Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1999

But the adult entertainment business is changing, and Fishbein is racing to keep up. While sales and rentals of adult videos racked up $4.1 billion last year, purveyors are steadily migrating online, where adult-oriented sites offer everything from chat rooms to "live-action" cameras. So AVN is following them--and has run smack into Luke Ford, an eccentric and self-aggrandizing cyber gossip from Beverly Hills.

On his Web site, which is devoted to porn news, Ford has repeatedly attacked the magazine for ignoring conflicts of interest, coddling advertisers and downplaying major stories, such as an outbreak of HIV among performers last year--allegations that Fishbein vehemently denies.

The threat of legal action last month forced Ford to retract a few particularly damaging accusations--but not before he posted the entire demand letter from Fishbein's attorney.

The spat has sealed Ford's reputation as porn's bete noire. "If this were a different age, I'd be in danger of having my legs broken," he muses, referring to porn's fabled mob ties.

Fishbein is now struggling to stay atop the flow of information within this rich but extremely fragmented business, which helps explain why the battle with Ford has become so contentious.

The magazine's prominence troubles some in the industry.

"When a trade magazine amasses as much power as AVN, it becomes an intrinsic part of the industry. And that bothers me," says Rodger Jacobs, a screenwriter and journalist who has written for Larry Flynt Publications, whose Hustler Erotic Video Guide competes with AVN.

Luke Ford has amplified such concerns on his Web site, often without the benefit of fact-checking. The son of a Christian evangelist, the Australian-born gossip has used the Web site to detail his sexual exploits with porn stars and thoughts on Judaism, to which he has converted.

While Ford praises Fishbein himself as "credible," he has accused AVN staffers of, among other things, trying to quash his reporting about HIV in the porn industry and tailoring its annual awards show to suit big advertisers.

"The stuff I've written has really shaken them up over there," says Ford, who admits to putting unverified items on his site. He adds: "So far AVN has been a failure on the Internet. They've spent a lot of money and it's just been drubbed by Internet people and adult people."

Fishbein calls the allegation of corruption "a flat-out lie" and says that AVN ended up correcting errors in Ford's reporting about the HIV scandal. Although he says he briefly flirted with hiring Ford to do a gossip column on the AVN site, he now dismisses him as "an irresponsible journalist."

"It's sort of like we're the establishment and Luke's the rogue," Fishbein says. "We will always have competitors. . . . I welcome anything like that as long as we're on a fair playing field."

www.salonmagazine.com, July 13, 1999

Th e__M a t t__D r u d g e__o f__X

A TORTURED CONSERVATIVE JEW _________DISHES A GOSSIPY HISTORY OF PORN.

By Michelle Goldberg

Luke Ford spends most of his time around porn stars, but he has a crush on Wendy Shalit, the neocon ingenue author of "A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue." Last time we talked, he had passed the afternoon skinny-dipping with X-rated actresses Kendra Jade and Shelle Pearson, but he was still mooning over a recent encounter with the poster girl for virtue and virginity. "Published in Commentary at only 19," he said dreamily. "I was really curious to see what she looked like, so I went to her reading. She's a little cutie, I kind of fancied her. I think we'd make a good couple -- Miss Modesty and Mr. Pornography."

He's not kidding. Ford, one of the most controversial figures in the porn universe, is a man torn between twin obsessions -- hardcore sex and conservative Judaism. He has elevated moral and spiritual schizophrenia to surreal proportions, and the split is most obvious in the two Web sites that he spends his life running. On Lukeford.com, he operates as the Matt Drudge of the triple-X industry, tirelessly reporting scandals, news, gossip, innuendo and minutia, earning $42,000 a year in ad revenue and the loathing of most of porn's major players. In his spare time, though, the sex industry's most notorious muckraker -- and the son, bizarrely, of a Seventh Day Adventist evangelical preacher -- maintains dennisprager.net, a site devoted to conservative writer, Jewish theologian and right-wing radio host Dennis Prager.

"I view porn, adultery, premarital sex, all forms of sexual expression outside of marriage as sinful, meaning against God's will," says Ford, a wry, blandly handsome 33-year-old. "Let me stress that I am single, I have never been married and the Lord has not granted me the gift of chastity. I do not fool myself that what I'm doing is OK by God or my religion. I'm really open that these are the ideals I believe in and in various ways I do not live up to them. C'est la vie. I get therapy once or twice a week for 90 minutes a session."

He's a hypocrite and he knows it, revels in it -- in fact, Ford is so blunt about his personal shortcomings he disarms criticism by cheerfully concurring with everything his enemies say about him. And they say a lot, because as much as the biz hates to admit it, everyone in the adult film world reads him.

"You can't find someone in this business who's never heard of Luke Ford," says Atlanta pornographer Mike South, one of the few people in the sex industry to count Ford as a friend. "Luke has done more research into this business than most of the people who lived through it in the '70s and '80s. If there is a Matt Drudge in the porn industry it is Luke Ford, hands down. He's very similar to Matt Drudge -- he came out of nowhere and created a name for himself in a very short time. The difference is that Luke may even be more vicious than Matt Drudge is."

Indeed, Ford's methods are slash and burn, often mean-spirited and journalistically dubious. His Web site is an odd melange of rambling daily reports on the shenanigans of actresses, directors and producers, exposés on industry corruption, torturous self-analysis, satire -- and lots of naked pictures. Also included are capsule biographies of nearly everyone who's ever taken his or her clothes off in front of a camera and Ford's own take on every issue related to the business, from child porn and bestiality to industry racism and mob involvement.

In one of his most notorious assaults on the business, Ford published a list that contains the real names of over 300 porn people, a list that has sabotaged the attempts of some to build a life after porn. Brandy Alexandre, for example, left porn in 1992. A few months ago, she was fired from her job as a senior secretary with Forest Lawn cemeteries after someone who had seen Luke's list outed her to her boss.

Ford's profile in the business really skyrocketed last year, though, when he broke the story about porn star Mark Wallace being HIV-positive. Like Matt Drudge's early stories of Monica Lewinsky's blue dress, at first Ford's reports were taken as evidence that he had become a dangerously irresponsible rumor-monger. At one point, after enduring vociferous criticism from the industry, Ford even apologized to Wallace. Four months later [four days later], Wallace tested positive -- under mounting pressure, a colleague had dragged him to the clinic.

To this day, many in the industry claim that Ford got lucky -- that just because the story was true doesn't mean he was right to publish it without hard evidence. "Just because he turned out to be right that time is no reason to applaud him as a great reporter," says Alexandre. Ford himself says he had no way to be absolutely sure about the story when it ran -- "I just had so many sources that told me he was positive that I took a chance and went with it." Either way, Wallace had been regularly working without showing his test, and by reporting the story Ford caused the truth to come out. He may have saved lives.

Last month Ford published his first book, "A History of X," which is, as he readily admits, a mess, a rambling and formless account that attempts to squeeze 100 years of sex on film into 232 pages. Huge dramas are condensed into a few sentences. Relating one of the biggest scandals in porn history, he simply writes: "In 1991, Jim Mitchell, frustrated by his brother's erratic ways, murdered Artie. He then hired a clever lawyer who bamboozled judge and jury into a 'voluntary manslaughter' conviction carrying a maximum punishment of six years in prison. After serving three years, Jim was released in 1997." End of story.

Ford insists that the reason the book is so bad is because his publisher, Prometheus Books, made him chop it from 1,000 pages to its current length (largely for legal reasons). One is tempted to dismiss this as a self-serving rationalization, but South, who saw the original draft, backs up Ford's account. Nevertheless, the book is suffused with Ford's trademark sarcastic contempt, making it frequently amusing. He deadpans, "Meyer was not the type of guy who reduced women to their tits. 'I've had more than my share of ass,' says Meyer." He relishes recounting the shattered dreams of porn actresses, like the story of Marilyn Chambers (whom he calls by her real name, Marilyn Briggs) and her blown shot at a Hollywood career. "She later moved to Los Angeles, where an important producer offered her a deal: He'd provide her with an apartment, car, acting lessons, spending money, roles in major films and career guidance in exchange for Briggs being his mistress. Not wanting to be tied down to an old man with a big paunch, she rejected his offer. On his way out the door, the shocked producer told Briggs that she'd never make it in the biz. He was right. Briggs never succeeded in mainstream entertainment." The book is often a jeremiad against the business disguised as a behind-the-scenes history -- though, to be fair, Ford also debunks certain stories that have bedeviled the business, including the myth of snuff films (he says they don't exist) and Linda Lovelace's insistence that she made "Deep Throat" under threat of violence (no one present on the set corroborates her account).

