility and share. Share what we have." Zimbabwe has announced the seizure of 90per cent of white-owned farm land in an attempt to head off growing popular opposition to the 20 year-rule of President Robert Mugabe. Eight white farmers have been killed by self-proclaimed liberation war veterans organised by Mr Mugabe's party. Another is in critical condition following an axe attack at his home on Monday. In recent months South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has been criticised at home and abroad for failing to condemn attacks on whites and opposition supporters in Zimbabwe. This year Government supporters, who call themselves veterans of Zimbabwe's war of independence, have spread their intimidation campaign from farms to white-owned businesses and foreign aid agencies. Foreign investors' fear of "contagion" from Zimbabwe has contributed to the South African currency's big slump on international markets. Official figures show South Africa with one of the highest murder rates in the world, with 22,000 of its 40 million people murdered each year. Another 10,500 die in road accidents. However, the United Nations estimates 7million South Africans will die of HIV/AIDS in the next decade, an average of 700,000 a year. It is estimated that one in 10 people carries the virus. Asked if he accepted that AIDS, rather than racism or corruption, was the greatest threat to his country, Mr Mbeki told the BBC that he had learned that more than half of South Africans who died between the ages of 16 and 64 were killed by violence. Luke says: What's the link? I need to be sure you're not making this up as a form of race baiting. Chaim replies: I commend you for your level of care and will try to document better (this brit journalist I know has corrected me on my split infinitives, hence I did not write "to better document" or even "document to better") my contributions, violative of the copyright laws of our great nation thought they may sometimes be. In general, you have to find a way of generating some buzz, lest you vanish with your porn personum. Any ideas from your end? I have tried and tried, but you never fucking do what I tell you to do. I am SO at wits end wit you. My "Real World Palestine" had a lot of potential for all concerned, and you have done nothing to push it. That is why my choicest efforts will be directed to helping young ambitious Marc and the hard-working Quasarman become the famous people I know that they could be. Luke says: I'm a harsh unrelenting Zionist even to the point where I would not mind Israel's Arab residents being expelled from Israel. I don't think multi-culturalism works - be it in Israel, US, or Australia or Rhodesia or South Africa. There is a frightening similarity between Dr William Pierce and his Natvan.com and Zionism. They are both tribalism. I guess I can subscribe to tribalism. I realized as the years went by from my conversion that I believed that Israel should be a Jewish state...and thus have come to have more sympathy for Pierce and the white nationalists who want the US to be a white Christian state, even at the cost to my group. Chaim writes: If the Arabs refuse to leave on their own, and continue blowing up places where fertile jewish females gather, would the Zionists be justified ordering them to leave and killing those who refuse? What do you think is the best way of dealing with Israel's Arab population, and would that technique have any applicability to thirdworlders living in the West? Khunrum writes: My own beliefs on the subject are somewhat radical as well. History aside, what the Israelis and Arabs are fighting for is basically Sand and Rocks. A lot of death, dismemberment and nervous energy over practically nothing. I think it would be much better if Israel abandoned the entire kit, kat and caboodle to the camel jockey's and relocated to Utah. Dismantle the "Wailing Wall" (like the Brits did London Bridge) and bring it along. The only resistance the Jews will find in Utah are Mormons. No problem there. There are no Mormon suicide bombers that I know of. Just tasty blondes. With Jewish expertise and business acumen they could start building religious theme parks. King Davidville, MosesBurg, Abrahamtown. Find new Sand and Rocks to worship. Gertrude Stein said it best "A Rock, is A Rock, is A Rock".... The relocated Utah Jews will be making tons of cash off the inbreed Southern yokels who want a religious experience but can't afford a vacation too far from Mississippi, Alabama, or Louisiana... "Hey Ma, Let's not go to Dolly Partonville this year. Let's see what them thar Jews got going for em' in Utah"....Go ahead, dismiss my suggestion with a chuckle or a laugh. Call me a simpleton, crazy (if you will) but in the context of what I am reading in the paper everyday i.e.. "I blow you up and you bomb me" what I am saying makes a lot of sense. NO? (As I have said before, you can never beat the guy who is willing to strap 500 pounds of TNT around his chest and pull the switch....just like we couldn't beat the Viet Cong.) Chaim Amalek responds: I hate to quibble over a few minor points, but the United States DID defeat the Viet Cong, whose cadres were virtually annihilated in the aftermath of the Tet offensive and the Phoenix Program. It was North Vietnamese regulars, armed with tanks, who finally defeated our ARVN allies in 1975. As far as Jews coming here, why do you suppose our immigration sphincter has been kept in a loose, dilated state - because we REALLY want all those Mexicans to settle here? NO. It was done to provide the Jews of Israel with an emergency place to settle, en masse, in the event of a final Arab triumph, which might be just a few decades off. If this happens, and the Jews are forced to settle here, the sphincter will be closed if we have anything to say about it. Potential Don't Win Championships The emails flowed in all day, thanking him for his lukeford.com efforts and wondering why he'd never achieved more. And there were the detractors yawning at lukeford.net. So late Monday night he sat at his computer, past his bedtime, and tried to put together a few meaningful sentences that would justify his day. He'd just returned home from a Torah lecture. And the more Torah he