Robert Rosen

Earlier this week I wrote about Authors Guild president Scott Turow's New York Times essay, "The Slow Death of the American Author." In the piece, Turow explained how Google was profiting from rogue Websites that offer pirated e-books for free, and how the company was using its financial muscle to run roughshod over the meaning and spirit of copyright.

Well, I'd like to end the week by reporting some good Google news, as personal and insignificant as it might be. For approximately six months, Google had stopped searching this blog, and my referral traffic, especially for popular posts about porn star Missy Manners and her relationship with anti-porn Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, came to a complete halt. I blamed the problem on Google. But the fault, dear readers, was in the code--my code--and this was finally brought to my attention by a sharp-eyed young man who lives on Beaver Street in Santa Rosa, California.

The problem is now solved. If you search for “Missy Manners” “Orrin Hatch”, my posts have returned to their rightful #1 place in the Google search results. And if you search for anything else I’ve written about here over the past few years, chances are excellent that you’ll find that, too.

I’ll take my good news where I can get it. Read More 

The War on Pornography is an ongoing effort, dating back to the dawn of recorded history, to cleanse the world of smut. It's an unwinnable war waged by radical religious groups and radical political groups of both the right and left wings. It's a subject I explore in Beaver Street, writing at length about the Meese Commission and their use of underage porn star Traci Lords as a pawn in a sting operation designed to bring down the porno industry in America. And it's a subject I've written about extensively on this blog, detailing porn star Missy Manners' relationship with anti-porn Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, and more recently deconstructing anti-porn activist Gail Dines and her efforts to have actors who perform in S&M videos charged with war crimes.

The War on Pornography is a crusade marinated in hypocrisy, corruption, and absurdity that never stops providing me with material, and the other day it provided a little more: Morality in Media (MIM), an interfaith religious group dedicated to the elimination of pornography and obscenity in American life, is best known for their "Dirty Dozen" list, which contains the names of individuals, corporations, and government agencies who, in MIM's estimation, are the "12 top enablers of our country's pornography pandemic." Among those names are such entities as Comcast, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Hilton Hotels, and the Department of Defense--because the Pentagon allows porn mags to be sold at commissaries.

MIM has just selected a new #1, the dirtiest of the Dirty Dozen: Attorney General Eric Holder. Why? Because Holder, they say, “refuses to enforce existing federal obscenity laws against hardcore adult pornography” and “has initiated zero new obscenity cases” since he’s been in office.

One of the points I make in Beaver Street is that “the biggest crooks cry ban pornography the loudest.” The examples I cite—Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Edwin Meese, Charles Keating, and Alberto Gonzales—either had to resign their offices in disgrace to avoid criminal prosecution or, in the case of Keating, went to prison after being convicted of multiple felonies.

Which makes me think that, unlike, say, Attorney General Edwin Meese, who, in the midst of fighting his War on Porn, was busy committing crimes ranging from influence peddling to suborning perjury, Eric Holder might actually be a paragon of moral rectitude. Which, I think, is what most Americans would want their attorney general to be.

I can only congratulate Eric Holder for being #1. Read More 

It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that lately I've been blaming Google for everything from the Kennedy assassination to global warming. I said that their search engine was "the single biggest Internet fraud perpetrated on humanity in the 21st century." I said that having the Google building on the fringes of my neighborhood was only slightly less offensive that having a Trump tower in my neighborhood. I called their "Don't Be Evil" slogan absurd.

I said all these things because I thought that, last October, Google had changed their algorithm and virtually cut off all search traffic from this website. My evidence was that The Daily Beaver is the single best online source of information about the porn star Missy Manners (real name Elisa Florez) and her connection to anti-porn senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, and that's why my post of June 20, 2011, "21 Facts About Porn Star Missy Manners," has gotten more hits than any other post on this blog. But since The Daily Beaver became unsearchable, "21 Facts" has gotten zero hits. I blamed it all on Google.

It has recently come to my attention that The Daily Beaver is unsearchable not because of the Google algorithm, but because of a mistake in coding on the Website. If you’re reading this on a PC, you can see all the coding on this page by pressing “control” and “u”. On line 24, you’ll see that it says: meta name="robots" content="noindex". It’s the "noindex" that’s made this page unsearchable.

I brought this to the attention of my Website hosts, who apologized for the mistake and said that they’d have their programmers fix it. Apology accepted. And, of course, I sincerely apologize to Google for my wild accusations. Will they accept my apology? Isn’t that like asking if God accepts apologies? Read More 

The Daily Beaver is the single best online source of information about the porn star Missy Manners (real name Elisa Florez) and her connection to anti-porn senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. For a long time, Google and their mysterious algorithm acknowledged this. That's why my post of June 20, 2011, "21 Facts About Porn Star Missy Manners," has gotten more hits than any other post on this blog.

Then, last October, Google changed their algorithm. Since then, "21 Facts" has gotten no referral traffic from Google. And I mean zero. If you do a Google search for Missy Manners Orrin Hatch, you’ll get about 746,000 results, including links to one of my Twitter posts and one of my Facebook posts, but even if you scroll down ten pages, you’ll find no links to this blog.

Recently, I used Google’s advanced search feature to try to find an old blog post. I knew the exact title but couldn’t remember when I posted it. “Your search did not match any documents,” Google told me. I thought the post had disappeared, but after scrolling through about two-dozen blog pages, I found it. That’s when I realized that the once reliable Google advanced search no longer worked the way it should.

Which brought to mind a guest post, “The Google Myth,” by SEO expert Ladyjean, that I ran here soon after I began experiencing problems with Google. “The idea that Google is this great, amazing search engine is a myth,” Jean said. “You DO NOT get the best results.”