It's startling, given Ford's blatant hostility toward porn, that anyone in the industry talks to him. The fascinating thing about Ford, though, is that he's so charming that even those who have every reason to despise him are often won over when they're in his presence. Ford has the gift of making you feel like you alone, of all the idiots in the world, really get it, are really on his wavelength. "Last year I was at [the Adult Video News Awards]," says South. "I was talking to a lady in the business. She had never met Luke, and she wanted to know who he was because she was livid about something he put on his site about her. Luke comes up, I introduce them, and she immediately goes into a very obvious attack mode. Within two minutes she's sitting in Luke's lap."

The lady? Alexandre, who still maintains friendly relations with him. "Personally, on a one-to-one level I talk to him every now and again, but on a professional level I hate his guts," she says. "He's one of those angst-ridden guys that draws women in. They want to ease his suffering. He might lay on the charm to get people to open up -- we good-looking people use that all the time. The problem is he turns around and hurts people with it."

"He's essentially an unhappy person based on the work that he does," Alexandre continues. "In one breath he embraces the industry because it supports him, and in the other breath he shuns it. He hates it but he needs it, and whatever the need is based on only he and his psychiatrist know. But he is nice, soft-spoken and friendly." Adds Paul Fishbein, the publisher of the industry trade magazine Adult Video News, "He's a really charming, nice guy when you meet him and talk to him, but he's not trustworthy." At one point, Fishbein considered hiring Ford. Now he's considering suing him. "He'll print anything, anything anyone tells him. He says things like, 'I heard that Metro Home Video threatened to pull all their advertising' -- if we didn't put all their girls on stage [at the Adult Video News Awards] and give their videos better reviews -- 'so Paul Fishbein acquiesced.' I had to threaten him with a libel suit. Luke Ford is interesting, but he screwed me."

Besides being charming, Luke Ford is also smart, though he believes he's not as smart as he used to be. Ford was an economics major at UCLA in 1988 when he grew ill with chronic fatigue syndrome, the amorphous sickness once dubbed yuppie flu. In an e-mail that Ford posted to his site, his sister apologizes to the world for her brother by attributing his odd proclivities to his long illness.

"In the mid-eighties he contracted glandular fever, which wiped out his energy and therefore his activity," she writes. "It is accepted by medical science that glandular fever, caused by the Epstein Barr virus, is often followed by depression. What still remains controversial is the diagnostic entity chronic fatigue syndrome. But whatever the label I saw my brother slide from an energetic and fun loving boy to an invalid ... Luke in some ways is not the boy he used to be. He seems to lack a degree of insight and balance in his life. I suspect he does not feel the tension which exists between being involved in pornography and gossip associated with that industry on the one hand and his religious beliefs on the other. He was brought up in a very balanced, loving and Christian family. His involvement in pornography is heartbreaking to us."

Ford was nearly bedridden for six years -- during which time he discovered Judaism, (eventually converting in 1992, after two years of study with a rabbi). "Since I was sick I've been only going at 7 or 8 percent. I've lived my life in a vice since I was 21," Ford says. "I'm not as mentally sharp as I was before I got sick, I'm not able to be an economist, which is what I wanted to." Thus, at times, he justifies his career choice in purely pragmatic terms. "However distasteful writing on porn is, it really beats dong temp work as an administrative assistant," he says. "Professionally I'm on a good gig. I've found my niche. I have thousands of readers. I'm getting most of my needs met. I'm writing about my life, making decent money. I don't have to work that hard and I have tremendous freedom."

Of course, Ford knows that professional convenience isn't the only thing driving him. "I think part of the reason I do this would be some deep, dark psychological Freudian desire to return to the womb," he says half-facetiously. "There's something tremendously compelling to me about pussy. I'm fascinated by women's sexuality. Porn is a male fantasy of female sexuality, but I'm still spending a lot of my time interacting with fairly attractive women -- albeit IQ-challenged -- so there is a deep, dark psychological attraction there." Not that Ford's that popular with porn starlets -- indeed, he says he's only had sex with two X-rated actresses. Anyway, what Ford really wants is to get married -- like countless men before him, he believes that once he ties the knot, he'll leave his promiscuous ways behind. "I'm tired of the life of tawdry blow jobs from porn stars! I want to settle down. One of these days the Lord will give me the strength to turn my back on such sin." He says this jocularly, self-mockingly, but he seems to mean it.

On one level Ford wants to hang out with porn stars. On another, he wants to bring down the porn industry. "The boy has a messiah complex," says Roger Jacobs, a former porn screenwriter and director who's now left the business to become a freelance journalist. In an interview with Ford published in Panik magazine, Jacobs describes Ford as being on "a suicide mission against the adult entertainment industry ... the most visible sniper in a lone shooting spree against easy targets."

"He's the son of an evangelical minister and he's converted to Orthodox Judaism -- each are the most fundamentalist of religions, and both are very anti-sex," says Mark Kearns, features editor at Adult Video News. "He is fascinated by sex, fascinated by people who are willing to perform sex on camera, and he wants to write about it, but he also hates it. He thinks he is fulfilling the requirements of his religion by attempting to destroy the porn industry."

"I don't regard the industry with respect, I don't regard it as something worthy of nurturing," Ford says. "If my writing helps anti-porn hysteria and activism, fine. It would not bother me if porn were banned. Censorship is one legitimate response to the rise of pornography. I would not shed many tears if the porn industry was carted off to jail tomorrow, and I don't think we'd be a worse society for it."

Ford claims to loathe Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, but he loathes the propaganda of the porn business more -- and he's disgusted that so many people have fallen for it. After all, in recent years pornographers, in concert with transgression-loving academics, have fashioned a New Age version of the sex industry as some kind of orgasmic human potential movement dedicated to freeing the world from the blight of sexual repression. Talking about the self-described "feminist porn" of Candida Royalle and the theories of pro-sex professors like Linda Williams and Laura Kipnis, Ford's usually mellow, self-deprecating tone turns angry.

"I loathe political correctness, I loathe pieties, particularly coming from the porn industry," he growls. "It's a filthy industry. I'm not going to take First Amendment lessons from whores. I'm not going to take sociological lessons and psychological insights about the human condition from pretentious pornographers. This PC academicized femme-porn boosting approach nauseates me. It's a laugh. Women do not buy this stuff. Men buy this stuff, generally single men. The whole purpose of porn is for men to jack off. It does not have entertainment, political or artistic value. It's lowbrow hard-on fuel, period."

Surprisingly, Ford professes respect for feminist porn stars and directors, but he thinks they distort the true face of the business. "Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle, Jane Hamilton and Gloria Leonard are all intelligent, thoughtful, kind and considerate. They're among the better persons in the industry. But as pornographers they count for zero. Their product does not sell. They do not add a distinctive wrinkle to porn that opens up a new market. The femme porn market is a myth, a nice-guy front that the industry presents to the public."

Porn's boosters assume that the libido needs to be liberated, and that human nature -- when not perverted by repression -- is inherently good. Ford, on the other hand, is steeped in the Judeo-Christian idea that people are wicked and need to keep their sinful impulses in check. "The study of porn shows that men are just bad news, and that the primary task facing society is what do you do with the men," Ford says. "Whenever men have been able to, they've raped en masse. What you see in mainstream hardcore pornography is simply an acting out of what your father, boyfriend, husband, brother or son thinks about much of the time. The more time I've spent in the porn industry, the more reverence I have for Judaism and for the Judeo-Christian tradition of forcing the male sexual genie into the marital bottle."

To the outside world, Ford is both a porn insider and someone who shares the values of Middle America, and he's routinely trotted out to bash the industry. He acted as a tour guide for a Weekly Standard writer doing a satirical piece about the World Pornography Conference, a congress of pro-porn academics and pornographers held last year in L.A. He's appeared on "The Fox Files," "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Jerry Springer Show," cheerfully adding his voice to the mainstream chorus of salacious fascination and outraged condemnation. "I'm happy to be used by people who want to bash the porn industry. I don't think it's something that I need in any way to protect. By its very nature, almost everyone who dislikes the porn industry can't spend that much time around it. Only a twisted multiple-personality person like myself can do that, so I'm happy to play along."