absorbed, the quieter he became and the more focused on his own behavior and less focused on swaying the world outside. He'd seen many women at the lecture and initially he made them laugh with his sophistry, but then, predictably, he didn't stop while ahead and they'd tired of him and turned their attention to other men and he drove home kicking himself and facing an uncertain future. So far he hadn't put together enough quality material on lukeford.net to stimulate his merry band of verbal warriors. Folks like Curious were off contributing gallons of witty prose to God forsaken websites like QuasarmanRants.com. Can Luke keep his audience without alluding to pornography? Lynne L-patin writes: Luke will have to reach out and attract a new audience; one that is spiritually healthy and questing for more in life than having bad (or no) relationships with real women while they masturbate endlessly to cultural fantasies of physical perfection and immoral attitudes. Those of your friends who lived vicariously through you envied your intimacies with porn women, unable to look beyond the fantasy. Even your posting from last weekend is an attempt to satisfy their carnal interests -- it describes you flitting from one female to another in attempts to "connect." Who is impressed by this? Are you trying to convince us of your heterosexuality? Do you really believe that hitting on women is glorious? To those who love you, it is sad. That you intersperse it with attempts to become closer to G-d is sadder still -- because you do not trust that G-d will care for you in this way by ensuring that the woman who is right for you will come to you when you are ready. Leslie says that I am being too hard on you, that you need approval, but that you are seeking it from women rather than looking for it within yourself. Torah lecture is a place to concentrate on Torah, not on meeting men (or women). No matter how funny you are, any audience will tire of you, and reject you. It's time to focus on yourself, and grow, and learn to accept approval from those who freely give it to you. Being centered in that way will elicit more approval than you can get from casual encounters. I have known you for over two years and never tire of you, because I know the depths of you, the truth of you, which you reveal through your writing. It takes time to know someone well enough to accept their imperfections. When I was a pornographer, you came and conquered my world. Now I await this new adventure you are giving me. You have endless entertainment value to me, because I am not trapped by pornographic fantasies into believing that there is always a more physically perfect wo(man) on the next tape... You achieved tremendous things on lukeford.com. What is "more?" Fame? Money? Living up to someone else's expectations? Don't discount YOURSELF, Luke. Have patience. You have more to offer the world. I dreamed about you last night, even though you never made an appearance in the dream. I dreamed I was in a movie, not a porn movie, but a costume drama. Russ and Betty and Hal and (his wife -- whoever they were....) were making it. My role was to be in love with you -- we were starcrossed lovers caught up in a revolution. I had on a long purple dress with a velvet bodice that was three sizes too big for me. There was apparently no script, but I figured that since my big scene was our parting before you went off to war, we could fake it easily. Days went by and the cast and crew stayed in a huge house, so huge that it contained a shopping mall, but the movie never got made, and I never saw you. Eventually everything degenerated into an orgy in the dressing room...men, women and drag queens. Then Tobi woke me up with her barking to go out... Luke Gets Mail Luke's mom writes: Luke, you are a riot. You can go over to Jerusalem and cover a war but you can't stand the cold in the mall. The idea of getting a space heater is a very good one. Get a portable one and you can take it along to the war when you are covering it. You could sit behind the space heater that way and use it as a personal shield. I could also buy you some woolly singlets and double strength socks and send them to Jerusalem. Jeff writes: Do the right thing and stay away from that entire [porn] industry, it's just bad stuff. Hopefully you'll hold true to your religion and not go back to it. Just don't be living a double life, going to synagogue and then doing something in your everyday life that is completely contradictory to what your religion teaches. If you're that type of person then you're just an out and out asshole. Chaim Amalek mourns the demise of lukeford.com: Food does not taste as good. Music is dull and tinny, and my knees have started to go. All since losing my pulpit. Imagine how Rabbi Union (what sort of moniker is that?) would feel if he lost his? William Manchester is unable to complete his biography of Winston Churchill. This could be the break you have been waiting for. Khunrum writes Luke: ...Hurry, Quick..See if you can buy the site back. You can't have ongoing angst about Judaism and porn if you are not even in the biz anymore. Neil writes Luke: I think you are an excellent writer and journalist and have always enjoyed reading your work. I often wondered why someone with your talents wasn't working as a broadcast journalist or for a big publication. I hope your move to Jerusalem marks a turning point in your career, for the better. There are a terrific number of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel journalists who have been unleashed, I hope you can come out with some cool and reasoned reporting to balance them and help in what may be the upcoming conflict. A lot of Israeli statesmen and journalists are frankly inept and don't know how to deal with the foreign press, so I hope you can do your part to improve on this. There are also are a lot of journalists (especially Brits ) in the press who hate Jews with a passion, including people like Christopher Hitchens, who is actually half - Jewish. To some extent this upcoming war is going to be fought in the world press, and the Arabs have the money to buy a whole lot of press. In addition, some people like Ted Turner have a strong pro PLO bias that nothing