From
hardcoregossip.com:
Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of drinking a little rum and hosting Distorted Reality for Quasarman and Gauge with the lovely and talented Justine Joli, Kimberely Kane, and Shaena Knight. The show was a fantastic success as the girls stripped down and all lofty notions of addressing serious issues evaporated like a porn stars bank account after the first line of amp.
After the show I spent some time in the company of one venerable Gene Ross, as well as Jason Curious, who was trying desperately to un-entwine three girls hell bent on cranking out orgasms and insisting that it wasn’t because he was gay, but rather that he had a serious show to do. Time will tell. Actually, Jason did do a fantastic show, trying to stick to the topics at hand while not pointing fingers and making claims that he could not substantiate, which is more than I can say for most of the boards out there.
I was watching the show, The Young and the Curious, from the KSEX Radio lobby when I met a dashing young lady named Keiko and her boyfriend. I was informed that we had all met at the Expo this year as well, and remembered that she was the nerd who loved bondage, and that she was pretty sweet, if not a little geeky. The sexy geek isn’t the worst title you could have in the world, I thought to myself. She was riveted by the conversation that Jason and Joy were having over condoms and HIV when she dropped a bombshell on me that shook me to the core.
She informed me that she read my site and that she also read Mike South’s site, despite his recent, debilitating loss of grammar, spelling, or punctuation, and was surprised to see that he was so vitriolic in regards to Sharon and vocal about testing procedures. Then Keiko told me that she had planned a shoot with Mike in Florida, to do his SOUTHERN BUKKAKE line, but that the shoot had never happened due to her canceling.
“ Why did you cancel?” I queried.
“ I got a strange feeling about it. I had my stuff packed and was headed out the door and I stopped and called him. I asked him if the talent would have PCR DNA tests,” Keiko informed me.
“ What did he say?” I prodded.
“ He said he didn’t use the PCR DNA but that some of them would probably have ELISA antibody tests,” Keiko said, with a shudder.
“ Some of them?” I asked, perplexed. “How many guys are in a Bukkake?”
“ Fifteen,” she responded dourly.
“ What happened then?” I asked.
“ I told him that I wanted ALL OF them to have tests and he said, ‘I can’t afford to test them all,’ so I told him I wasn’t going to do the shoot.”
“ How did he respond to that?” I asked, guessing his response, as I am sure most of you can as well.
“ He flipped out on me,” Keiko said.
“ In all fairness, oral sex is pretty low risk behavior, or so I read. So did you do it?”
“Absolutely not!” Keiko declared indignantly. “ I don’t care if some people think that oral sex is low risk behavior. I am not sucking fifteen dicks that are untested. I don’t want all of that in my mouth. Plus I could get something besides HIV, like an STD.”
“ Doesn’t Mike South have his performers tested for STD’s?” I asked, thinking of all the volatile and angry missives and threads South has initiated on his site as of late against AIM and Sharon Mitchell.
“ No,” said Keiko. “He doesn’t.”
Again, before I go off on a long and truculent rant here, I have to state that I have had pleasant dealings with Mike South before, and that while I don’t agree with him on some points, I think he is usually a rather kind, if grammatically challenged, individual. I think he has, in the past, brought up some very interesting and entertaining points about standard porn policies and topical discussions like Rob Black, obscenity, and porn performer’s rights. I do not understand why he has taken his soap box up, especially in this time of crisis when it is so inappropriate, and used his podium to further the air of fear, distrust, and paranoia that has descended upon us like a thick fog against reason. I do not understand what he stands to gain by defaming the personage of Sharon Mitchell, or the medical facility of AIM, or what better, rational solutions he might introduce for dealing with this motley and unruly body of renegade performers and capitalists. I do not understand, in the slightest, what he stands to gain by helping to divide opinion, encouraging acrimony, and giving the press and the media exactly the kind of ammunition they have been drooling for to create near libelous fabrications and pass them off as news around the world, effectively helping to draw more of the ire onto the heads of those who earn their living here, just like Rob Black whom I know he despises for such an act.
I just don’t think his actions are well thought through as of late, in regards to the HIV outbreak. I think they are dangerous and provocative and anti-industry, whether he sees this or not.
I do not understand why he is shouting at the rain.