At the same time, there is probably some validity to Ford's views on the porn industry -- he's so transparent in his self-criticism, so brutally honest about himself, that it gives him a certain credibility. Whatever his agenda is, at least he's up front about it. Even Jacobs agrees with some of Ford's conclusions. "I never met a more collectively dysfunctional lot of people in my life than during my seven years in the business," says Jacobs. "The mainstream entertainment industry is neurotic. People in porn are partially psychotic."

Says Mike South, "I think Luke's been very good for this business. He has thrown open a lot of doors and shined light on questionable people and questionable business practices. Not much of anything in this business escapes Luke. I trust the majority of what he writes." Indeed, says South, the fact that Ford is so critical of the industry sometimes means that those inside it take him more seriously. "It makes him, believe it or not, more credible. There are a lot of people in the business who are far from evil, a lot of good people. But there are evil people in this business, no question. If Luke says everyone in the business is wonderful, he's just another fucking industry apologist. Instead, he calls it like he sees it."

In fact, South thinks that Ford is getting over on all the porn outsiders who take him seriously because his religious views mirror their own. "I wouldn't say it's 100 percent schtick," says South, "but at least 50 percent of it is. What he is trying to do there is to echo the feelings of people reading his site. He's doing what he does best, trying to disarm them and fit in. Don't you think he is smart enough to be playing these people?"

Ford is comforting to outsiders because he's willing to give up the dirt on the porn business while professing to hate himself for being so close to it -- he makes readers feel like he wishes he could live in the dull, mainstream world with the rest of us. But South believes that Ford's self-loathing is just part of his game. "I don't think he hates himself at all," says South. "Quite the contrary. I think sometimes he goes home and thinks about the things that have happened and he laughs at the people in this business, because they're so easily duped." salon.com | July 13, 1999

The Forward - July 16, 1999

Conservative Crush: Luke Ford, the politically conservative convert to Judaism who is known as the Matt Drudge of the pornography business, has the hots for Wendy Shalit, the young Jewish woman who is the author of "A Return to Modesty."

"Last time we talked," writes Michelle Goldberg in the July 13 edition of the online magazine Salon, "he had passed the afternoon skinny-dipping with X-rated actresses Kendra Jade and Shelle Pearson, but he was still mooning over a recent encounter with the poster girl for virtue and virginity. ‘Published in Commentary at only 19,’ he said dreamily. ‘I was really curious to see what she looked like, so I went to her reading. She’s a little cutie, I kind of fancied her. I think we’d make a good couple – Miss Modesty and Mr. Pornography.’"

Mr. Ford recently published his own book, "A History of X"; perhaps an impish matchmaking bookstore owner will schedule a joint reading so Mr. Ford and Ms. Shalit can meet.

From the August 19, 1999 issue of Rolling Stone:

"Porn attracts a wacky element," Luke Ford says. "Case A: Luke Ford." Since April 1998, Ford, a thirty-three-year-old convert to Orthodox Judaism, has been writing a daily Web column covering the triple-X industry (lukeford.com). Ford exposes drug use, mob connections and murder plots, and details the operatic dramas of porn stars' daily lives. Sometimes the column is about little more than Ford's fascination with his own life. He posts naked pictures of himself cavorting with porn actresses, and when his stepmom sent him a letter calling him "devil possessed," he put it on his site. (Ford's father, a Christian evangelist, brands Luke "mentally unstable" as a result of a head injury he suffered as a teen.)

Though Ford considers pornography "destructive and immoral," he also brags about having directed porn movies. "I actually directed people to commit explicit acts of sexual intercourse," he says. "And what's worse, I had [an actress] blowing me while I was delivering the introduction to the pornographic tape I made."

Ford is not exactly Bob Woodward, or even Matt Drudge, when it comes to journalistic scruples. He has been caught plagiarizing news items from trade publications. He has erroneously labeled certain porn stars as HIV carriers, and he recently charged that Gene Ross, a rival internet porn columnist, had been arrested for exposing himself to schoolchildren, though Ford now claims the piece was a "parody."

When the leaders of the top adult video and Internet companies gathered at a secretive conference in Cancun, Mexico, in the spring, Ford was a prime topic. The owner of a chain of adult stores [Edward Wedelstedt] was reportedly heard saying not only that Ford is a "menace to society" but "no one should worry about him anymore - Luke's going to end up as a spot on the pavement."

Death threats notwithstanding, everybody in the adult business reads the column. The secret to his success? "People in the porn business are extremely self-involved," says Michael Louis Albo, executive editor of Hustler Erotic Video Guide. "Luke angers them, but they love reading about themselves in his column."

Luke Ford Suffers For Our Sins

I received issue ten of "Adults Only" Panik magazine today. The cover, which pictures a busty babe having her tummy licked by a Christlike figure, screams "Jim Goad [who writes regularly to NiceJewishGirl]...Richard Ramirez, Berlin Lust, Necro Cannibalism and so much more."

Panik's editorial statement reads: "Panik magazines doesn't encourage anyone to commit murder, rape, torture, massacre or promote any criminal activities. Most opinions expressed here-in are for entertainment and information purposes only, and Panik will not be held responsible for your actions. If you're under 18, run ask our mother the permission to read this magazine..."

The piece on me runs on pages six and seven under the headline, "Luke Ford Suffers For Your Sins - A candid interview with the leading purveyor of gossip on the skin trade."

Rodger Jacobs writes:

The command center for Luke Ford's suicide mission against the adult entertainment industry is a dank bungalow in Beverly Hills, a stone's throw away from the headquarters of Larry Flynt Publications. It is from this small and cramped bunker that Ford, the heretic son of a Christian evangelist, lobs his poisonous grenades filled with scurrilous gossip against the stars, producers, directors, and distributors of skin flicks via his website at www.lukeford.com.

Someday Luke Ford - described by The Weekly Standard as "a kind of shaggy-haired, acid-washed Brad Pitt [who] serves as the industry's Matt Drudge" - will be silenced, either by voluntary exclusion, banishment from the business he so despises, or worse. But until that fateful day the Australian-born hellion remains the most visible sniper in a lone shooting spree against easy targets. For two years now Luke Ford has shaken the insulated establishment of the XXX trade by daring to expose their dark underside - as if it wasn't already understood on a pandemic level that porn attracts "scum bags, dishonest types, showmen, scam artists, prisoners, and career criminals."

Ford's "report now, verify later" style of gossip mongering has caused him to inherit a multitude of harsh critics, including porn journalist Gene Ross of Adult Video News, who, in a 1998 editorial, dubbed Ford "a pen-wielding Rosemary's Baby...a keyboard vigilante with a penchant for a hanging. Ford...chooses to essay the role of some bow-wielding William Tell figure whose quest for truth and justice is achieved by methods best understood by the Ku Klux Klan."

A devout convert to the Jewish faith who feels "a strong attraction to pornography and sin, and to the flight from moral responsibility," Luke Ford is a human Rubik's cube, a complex maze of dazzling colors and contradictory schemes that rarely match up. At times he dutifully plays the role of a self-appointed messiah, a weeping martyr wandering through the burning desert of sin and damnation with bleeding blisters on his bare feet. In contrasting moments he seems hedonistically immersed in the world of bare flesh and writhing orgasms, a fallen angel enjoying the lusty delights of human existence.

And like every writer seeking validation, particularly internet scribes, Luke Ford sat down and wrote a book.

Prometheus Books accepted accepted Ford's challenge to the limits of his own audacity by agreeing to release his self-indulgent polemic, A History of X, upon the world. The book flap hails A HIstory of X as "an in-depth comprehensive history of cinematic pornography," and hilariously salutes Ford as "the best known source on the contemporary world of pornography."

The critics don't share the lavish praise of Luke's own publishers. The January 28 1999 issue of Publisher's Weekly hacked into Luke's book, asserting that it achieves "neither coherence nor climax...most disturbing of all, Ford doesn't appear to be especially well-informed on his topic." One magazine editor preferring to remain anonymous confided to met hat he was "a little aghast that Prometheus let this book slip through...it has no logical structure whatsoever." Stylistic criticisms aside, A History of X is striking a chord with readers, ranking number 35 on Ingram Books list of the Top 50 requested pop culture titles for the week of June 14, 1999...

It is with an odd mixture of pride and revulsion that I call Luke Ford my friend. He can be kind, affable, and keenly intelligent while possessing all the nasty traits of a venomous snake who bites simply for the sake of striking out at something - in other words I have been the victim of his poison pen. What follows is an interview with a confused messianic prophet who I sincerely hope does not end up crucified on a cross of his own invention.