can shake. I thought your site was entertaining and you did the world a mitzvah by exposing Marc Wallace, too bad he already infected some people. But I can see how working on the site put you in a moral dilemma so I hope your new endeavours are successful. Goddess writes: wow, luke, i *really* like (heavy on the sarcasm) your new site...you're covering so many interesting (even heavier on the sarcasm) topics, it's hard to know what to read first <g> Lynne writes Goddess: Shame on you, my friend. For my sake, won't you love and adore my darling Luke's attempt to leave the sordid behind? That's a polite way of saying "horse's ass," by the way. Your cutting edge insight is needed here on lukeford.net. Without your sharp witticisms, the boy will grow pompous and smug! I cannot be counted upon to stick a needle into his inflated sense of self-importance -- every day I grow less objective concerning his failings. And who will insult ME here on lf.net, where the insults must be meaningful and educational and in the insultee's best interest? I need you (in a platonic way, you understand) to keep my obsession with Luke's perfection under control. Please, come, stay, be our resident shiksa and remind us that there's more to spirituality than Judaism, and more to life than hitting upon and being rejected by Jewish babes. D.A. Anderson writes: Before you're entirely lost to us in your self-serving religiosity and other personal problems, I wonder if you would favor those of us who have been interested in your conflicted relationship to porn with some parting observations about the subject. You researched that History for years, devoted years after to on-location reportage: what are your conclusions? What has all this meant? It is after all a problem transcends your personal case, representative as it intriguingly was for many of us, and is what LukeFord.com was about. Not your mid-life anxieties. Are we admonished to flee Sodom and not look back? Follow Luke to Jerusalem? Or what? You can't just run away. We need closure. We need to hear the end of the story, whatever it might be. You say "the end of an error": very clever, but it won't do. If this era of your life has truly been a mere mistake, you have made a fool not only of yourself but of everyone who took you seriously. As you must realize. Not that I blame you for fleeing the shambles of your life in pornoland, but please grace us with a respectable farewell. And I don't mean pieties of your new-found religiosity: philosophize on pornography one last time. I'm serious. You have an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject as well as a priveleged proximity and a disinterested point of view. I'd rather hear what you have to say than Jim Holliday or Patrick Riley (well, that might be stretching it). I'm about to delete lukeford.com from my favorites, and will attend to lukeford.net but a little while (after over a year of daily involvement with you). After that the only way I'll learn WEHT you is on RAME. By the way, thanks for the enjoyment your internet site has given me, and good luck in Beulah-land. Luke replies: My conclusion about pornography is that it, like many things such as rock music and TV and Hollywood movies and trash talk radio, is a form of spiritual and moral contamination that will generally cause less damage to individuals and societies who are disciplined and morally grounded. The middle class can occasionally engage in vices like porn and illicit sex that would forever ruin someone from a lower class. There is no neat solution to society's pornography problem. Like drugs, it evades total solution. It's messy and inherently contaminating and damaging and will never be just another form of entertainment. Whether society criminalizes or legalizes porn, it will still be a source of problems, just different problems depending on the attempted solution. Criminalizing porn will pour money into the pockets of organized crime. Legalizing porn, like legalizing drugs, will allow a higher percentage of the population to use and produce the product. I believe that society has an overwhelming interest in discouraging all forms of sexual activity (including pornography, homosexuality and masturbation) outside of heterosexual monogamous marriage. Lynne writes Luke: Your semantic labels of "middle class" and "lower class" are divisive and ugly and obsolete as well, but our differences here will make great moral fodder for discussion. Societies which are disciplined and morally grounded find "trash culture" unappealing; that doesn't say much for the majority of Americans, does it? As you know, the media is aimed at a certain demographic -- younger people who, regardless of "class," have yet to form their moral values. It is more important for them to be "cool" than to be true to themselves, hence bonding around popular culture. I agree with you that there is no neat solution to society's "pornography problem" which, in reality, is society's current problem of sex and gender. Our discussion of this topic, as begun on lukeford.com, continues to be an appropriate topic for discussion here on lukeford.net. I am looking forward to it. As to whether society has an overwhelming interest in discouraging all forms of sexual activity outside of heterosexual monogamous marriage, I don't know. Does pornography do any good? Possibly. I don't know. Does masturbation do any good? Certainly! Homosexuality? Old as recorded history, and my feelings about it are mixed. Your status as an expert on the history of pornography is unquestionable. But you are no expert on human sexuality, or on the feelings men have about women. In your book, "The History of X," your documentation of the adult industry is accurate, but your interspersed comments on sexuality are often bizarre. Most men do not, as you describe it, find orgasms to feel like nothing more than "a strong piss." Khunrum writes: Suicide bombers motivated by sex with virgins. The reality is they will end up having sex with Hanna Ashrawi! Lynne L-patin: Now that you have chosen to leave the porn ghetto, you
will be famous in the media beyond your comprehension. You will no longer
care for me AT ALL. As happy as I can be for you, I am miserable for myself.