A week before Darren tested positive, Mike and I had been debating the value of the PCR DNA versus the Elisa antibody test in a series of emails. He had expressed his opinion that he was certain that the Elisa was a far better test and that if I would simply check into the readily available facts I would soon find that the PCR DNA was not a reliable or valid test for determining HIV. Actually I wish he could have suggested it so nicely. Instead he rather insulted my intelligence and suggested that I should not swallow the party line on the issue and believe whatever AVN and AIM, his one great nemesis with two evil heads, had invented. I let the issue go, not wanting to work and not prescient enough to see it as a harbinger of days to come, on the cusp of an industry wide panic. Mike sent me emails while I procrastinated, ranging from things that Sharon had done or said in the past to claims by anonymous virologists that seemed to suggest our current system might be flawed. I promised myself that I would investigate the matter more thoroughly, mostly due to his insistence that I was being obtuse, but warm days and porn set invites kept me from following through. As I have stated repetitively on the site, I am not a journalist, nor do I aspire to be, but an aspiring writer biding my time and sharpening my claws. Then, sadly, the series of events we have all become too familiar with transpired last week, and I found it important, given the sea of calls I was receiving and the kinds of questions I was being asked, to find out how testing really worked and give readers the facts.
Most of you know the results of that fact-finding mission. If not, check the archives, searching under PCR…
Indeed after searching through several sites on the web, calling two doctors, and interviewing an AIDS hotline worker at AIDS Project Los Angeles, I found exactly the opposite. As to the report that I posted, I found no response from Mike. Instead I discovered more of his original ranting on the subject, declaring his certainty about his testing methods and decrying AIM and Sharon as devils, driven only by their cupidity, and somehow achieving the impossible feat of controlling free market capitalism in regards to industry testing.
For the record, I do not see Dr. Riggs, or any other Valley doctor, creating a website to address the issue, offering psychological counseling to sex workers, creating a scholarship for sex workers who contract HIV and accruing their medical expenses indefinitely, providing cheap HIV and STD testing, providing phone confirmation of that testing as well as making secondary lab results available via the web 24 hours a day, or spending any time creating a quarantine list while trying to field questions from an opulently mordant talent base and ward off malicious, quote hungry media hordes. It is my firm belief that no amount of threatening or blackmail could close a clinic driven and tenacious enough to defy Sharon, IF they had such intentions as benefiting the adult entertainment community with their years of knowledge instead of offering ten dollar kickbacks per performer testing.
What I think is sad, above all things, and not just about Mike South, is the general malaise and petulant attitude about AIM since the confirmation of Darren’s test, the finger pointing and insinuation, the rumor spreading and outright inventions I have listened to. At what point, regardless of whatever statements Sharon or anyone else has made, were we supposed to be naïve and fool enough to believe that this was a fool proof system again? Were we really just supposed to believe, in the real world, as fully-grown, responsible adults, that AIM, or any clinic, was going to operate without error, and create a consequence free environment for high-risk sexual behavior?
Sometimes I think that Mike thought he was going to yell “rebel” and everyone was going to champion his cause of the porn proletariat overthrowing the strictures imposed on them. He may suggest that he receives a great deal of fan mail supporting his attack on both AVN and AIM, but I can assure you that he does not see his detractors here in the heart of the panic, and how his comments can be received as being just as callous, cruel, and sadistic as they are heroic and enlightening to his more vocal, and definitely misguided, constituency.
I do not know to what degree Keiko is telling me the truth, or if she, like Mike, has an ax to grind and will not name her real reasons. A lot of sites would never have admitted that, but I think it is only fair to Mike to offer him that first, before I ask some serious and probing questions. No pun intended folks.
If Mike South doesn’t require full STD testing or any kind of HIV testing for fifteen guys to engage in sexual congress with a woman in one of his films, how can he rail against testing practices and those who seek to institute them for the general safety of those who earn their living here as performers?
If Mike South is the champion of the average porn performer, concerned for their well being and safety against a greedy clinic like AIM who he claims spreads misinformation, why does he try to force girls like Keiko to engage in unsafe practices on film for his OWN PROFIT by berating them when they refuse?
If Mike South really cares about the future of porn as an industry, why does he, in a time of crisis, do everything he can to spread the bitterest of acrimony and support a line of ugly propaganda that plays directly into the hands of porn’s greatest critics? His contention that Rob Black is an asshole for drawing the ire of the Right Wing anti-porn government down on our heads without our consent seems to demand his branding as a hypocrite, by him creating or supporting a far worse atmosphere. His words could have far reaching implications, whether he sees this or not, given that the media polls people who read his ramblings everyday and attempts to quote them to their own ends.
Does Mike South not think that the government wants to regulate porn and that his treacherous and uneducated tirades go unnoticed by the powers that be?
Again, my line of reasoning is largely predicated on the testimony of one porn star, Keiko, who I do not know well enough to defend here, but who wanted desperately to give her side of the story. I have not asked Mike these questions until now, in this posting, and I gladly welcome an educated, well thought response, as I am sure all of you do as well.
If there is any validity to Keiko’s provocative claims however, it appears that Mike might somehow find he has been not only shouting fire in the crowded theatre he was not sitting in, but also throwing stones in a glass house he was not aware that he lived in as well, that is until the shards began to brindle him with their effervescent cascade onto his unsuspecting head. Indeed it would most certainly appear that for everyone, even Southern rebels, the sky is falling.
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