RJ: (1) How do you react to some of the hostile critical reaction your expose of the adult industry has received?

LF: I think the bad reviews the book has received are largely deserved. It is poorly written. Most of the original information in it was cut out by my editor for being defamatory, libelous, gossipy, etc… This is my first published book. It is an interesting process.

RJ: (2) Why do you think there has been so little literary output about the adult business? Because it is such a low down scummy impolite subject to write about, so nice people stay far away. Having anything to do with porno, quite properly, carries social contagion. You are tarred, forever, with the muck of a sinful industry.

RJ: (3) What compelled you to make the sex business the focus of your journalism?

LF: The primary reason was professional - it had not been done, at least not since Sinema in 1974. I wanted to write about something that people would buy to read, and thus thought a history of X would be popular. I was right. The other reason was personal. I personally am interested in sex, and the sex industry. I feel a strong attraction to pornography, to sin, and to the flight from moral responsibility, and ultimately, God.

RJ: (4) You seem obsessed with colorful tales of Mafia involvement in porn. Do you believe that organized crime still exterts a strong influence?

LF: I think it still exerts an influence. I think one valid perspective on the porn industry is to view organized porn as organized crime. Porn attracts the same people as organized crime - drug addicts, drug smugglers, psychopaths, scum bags, dishonest types, showmen, scam artists, prisoners, career criminals… The legality of porn depends upon community standards, and these are always shifting.

RJ: (5) You cover the infamous Traci Lords scandal in your book. Don't you believe that it was Traci who victimized the industry --- considering she willfully faked her I.D. in order to appear in porn --- rather than the other way around?

LF: In Judaism, a child becomes a man at age 13. I hold Traci Lords responsible for her shenanigans, for the negative consequences she inflicted on people's lives and on porn. So yes, I believe Traci victimized porn, rather than the other way around. I feel funny using that language however. I feel that porn attracts unethical types like Traci. So saying Traci victimized porno is like saying Henry Hill victimized the Mafia. Porn deserves Traci Lords and Linda Lovelace and their ilk.

RJ: (6) How do you feel about Linda Lovelace's cries of victimization in her book "Ordeal'? Shouldn't these stories be taken on a case-by-vase basis, rather than handed down as blanket indictments against the business?

LF: The public's perception of porn as a form of contagion, moral, spiritual and physical, is basically correct. While on the surface there's nothing unethical or immoral about consenting adults filming consenting adults in consensual legal behavior, the consequences of porn, like those of homosexuality and other sins, are profoundly destructive and hence immoral. Porn is another form of rebellion against God. Porn is anti-God, and in the final analysis, God is the Creator, the source of life and of right and wrong. He is the repository of meaning. So while Traci Lords and Linda Lovelace are Very Big Liars, I have no problem with the public's kneejerk blanket indictment of porn as an immoral business. I agree with that. By the way, I view Hollywood, TV, teacher and lawyer unions, much of the Democratic Party, etc as even more destructive. I believe that there are forces for good in this society (churches, charity groups) and forces for evil. Porn is a force for ill, for both the individual user and producer, and for his society.

RJ: (7) By your own admission your are not a regular consumer of porn. How do you feel qualified to write about a business that you apparently have such little affection toward?

LF: I despise the particularly American preoccupation with credentials. That I've made a living for two years off my writing makes me a writer. That enough people visit my website and patronize its advertisers is all the "qualification" I need to write about porn. Or any subject. I see no need for a writer to like his subject, be it baseball or movies or porno. Empathy with one's subject is not necessarily better than lack of empathy for one's subject.

RJ: (8) Has porn permanently settled into the popular culture or is it just a passing phase?

LF: The pornographic male imagination, which produces pornography, has been with us always… The amount of physical pornography in a society depends on its laws and mores and these will vary. If America undergoes a religious revival, porn will play a much smaller role in pop culture.

(9) Honestly now: is there anyone in the adult business that you truly admire? And if so, why?

LF: Yes. I really like AVN publisher Paul Fishbein. I think he is a mentch. And I also like VCA owner Russ Hampshire.

(10) Because of incendiary material you have posted on your website you have received death threats and numerous threats of litigation for slander. Would it be fair to say that Luke Ford is a man who lives his life in constant fear?

LF: I live my life in frequent fear - of myself. Of my own moral weakness. My biggest struggles are with my evil inclinations. Dealing with the porno world and the outer world is much easier than dealing with my inner world. My problems are not in porn but in myself.

12/99

The Truth Is Out There

British journalist Anthony Haden-Guest writes in the December 1999 issue of the British edition of GQ magazine on page 52, under the headline: "Luke Ford. The truth is out there...but only if you are over 18."

On top of the headline is a picture of my website, including a picture of me holding my gun. The text of Haden-Guest's article says:

Luke Ford's father is a Christian evangelist. He himself is a convert to Orthodox Judiasm. For a career he runs lukeford.com, a gossip column on the Net which goes, with Byzantine detail, into the porno world - who is HIV positive, which producer has written bad cheques (and to whom), and who is trying to persuade which porno performer to do precisely which athletic stunt with who. His parents are not impressed.

"They're thoroughly ashamed. Aghast. Appalled. Disgusted. I've got a letter from my father which says I'm going to come to a very bitter end and wind up in hell unless I change my direction. My mother and my sister are just as appalled."

Lukeford.com has published some strong stuff. He posted a story that one porno star was HIV-positive, posted a recantation and then made a new posting which said he had been right all the time. And it hasn't just been porno people either. He has published lists of gay movie stars (it's a long list). And some hackers recently blasted Ford's systems, causing thousands of dollars damage.

Does he have any idea who they were? "I don't. I've made so many enemies that it's hard to keep track."

According to Ford, porn plays only a tiny part in his social life. "I don't mention that I write on pornography when I mix generally," he says. "I spend most of my spare time within Judaism. I'm a religious Jew so I'm quite happy with my religion and that is where I spend most of my time. I regard the pornography industry, like most people, as kind of being unclean and a source of contagion. And I generally keep myself very much at arm's length from it."

But hasn't he actually been involved in porn himself?

"I made one pornographic film," he admits. "And I have appeared in about ten, always in non-sex roles. But, yes, it is a contradiction. I do not live up to the ideals of my religion. I do a lot of things that contradict each other and appear paradoxical. I've kind of made peace with that."

And yet there was one major contradiction, in particular?

"Right! I was getting a blow job, but it wasn't on screen. I was standing in front of the camera and she was blowing me. I was moving her back and forth, but you can't actually see my little fellow." Charming.

From the January 7, 2000 edition of The Forward.com:

Porn Muckraker and Son of a Preacher Man

Luke Ford Holds Forth on Converting, Dennis Prager and the Trials of the Triple-X Industry

By NANCY BEILES

Luke Ford has identity issues. Depending on the day and his mood, he might liken himself to Jesus, to the prodigy described in Alice Miller's psychological classic "The Drama of the Gifted Child," or even to Hitler. Most of the time he's kidding around, but it's hard to know because like the best private eyes or con artists, Mr. Ford can glide into the most incongruous personas. His two favorites these days are committed Jew and pornography gossipmonger.

The son of a prominent Seventh-day Adventist evangelist, Mr. Ford, 33, converted to Judaism seven years ago. Soon afterward, he gave up his dream of becoming an actor and has since made his living chronicling the ins and outs of the lives of porn stars for his online gossip magazine about the adult film industry.

How does a real commitment to Judaism coexist with a preoccupation with the sex trade? Even Mr. Ford isn't sure it can. "I accept that they don't reconcile," Mr. Ford tells the Forward. "Judaism is unambiguously opposed to pornography. How I morally justify it, though, is that I'm writing about pornography rather than writing pornography."

A quick glance at his web site, www.lukeford.com, will yield profiles of porn stars, behind-the-scenes information about productions and bits of porn history, such as how the availability of VCRs helped pornographers expand their audience to those disinclined to visit triple-X theaters. Mr. Ford, who is also the author of the book "A History of X" (Prometheus, 1999), says he's like a crime reporter, exposing some of the secrets of this dark world. Sometimes, Mr. Ford seems to be arguing that he's performing a real public service -- such as when he describes his most famous dispatch, a gossipy item that a porn star was HIV positive, which turned out to be true. (In this case, Mr. Ford is proud of his role in protecting the actor's potential co-stars from infection.) But, in writing about porn, Mr. Ford sometimes turns X-rated himself, providing scene-by-scene descriptions of adult films, for example, and it's hard to know where the line between pornography and writing about pornography really lies.