Battle For Luke Ford's Soul Over Noah Shachtman writes for Wired.com: The battle for the soul of Luke Ford is over. Ford -- the Web-based gossip columnist universally reviled and universally read by the porn industry he covered -- left the smut business behind last week. But unlike so many retiring dot-commers, Ford's reasons for bowing have nothing to do with slumping ad revenues or fed-up investors. Instead, Ford is calling it quits because of his religious beliefs. Ford's triple-X connections had long been in simmering conflict with his involvement in Los Angeles' Orthodox Jewish community. For years, the gossip lived "constantly on the knife's edge," knowing that he'd be tossed out of... his strictly-observant synagogue -- where he studied Talmud every morning -- if the leadership found out about his website -- where he dished out equal portions of news and half-truths every night. This wasn't the first time he'd been booted from a congregation. In December, 1997 -- months after constructing his site from the material gathered for his book, A History of X -- Ford's then-Rabbi asked him to end his adult industry involvement. When Ford failed to do so by April of 1998, he was told to get out. This spiritual nadir came as his career began to peak. In the same month, Ford landed his biggest scoop: that veteran money-shooter Marc Wallace had HIV. The revelation injected him into the mainstream's consciousness and cemented his infamous reputation in the adult community. Summing up the porn business' feelings about Ford, Mark Kernes, an editor at Adult Video News (AVN), the porn industry trade magazine, said "Luke Ford is a scumbag. And you can print that." The abuse only seemed to encourage Ford to outrageous heights, with salacious stories about porn tarts turning tricks, movie moguls dealing with the mob, and down-on-their luck actresses doing it with dogs. "I'll put up anything someone's willing to put their name on," Ford once boasted. "If someone tells me (AVN founder) Paul Fishbein sticks bananas up his anus in an on-the-record interview, I'll happily publish it." Strangely enough, Ford -- the converted son of an Australian evangelist -- was also happy to couple this less-than-holy material with lengthy debates of Jewish law and melancholic, angst-filled ruminations on living in the conflicting realms of smut and Sinai. In response to his free-wheeling posting policies, Ford was sued -- and threatened with lawsuits -- on several occasions. And he was threatened with worse when he began questioning the financial stability of RJB Telecom, one of the most prominent porno pay site operators. "Hey Luke if I ever see you in public...I hope you bring that BIG gun...your gonna [sic] need it," posted one angry reader. But despite such hostility, Ford attracted enough of an income from adult advertisers -- around $45,000 annually -- to keep himself fed and the site afloat. And he got plenty of attention from adult industry insiders, with many of the people who trashed Ford in public perfectly happy to supply him dirt in private. "A couple of years ago, I would have been jumping up and down for joy to see Luke Ford 'eliminated,'" writes well-known porn performer Asia Carrera. "Then I figured out how to use him to my advantage (having Luke around to disseminate scurrilous 'anonymous scoops' on one's enemies was almost TOO convenient!)" It's this interest from blue-movie bigwigs that made LukeFord.com an attractive buy for Michael Keene, the Netvideogirls.com chieftain. "We (made the purchase) to introduce ourselves to the players," he said. "Already from the people we've met, we have our money's worth." Few in the adult community believe Ford will actually leave the industry behind. "He'll be back. He can't stand to be away from this business," said AVN's Kernes. So Ford has bet over $7,000 with skeptics, like online madam "Nici," that he'll still be out of porn by Oct. 1. By then, Ford contends, he'll be ready to move to Jerusalem. "I really think we're going to have a war (in Israel), and I want to be there to cover it," Ford said. He'll upload such material -- along with his religious musings -- to his new LukeFord.net site. "I never covered a war before. But I've certainly dealt with a lot of dangerous people." He jokes, "I plan to do for the Middle East what I've done for the pornography industry." Meanwhile, Netvideogirls.com's Keene says LukeFord.com will continue its rowdy ways. "We're not going to be toned down. We're not going to check every story," he said. "We're going to be true to the character of Luke."
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