Mr. Ford himself is aware of the murkiness of the delineation. He does his best to keep his pornography connections under wraps when he's at one of the several Los Angeles-area synagogues where he attends weekly services or at his regular Torah class. "If someone mentions what I do in a religious environment, I blush," Mr. Ford says. "If people want to hurt or embarrass me they mention what I do."

If pornography is a hidden presence in Mr. Ford's religious life, religion -- both the one he practices and the one he left behind -- is a prominent thread woven throughout his work. In one particularly rambling item, Mr. Ford essentially rewrites the Book of Matthew, casting himself as Jesus and the Romans as his competitors from the industry-trade publication Adult Video News. ("Luke withdrew to the Hollywood Hills to be with his disciples...Blessed are thee that read lukeford.com for they shall be enlightened. Woe unto you, AVN scribes.") After one porn star became so despondent after reading a lukeford.com dispatch about herself that she threatened suicide, Mr. Ford wrote a piece promising not to rely on gossip and explained the decision by quoting from the chapter in Leviticus that warns against the evil tongue. ("Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among my people.") "Luke has a dualistic personality," says a friend of Mr. Ford's who used to write screenplays for adult films, Rodger Jacobs. "He's very well-informed on theology, but he's also fascinated by pornography and the effects of sin on the human soul."

Perhaps Mr. Ford's two-track life-style isn't as unusual as it seems. "Human beings are compartmentalized as it is, and we see a lot of strange behavior in people who are not of one material," says Rabbi Harold Schulweis of the Conservative Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif. "David, the author of the Psalms, was also known as an adulterer and murderer," Rabbi Schulweis says.

Mr. Ford's interest in both theology and sex dates back to his youth when his father, Desmond, who gave searing sermons about sin and redemption, was training his son for a life as a Christian missionary. After peeking at his first Playboy magazine at age 13, Mr. Ford slowly started to move away from his father's teachings and began to question the Christian emphasis on the next world and being saved. "Heavenly salvation didn't speak to me," he says. "Jesus didn't speak to me. He was too humble, too self-effacing."

Having rejected the ministry, Mr. Ford went on to study economics at the University of California at Los Angeles, where for the first time he met Jews and began listening to a radio show hosted by Dennis Prager, the conservative Jewish commentator. It was during this time, Mr. Ford says, that he started to see Judaism as a practical blueprint for endowing this world with higher principles. "It's a step-by-step way of making a better world," he says. "It's the best way to morally improve people."

Ever conscious of his childhood history, Mr. Ford notes that the intellectual bent of Judaism appealed to the part of him that had been awed by his father's preaching. "I was very enamored of people who could speak well, who were rhetorically brilliant," he says. And thus began the several years of studying Jewish principles and teachings that culminated in his conversion in 1992.

"I try to be a serious Jew," Mr. Ford says, noting that he keeps kosher, doesn't work on the Sabbath and regularly attends services. But behind the trappings of religiosity, lies the tension from his continued work in the adult film industry. Every night, as Mr. Ford describes it, he settles down to sleep on the blanket-strewn floor of the Los Angeles studio where he lives and works. There, he is watched over by twin totems -- on his left, a pile of books about Jewish theology and on his right, a stack of books about the pornography business.

Luke Ford In 'The Scotsman'

From the Scottish paper 'The Scotsman,' (3/28/00) an article on internet gossip. Here's an excerpt:

Drudge can afford to maintain his lofty indifference, meanwhile, because with Monica Lewinsky he broke one of the three biggest scoops in the history of internet reporting. The others, a story detailing a mass outbreak of AIDS in the Californian pornography industry and allegations that Beverley Hills 90210 creator Darren Star left the body of a naked teenage overdose victim in a New York hotel room in 1995, appeared on the adult gossip site LukeFord.com. Although these tales raised enough attention and ire to provoke Marc Star, the producer’s pornographer brother, into physically attacking Ford at a porn convention, they remain a droplet when compared to the oceans of information pumping through the internet gossip scene.

“The Darren Star story is one of the few examples where the true potential of online gossip reporting has been explored,” says Kramer. “That started as a few lines in the newsgroups, expanded on to LukeFord.com and then made it into the pages of the international press. But the fact remains that few of these so-called columnists have ever broken a real story except Matt Drudge, and even with the Lewinsky thing he was only leaking the fact that Newsweek had unearthed the tale and decided not to run it. Most of this stuff is either culled from the print media or is just a string of unverifiable rumours thrown against a wall to see which ones stick.

USA Today, August 2, 2000

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti323.htm

PALO ALTO, Calif. — A decision is expected as early as this week in one of the Internet's most intriguing disputes, involving the ownership of the name Sex.com.

"This case has it all: bankruptcy fraud, pornography, forgery, offshore holdings, deep pockets, dirty tricks, depositions in foreign cities and a bitter dispute over rights to a multimillion-dollar domain name," says Ellen Rony, co-author of The Domain Name Handbook.

The coveted Sex.com name has helped Stephen Michael Cohen, 52, build an adult entertainment network that some porn executives say is worth at least $250 million. But Silicon Valley businessman Gary Kremen, 36, who made a small fortune founding online dating service Match.com, says he owns the name — and that Cohen cheated him out of millions.

Cohen countersued Kremen and his lawyer, and filed a $50 million libel lawsuit against Luke Ford, an online gossip columnist who focuses on the sex industry and has written about the case.

No one expects Cohen to back down.

"He intimidates a lot of people in an industry filled with outlaws," Ford says.

10/00 www.latribe.com

Meehna Goldsmith writes:

Luke Ford is an average looking Australian ex-patriot. In fact you might find him attractive with his longish brown hair, tall build and sincere blue eyes. But Ford wanders in a fringe world most of us were trained by Mommy to abhor: the sleazy demi-monde of pornography.

Though Ford isn't involved in the making of porn movies, (though he does cop to sleeping with porn stars in the past), he makes his money from the industry. Ford is a porn journalist. Still, Ford insists, "The last thing I set out to do was be a porn gossip columnist."

Even more unusual than Ford's chosen profession is the role religion plays in his life. Raised by an evangelical Christian theologian father, Ford eventually converted to Orthodox Judaism. Every day, twice daily, Ford davens (Yiddish for praying) at different temples around town. And he's not only a convert, he's an ardent proselytizer. He invited this lapsed Jew to join him at services.

Many people write about porn, but only a few are respected in their field. Ford leads the pack along with Gene Ross and Susie Bright. In fact, Ford did what in the Jewish religion is deemed a mitzvah (a gift) when he identified porn star Marc Wallice as HIV positive. "I outed him as positive and saved lives," said Ford.

Ford's gutsy coverage wasn't appreciated in certain circles. He's been banned from places including Larry Flynt Publications and the Hustler store for his criticism of the porn industry.

Despite voluntarily immersing himself in pornography, Ford is very confused about its role in society. "I'm not sure whether [pornography] should be banned or not. It diminishes the soul and is spiritually harmful."

So how do you reconcile Ford's seemingly sincere religious beliefs with his ties to pornography? Well, that's one question Ford hasn't figured out. He admits to being "fucked up" and unabashedly describes how he manages his contorted psyche: "I've been in therapy for years. I pray, go to synagogue. I study Torah. I read self-help books, meditate. I try to do battle with my demons."

The obvious answer is for Ford to get out of the porn game. At this point in his career Ford says, "I loathe [pornography] viscerally. It's increasingly repellant to me." In addition, he relates how his chosen job has alienated him from his religious community, friends, Torah observance, family and God.

So what's stopping him from putting down the pen? Vanity. Besides needing porn to make a living, Ford is driven by, in his own words, a "need for attention, to feel number one at what he's doing, his need for independence and his need for free expression."

As we finish dinner, Ford looks off into space and states his wish to quit the whole business and move to Israel. He wants to live on a Kibbutz and cleanse his soul. Until he does, you can continue to count on honest coverage of the porn industry by this complicated man on Luke Ford.Com. He also contributes to Cllixx and Stroke magazines.

When asked how he wants to be remembered, Ford replies, "Unique, funny, morally courageous at times. Interesting."

From Wired.com, Noah Shactman reports 10/17/00:

NEW YORK -- The juiciest porn site on the Web doesn't feature silicon-endowed bimbos, paper-thin plots or money shots.

Instead, triple-X aficionados flock to Luke Ford's domain for gossip about the porn industry.

Ford's favorite targets: nudie-flick moguls looking to run from their sleazy pasts and shady business deals. Among Ford's bits, leading porn producer Vivid Video has "operated as a whorehouse for years. People have gotten contracts by having sex with (Vivid production chief) Marci Hirsch," Ford claims.

Ford also alleges that Ken Guarino, president of Metro Home Video -- a production house recently de-listed from the Nasdaq -- was a Gambino crime family associate.

Eye-popping allegations like these haven't made Ford many friends in the smut business. But they've spawned scads of copycat sites such as StunningCurves and Gene Ross, and made Ford's missives must-reads for everyone involved in the industry.

Ford's rise is only one example of gossip's increasing importance online. Industries from fashion to media to music to technology to bodybuilding all have their online rumor mills. Even straight-laced, mainstream news sites, including CNN.com, are trumpeting saucy gossip columns.

"This is a naturally breezy medium, perfect for gossip," said Larry Pryor, executive editor of Online Journalism Review. "It's free-wheeling. When I'm writing on my website, I don't have to get three sources to support every statement I make."

This week, such muckraking heavyweights as Michael Musto (the Village Voice), Liz Smith (the New York Post), and George Rush and Joanna Malloy (the New York Daily News) will join their online counterparts, Salon.com's Amy Reiter, Foxnews.com's Roger Friedman and MSNBC.com's Jeannette Walls to dissect "the state of gossip in the digital age" in a forum sponsored by eYada.com.

Unlike offline dish, Web gossip doesn't orbit around the Donald Trumps, Pamela Anderson Lees and Prince Williams of the universe. Instead, sites like Ford's, devoted to a single industry -- "verticals," in industry parlance -- each dig dirt on local luminaries, often unknown outside of their subculture.

"Verticals get really far down into their subjects. And when you get that far down, you invariably wind up dealing in the world of rumor," Pryor said.

No matter what their beat, gossips rely on tips and tidbits from an array of sources. Like Matt Drudge and Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles before him, Ford turns his site into patchwork of comments and quips from a cross section of the carnally inclined.

One post, from porn star Asia Carrera, describes her new 9-to-5 job designing menus for adult DVDs. Another, from "Aghast," offers an opinion on aging XXX king Peter North: "His distance is shorter, his volume is down and his aim, well, some things never change."

Ford says: "I'm totally dependent on my readers talking back to me. There's a seamless integration between myself and them. We're a team."

Malloy, the New York Daily News gossip who hosts a dirt-digging webcast on eYada.com, is establishing a similar bond with her Internet audience: "Online, I get tips from listeners every day." Recently, a fan alerted her to a death threat Limp Bizkit front-man Fred Durst made to a young rocker reluctant to sign to Durst's label, Interscope.

But Ford's writer-reader interactions go deeper than scoop assists. What plants Lukeford.com firmly in the realm of the bizarre are the religious currents flowing through the site's lurid torrent. Born an evangelical Christian, Ford converted to Judaism -- "I'm an embarrassment to myself and to the Jewish people," he sighs -- and now attends synagogue daily.

On the site, Ford is as quick to expose his beliefs as porn starlets are to bare their assets on film. A recent item on a staff change at Vivid Video, for example, quickly morphed into a Talmudic-centered riff on the morality of the death penalty.

"Most of the writing on my site is more intelligent than what's in The New York Times," Ford boasts.

Of course, later in the same conversation, he said, "If someone tells me (Adult Video News founder) Paul Fishbein sticks bananas up his anus in an on-the-record interview, I'll happily publish it. I'll put up anything someone's willing to put their name on."

Not surprisingly, these lax posting policies have gotten Ford into trouble more than once; there are three active lawsuits pending against him. Blue actress Christy Lake is going after Ford for displaying grainy pictures which allegedly show Lake having sex with a dog. John Holmes' widow and fellow porn player, Laurie, is suing for posting a quote from a book that says that Laurie used to turn tricks on the set. And Sex.com is seeking revenge for amorphous "false statements."

No wonder, then, that anonymous slams are off-limits on Ford's site. He's held back, for instance, from publishing stories about "financial irregularities" at Vivid Video. "I don't have the backup yet," Ford said.

Ford's internal governors on what should or should not be published are unlikely to slow his pace for long. Instead, what may ultimately stop Ford's talk is the fear of turning from gossip's author into its subject.

A summer Jewish singles trip to Israel -- an ecstatic excursion, usually, for those as religiously minded as Ford -- proved terrifying. "My greatest fear was that someone would find out what I do and tell the whole group," he said. "Baruch Hashem (thank God), no one found out."

10/26/00

http://www.sfbg.com/AandE/Frequencies/64.html

Porners Must Live

Josh Kun writes a column called "Frequencies" for SFBG.com (what's that?). His latest is about my favorite topic - me. Here it is:

LUKE FORD HAS been attending a new Orthodox synagogue. A few Saturdays ago, some of his new friends invited him over for a Sukkot dinner. "It was grand," Ford recently wrote. "But would these people who I yearn to fit in with still talk to me if they knew about LF.com?"

LF.com is LukeFord.com, the heavily hit porn culture Web site Ford runs that contains everything from porn-star bios and daily industry gossip to Ford's ranty, wanna-be-scholarly essays on porn racism, come shots, and porn feminism, along with excerpts from his book, History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film. In porn circles, he's infamous as a loose-cannon chatterbox – the Matt Drudge of gang bangs, the Arianna Huffington of double penetration ("porn's biggest yenta," according to the Village Voice) – and is best known for two controversial postings: listing the real names of more than 300 porn stars and announcing the HIV status of a major porn figure.

Ford has written of that outing as "a mitzvah." From what I can tell by scrolling through more than 400 pages of text on his voluminous site, it's been the only time when Ford's split personality – the profiteering porn junkie who studies the Talmud, rests on Sabbath, keeps kosher, tacks "Live in truth, Don't lie, God sees all" to his mirror, and even gets shrunk by an Orthodox therapist – wasn't involved in a destructive psychological war of spiritual and moral contradiction. The story of the Web's most influential pornophile is nearly unbelievable: the son of an Australian Christian evangelist, Ford converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1993 – a "porn-again Jew" in Fordspeak – under the theological influence of right-wing Jewish talk-radio demagogue Dennis Prager.

As a result, Ford's site is not really a porn site at all. It's a daily chronicle of how devout Judaism and devout pornology play themselves out in one man's endless public arguments with himself. The basic premise: how can someone devote his professional life to an industry he believes is, in Ford's own words, "profoundly destructive and hence immoral ... another form of rebellion against God."

Ford is a religious Jew, not a cultural one, yet it is cultural Jews – "non-Jewish Jews," he calls them – with whom Ford's site is most invested, specifically all those non-Jewish Jews who get it on and buy and sell the getting-it-on in the porn industry. Like all of his polemics, Ford's essay on these Jews is a rambling collage of theories, interviews, and uncited historical references that never really coalesce into an identifiable argument. Ford is less of an opinion maker and more of an archivist-chronicler, his agenda always buried beneath layers of deferral and ambiguity.

In the piece, Ford turns the Jews-run-Hollywood riff into a Jews-run-porn riff, listing off the secret Hebraic roots of all the key players – Randy "Andy Abrams" West, Barbara "Stacy Mitnick" Dare. He also feeds the age-old anti-Semitic connection that Hitler turned into grounds for genocide in Mein Kampf – Jews as dirty, parasitic merchants of smut, disease, and moral pollution – by emphasizing the high number of Jewish porn publishers throughout smut's history.

On his list is Samuel Roth, the prison-friendly publisher of the '30s and one of the featured subjects of Jay Gertzman's new book, Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-40. Like Ford, Roth was a religious Jew, but after convincing himself that his fellow Jews in publishing were out to destroy him, he wrote the 1934 manual for Jewish self-hate, Jews Must Live. Here Roth masked his disgust for himself by lambasting – in a screed worthy of Henry Ford – a Jewish publishing cabal, whom he accused of infecting pure culture with prurience and depravity (anti-Semitic groups have kept the book in print). Ironically enough, two years before Roth went anti-Semite, he was put next to Hitler in a Vanity Fair article ("We Nominate for Oblivion") for being a pornographer.

Roth was torn apart by his faith in Judaism and Zionism (he often went by his Hebrew name Mishillim), his dream of being part of the literary avant-garde (he put out unauthorized excerpts of Ulysses), and his reality as a mail-order porn huckster. His contradictions and struggles weren't at all unlike those that now plague Ford ("I will never fit in anywhere ... until I change my moral character"), with the crucial difference that Roth's porn trade momentarily turned him into a self-hating Jew and Ford's Judaism has turned him into a self-hating porner. LukeFord.com is his Porners Must Live, a confused filth-or-faith confession of his desire for the things he hates and his hate for the things he desires. Roth got one shot with Jews Must Live; Ford updates his site daily.

The Most Hated Man In Porn

From http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,40829,00.html

Noah Shachtman writes for Wired.com 1/2/01:

Luke Ford may now be the most hated man in Internet porn.

The Web-based, adult industry gossip monger, known for his salacious accusations and traditionalist Jewish religious views, has never been triple-X's Mr. Popular.

But ever since Ford started going after RJB Telcom -- the Internet's leading pay-for-porn firm, named one of the "Top 10 Dot-Cons" by the Federal Trade Commission for alleged billing shenanigans -- the long-simmering acrimony against Ford has heated to a boil.

"Hey Luke if I ever see you in Public...I hope you bring that BIG gun...your gonna [sic] need it," JohnIP posted on the Netpond porn webmasters' bulletin board.

Rich ("RB") Botto, RJB's chieftain, is less effusive in his threats. He wrote, "I'm an Italian with a long memory. Enough said."

Before its Halloween run-in with the law, RJB -- which operates the Kara's Adult Playground, Major Melons and Fetish Hotel sites, among others, was regarded by many -- Ford included -- as one of the most upright, best-run online smut factories.

Then the FTC accused RJB of over-billing customers' credit card accounts by nearly $48 million. The company was also charged with installing a dialer program onto customers' PCs that uses an international number for Internet access -- numbers in the Caribbean and Madagascar were popular choices. RJB would make money on the new phone rates, which went as high as $7.34 per minute.

RJB's lawyer vehemently denied the credit card allegations, saying, "There's been no evidence produced by the FTC of any fraud committed by RJBTelcom or the Bottos."

But RB admitted to using the dialer: "We knew exactly the way it worked.... There was full disclosure to the consumers about how it worked."

This is, apparently, a scam that's becoming all too common. Last Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a fine of $640,000 for AT&T for its role in these types of service-switching practices.

The FTC did worse to RJB, temporarily freezing the company's assets and putting an outside observer in charge.

That meant serious trouble for the thousands of adult webmasters participating in RJB's "Maximum Cash" affiliate program, which paid them about $5 million per month in return for traffic and subscribers sent RJB's way.

Largely small operators -- online porn's mom-and-pop shops, really -- the affiliates depended on the money for their car payments, mortgages and groceries. So when Ford started publicizing RJB's woes, they rallied around their benefactor. Some sent donations to cover legal expenses.

Others got angry.

"Luke, you don't KNOW this industry. You are NOT a part of it.... Stop talking like some authority, when you haven't the first clue," posted Dravyk on Netpond. "RJB was picked on for one reason, they are the biggest and the most successful. Period."

As tension mounted over the next month, Ford continued to publish on the RJB Telcom case. He continued despite getting "more threats on this story than any other" since revealing triple-X star Marc Wallace was HIV positive two years ago. Matters were only made worse when Ford posted accusations that RB rival Ron Levy, proprietor of Cyber Erotica, was somehow behind the FTC's -- and Ford's -- actions. "Lots of webmasters accused me of swallowing Levy's seed," Ford reports.

These and other charges were denied. But airing the allegations further isolated Ford. "Ron was one of the very few persons in the industry who could possibly be called my friend," Ford said.

Meanwhile, RB appeared to regain management of his company's finances through a "stipulated preliminary injunction" with the FTC. The quick return of control was cited as evidence of RJB Telcom's innocence.

"We weren't the perpetrators of fraud, we were the victims of fraud, through affiliates with credit card generators or stolen credit cards," RB said.

Thanks to the FTC deal, RB assured webmasters that the affiliate program payments would resume shortly. Then, Ford posted an analysis of the FTC deal by a law student. Ford's headline: "RJB Telcom Bankrupt in All But Name."

Discretion has never been a Ford strong suit. "I'll put up anything someone's willing to put their name on," he said.

In one of Ford's and RB's dozen or so e-mail exchanges since Halloween, Ford said, "It's my modus operandi. I'm not a businessman. I'm not a conventional journalist. I'm a story teller/entertainer/lunatic."

RB, whose affiliates were freaking out over the loss of their "Maximum Cash," was not exactly impressed with Ford's justification.

"Luke - Warned you before about being irresponsible. In fact I gave you 2 chances. Now, you're shit out of luck. Take care," wrote Botto.

Botto's lawyers demanded Ford retract the "libelous statements." This came just as Ford's legal horizon seemed to be clearing: Porn starlet Christi Lake had just settled her case against Ford for posting pictures that supposedly showed Lake having sex with a dog.

And Laurie Holmes, widow of Boogie Nights-inspiration John Holmes, dropped her lawsuit over an accusation that she used to turn tricks on the set.

Rather than risk another lawsuit, Ford quickly published a retraction.

Ford's friends advised him to make the apology his last words on RJB. "RB is the kind of person who will knock your block off. Because he don't give a fuck. You wouldn't want to bump into him at a trade show," writes a Ford confidant. "He's an Italian. And he's from New York. You know what I mean?"

To which RB replied, "I find this exchange hilarious and yet accurate LOL (laughing out loud)."

RB won't explain what he meant by the note. When asked, he chuckled, and then replied, "I've got no comment on that.... I told Luke he needed to be responsible in his reporting."

Some might take the insinuations as half-serious scare tactics against someone who, earlier this year, showed a bit of a penchant for stereotypes, calling RB a "handsome guido."

Ford has a more nefarious view. "The message is clear: I'm risking my life by writing about RJB," he concluded.

As if being hated by nearly every Web porn operator on Earth wasn't enough.

New York Times Sunday magazine 5/20/01

Frank Rich writes: "Porn even has its own Matt Drudge -- a not-always-accurate Web industry gossip named Luke Ford, who shares his prototype's political conservatism and salacious obsessiveness yet is also, go figure, a rigorously devout convert to Judaism."

Details Magazine, June, 2001

"This is as sleazy a hard-core porno organization as any other," says Luke Ford, the Matt Drudge of the porn industry. "It's just that they're better at putting a good face on it." He does allow that Vivid treats its stars better than any other company. "Women are not spat on in their productions," he says.

The Jerusalem Report, July 30, 2001

Luke Ford has a problem. Actually, the 35-year old Aussie expat has several. But the one we focus on while strolling through L.A.'s Pico-Robertson Orthodox Jewish stronghold is this: How can an apparently sincere convert to Orthodox Judaism secure a place within a community that would never be able tto stomach the way he makes his living - if he were to actually come clean with them about what he does?

Ford covers the pornographic film industry. He interviews performers, producers and distributors; he reports back from shooting sets and trade shows and awards ceremonies; he hangs out with people from the business to elicit the latest "dirt"; when things are quiet, he publishes a running Internet rumination about his own difficulties balancing the demands of an unsavory profession with his own attempts to live an observant life; he has even written a book, "A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film," published in 1999.

Ordinarily, covering a controversial beat, however distasteful, would not present an insurmountable obstacle to gaining acceptance within the Orthodox Jewish community. It would be hard to imagine, for instance, a journalist being barred from polite society because he covers organized crime or the drug trade.

Ford, however, is not your everyday journalist. In fact, some of his philosophical leanings would be hard for anyone to swallow: He often cites the writings of a rabid American neo-Nazi, William Pierce, and views liberalism, communism, socialism, feminism and Freudianism as largely Jewish-instigated afflictions every bit as perfidious as the field he covers.

Asked by a recent visitor to his website how he was able to reconcile his vocation with his identity as an Orthodox Jew, Ford wrote:

"I view my primary Jewish obligation to my work is to do it well. Journalism is an honorable profession. I'm a journalist who writes on pornography. I no more endorse pornography than journalists who write on the Mafia endorse the Mafia. Yes, my website is sponsored by porn companies. So yes, I do make money from porn. That is very troubling from a Jewish perspective. I have no answer to that. A third party does operate all the ads on my site, and I receive a regular weekly check. The third party can sell the ads to whoever will pay."

Although he makes no bones about his own dim view of the burgeoning porn industry and the people associated with it, Ford is not loath to hang out with some of them, commiserate with others, or adopt their smutty terminology. Indeed, he has even appeared as a clothed extra in some of the productions he has written about.

This kind of familiarity with a completely outre milieu could not possibly sit well with his Orthodox friends and associates, some of whom had mentored him and supported his conversion unaware of how he earned his daily bread. There is simply too large a gap between the titillating yet obscure celebration of sexual desire in such Biblical sources as Song of Songs and the mechanistic rutting in Jewish-oriented porn videos like "Debbie Duz Dishes," "Mitzi's Honor" and "The Three Daughters."

And so it should come as no surprise that when the leaders of Young Israel of Century City - where Ford has been studying Talmud on a daily basis - were recently apprised of his profession, they were less than thrilled. As much angered by his misrepresentation of himself as by his website, the rabbis stripped him of his tefillin, handed back a $600-donation and drummed him out of the building.

A New York Times survey of the industry this spring referred to Ford as the "Matt Drudge of porn." Drudge, founder of the The Drudge Report website, gained notoriety when he beat the mainstream media in breaking the Monica Lewinsky story. But while Drudge has parlayed his scoop into paid gigs on TV and radio, Ford has not quite managed to approximate his success. Supported solely by ads, his site brought in a comparatively modest $40,000 last year, and will likely fare the same this year as well. And he lives a spartan existence, spending his nights in a sleeping bag on the floor in a small converted garage in this middle-class Jewish neighborhood. His kitchen consists of a microwave and a hot plate. The tiny apartment is packed with stacks of old magazines; a lone bookshelf contains titles by Jewish radio talk-show host Dennis Prager. A copy of his own book is nowhere to be seen.

Ford's website attracts upwards of 1,600 visitors daily. His running narrative is peppered with e-mails from various industry types and hangers-on who hold forth on their latest gripes and gossip, and fans who can't believe their own good fortune at being able to interact with their heroes on-line. On any given day, readers will find up for discussion such subjects as: Mafia involvement (still an issue, he reports); why the women who perform in the upper-crusty "Vivid" videos so often seem inanimate (partly it's drugs; partly, it's because the company thinks the pose of unavailability is alluring); what the industry hopes to accomplish in an upcoming Free Speech Coalition visit to the California state capitol in Sacramento (making blue films is no longer illegal, and the industry wants it to stay that way); the pros and cons of breast implants, and why it's so hard for a guy like him to find a spouse who is not only more religiously observant than he is, but unfazed by his professional associations - and hot to boot.

Ford also calls upon the services of a host of imaginary characters, whom he uses as agent provocateurs. These include the redoubtable Haim Amalek ( a once-legendary performer and videographer now living quietly on New York's Upper West Side) and deranged starlet Cindy Plenum, who invariably take Ford to task for his journalistic practices, his affinity for Orthodox Judaism, and all the other glaring contradictions he embodies.

The son of Dr. D--mond Ford, am Australian Seventh-Day Adventist theologian who ultimately caused a split in the church over his insistence that its members were no more assured of salvation than any other Christians, Luke Ford seems bent upon emulating his father's propensity for shaking things up. For instance, although warned by his psychotherapist and friends not to do this interview, for fear it might find its way into the hands of members of his synagogue, Ford says he waved them off. "I suppose I just like the attention," he explains.

At 16, Ford saw his first Playboy centerfold. The sight of such unblemished female perfection, he recounts, result in an erotic epiphany. He became a passionate collector of girlie magazines, which he kept buried in the woods outside his house, near Walla Walla, Australia. Before he burned them in a fit of righteous resolve, they were, he acknowledges, very well worn indeed.

During his first year in college, at UCLA, Ford succumbed to chrnoic fatigue syndrome, an affliction, he says, kept him bedridden for six years. He used up his savings searching for a cure, and still regards the disease as a metaphor for his own conflicted existence.

Growing up among Adventists, who Ford says continue to regard Jews as Christ-killers, he never actually met a Jew before entering college. In 9th grade, though, at a Christian day school in Auburn, California, he came across some of Chaim Potok's novels, which he found perplexing. "Judaism," he recalls, "appeared strange and irrelevant. Living in religious ghettos where they perform hundreds of minute commandments, Orthodox Jews showed no sense of mission to the world." Later, though, Ford encountered the work of Jewish radio host and ethicist Prager, and found himself convinced of the efficacy of Judaism as a pathway to a proper, moral existence. As a result, he embarked on a two-year conversion program with an Orthodox rabbi. In May 1992, he became a Jew, (a conversion that has recently been called into question by some local rabbinical leaders).

In 1994, having recovered somewhat from chronic fatigue, Ford took up what he describes as a job offer from Prager as a personal assistant. But the job, and the relationship, fell through; Ford's website mentions that in 1998 he was accused of stalking the man. Ford rejects this, insisting that he had begun an autobiography of Prager during the early 90s, and that although initially cooperative, the talk-show host withdrew his sanction in 1997, and threatened a defamation suit. For his part, Prager doesn't recall having offered Ford a job at all, and says the threatened suit was meant to prevent Ford from publishing copyrighted material on his website.

Shortly after his blowout with Prager and a stint pursuing an acting career, Ford wrote "A History of X," a chronological saga on the genre. "Why porn? I suppose it sort of sums up how I lead my life. I have always had a naughty streak, and I suppose I had a salacious interest in the industry. But primarily, I thgouth this presented an opportunity to distinguish myself. I am now at the top of my profession - even if it's a sleazy profession."

Ford has broken some stories that not only got picked up in the mainstream press, but by identifying a particular porn star who appeared ot have made himself a deliberate vector poitn for a spate of HIV infections, may well have saved lives. His book does a thorough, if somewhat perfunctory and even crude, job of chronicling the industry, and the newsletter doesn't shy away from addressing the moral pitfalls of his profession or its players.

Ford makes the case that however much one might wish to overlook it, porn brings in an awful lot o f money, most of from mainstream, otherwise decent and law-abiding consumers. In the process, "porn chic" - the genre's trappings and aesthetic - has made its way into a variety of media, including film, fashion, TV, advertising and popular music.

Ford's somewhat Gonzo, stream-of-consciousness chronicles, however, have alienated many in the industry, and many producers and distributors now refuse to talk with him, and strive to keep him away from their sets and out of their hair. Yet his self-appointed crusades have done little to win over fellow Jews. Some like Long Island-based journalist Sheldon Ranz, who has also covered the industry, are appalled by his apparent internalization of various anti-Semitic canards in his analysis of the industry. In his website archives, for instance, Ford devotes significant attention to the Jewish role in the evolution of the porn universe, and lists the original Jewish names of legions of performers. Ford insists that pornography constitutes a deliberate attempt by "non-Jewish Jews," alienated from normative Judaism and Christian mores, to undermine Western civilization.

Perhaps most glaring is his fascination with the American Nazi propagandist Dr. Pierce, who claims that Jews dominate pornography so that they can mount an assault on traditional Western mores. "Nazism is my own favorite kind of pornography," Ford explains. "I'd say I find myself agreeing with anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of what Dr. Pierce has to say."

Says one local Jewish observer: "My sense of him is that while he seems very sincere in his religiosity, his socialization, Jewishly, may still be a tad incomplete." But, he says, "there's a saying that the Jews were given the Torah because they needed it most. We are a passionate people, and before receiving the Torah were prone to channel those passions into all kinds of illicit behaviors. By virtue of his conversion, Luke was most certainly at Sinai with the rest of us. But in some ways, he missed out on the ensuing millenia. He may just need a little catch-up time."

Luke says: I thought the piece fair and balanced and funny in places. Here are some minor corrections:

* I have no hot plate.
* I average 7000 visitors a day to my site, 7000 unique IPs hitting my site every day.
* I don't view Freudianism as an affliction
* I sleep on the floor, on a sheet and under blankets but no sleeping bag
* I burned my girlie magazines outside my family's home in Auburn, California
* I got sick my first year at UCLA, but my fourth year in college
* Some Adventists regard Jews as Christ-killers, but perhaps only a minority of Adventists
* Dennis Prager never specifically offered me a job, only mentioned to me in Tampa Bay, in January, 1994, that if I was ever in Los Angeles, he might have work for me.
* Dennis Prager never cooperated in any biography or autobiography of him, nor did I seek or expect his cooperation. In my own autobiography, started in the early 90s, I mentioned Prager's affect on my life. And these scribblings later led me to start www.DennisPrager.net in early 1998, a website unaffiliated with Prager. I gave the domain name to Dennis in August 2001.
* Prager never threatened me with a defamation suit, it was for other things, including copyright violation.

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