I had no doubt this was true when I posted it four months ago. But based on what happened with the advanced search, I’d now like to suggest that the superiority of Google search may be the single biggest Internet fraud perpetrated on humanity in the 21st century.

Theories abound as to why Google is doing whatever it is they’re doing. Many of them have to do with Google ads—if a site doesn’t carry them, then Google won’t direct you there. But nobody outside Google knows exactly what’s going on.

The questions people should be asking are: What, if anything, can be done about Google? And where do you go for reliable information? Unfortunately, there are no answers, though one can hope that there will be, sooner rather than later. And all anybody can do until then is be aware that when you’re searching for information on Google, the results often leave a lot to be desired. Fortunately, some cities still have brick-and-mortar databases. They're called libraries. Read More 

Yesterday, to celebrate this blog's third anniversary, I ran Volume I of my most popular posts since The Daily Beaver's inception. Today I bring you Volume II, my five greatest hits of all time. And they're all related to pornography.

5. The Great Porno Debate: Ron Jeremy vs. Gail Dines (Aug. 17, 2011)
Let's just say that my opinion has evolved since I wrote this piece.

4. The Marvel Comics Porno Connection (June 29, 2011)
This video of Stan Lee explaining his partnership with Jack Kirby provides additional insight into one of the central themes of Beaver Street.

3. The Christy & Ginger Show (Apr. 24, 2012)
Big surprise: People love Christy Canyon and Ginger Lynn. But who knew they had a radio show, You Porn? And who knew I’d be their very special guest one day? (Note to anybody with Sirius XM Radio: I’d love a recording of my appearance on the show, air date May 10, 2012.)

2. About Cherry (Sept. 18, 2012)
I called About Cherry, starring Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, and Lili Taylor, the best film about the porn industry since Boogie Nights. Mainstream critics hated it.

1. 21 Facts About Porn Star Missy Manners (June 20, 2011)
There’s an enormous amount of interest in “Republican porn star” Missy Manners (real name Elisa Florez), former aide to anti-porn senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and former girlfriend of Artie Mitchell. Read More 

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah—whose former aide Elisa Florez became the porn actress Missy Manners, star of Behind the Green Door: The Sequel—is taking some time off from his crusade against pornography to go after poor people.

According to Talking Points Memo, Hatch told the Senate yesterday that the poor need to pay more taxes and “share some of the responsibility” for shrinking the national debt.

According to The Huffington Post, Hatch also voted against beginning debate on a resolution to have the Senate declare that millionaires and billionaires should share the pain of debt reduction.

I think that Hatch should stick to what he does best: railing against pornography. Having employed Ms. Florez, at least that’s something, unlike poverty, that he’s personally experienced.

 Read More 

Taking one of our periodic looks into the diversity of Beaver Street subject matter, today we’ll explore one of my favorite letters of the alphabet, M, which in the book’s comprehensive index covers, among other things, the novelist who wrote The Naked and the Dead, my wife, a men’s adventure mag once edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, a French impressionist painter, a porn star who once worked for Senator Orrin Hatch, and a mass murderer who some people think is “a genius gone wrong.”

Mailer, Norman 138
Maiscott, Mary Lyn 205
Male 76
Manet, Édouard 173
Manners, Missy 142, 162
Manson, Charles 30, 118

If you’d like to know more about the letter M (or any other letter of the alphabet), you might consider reading Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography. Read More 

1. Her real name is Elisa Florez.
2. She was born in Salt Lake City, in 1962.
3. Her mother was a fashion model.
4. She considered herself the “ugly duckling” in the family.
5. She believed her breasts were too large.
6. Her first job, at age 15, was a United States Senate page.
7. She later worked as a United States Senate intern.
8. She was a receptionist for Senator Orrin Hatch, anti-porn Republican of Utah.
9. She worked for the Republican National Committee and for President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign.
10. She studied political science at Georgetown University.
11. She moved to San Francisco in 1985.
12. Her boyfriend was sex-photographer Dave Patrick.
13. She competed in the Miss Nude America pageant.
14. She competed in an amateur night dance contest at the O’Farrell Theater.
15. She met James and Artie Mitchell.
16. She became Artie Mitchell’s girlfriend.
17. Her life with Artie Mitchell included such activities as tennis, racquetball, riding bikes, and doing coke.
18. She auditioned for the leading role in Behind the Green Door: The Sequel, and was selected over 300 other actresses.
19. She testified before the Meese Commission on Pornography.
20. She made a non-pornographic safe-sex video, Missy’s Guide to Safe Sex.
21. Her father was George H. W. Bush’s Undersecretary of Education. Read More 

All has been quiet on the Orrin Hatch porn-investigation front for the past few weeks. Perhaps the embattled Utah Senator, who thinks “pornography is a cancer on our society,” can blame Congressman Anthony Weiner for providing more pornographic distraction than any concerned citizen can handle.

The other day, however, The Daily Beast ran a piece that explains Hatch’s strategy, porn-wise. It seems the senator is a target of the Tea Party—they think he isn’t conservative enough, and want to replace him with somebody even more right wing. Clearly, Hatch’s call for the Justice Department to launch a vigorous porn investigation is his attempt to show the Tea Party that he can be as idiotic as any politician.

But is the Tea Party even aware of Hatch’s relationship with Elisa Florez, who became the porn star Missy Manners after working for Hatch? Not that I’d ever want to do anything to help the Tea Party, but really, Teabaggers, if you want to run a politician out of Utah, all you’ve got to do is point out his links to the porn industry. It’ll work every time. Read More 

More than any other part of Beaver Street, I enjoy looking through the obsessively comprehensive index--because it takes every little thing I wrote about and arranges it in a random way that makes the book seem fresh. What the hell did I write about Marlon Brando (pg. 77) and Mel Brooks (pg. 97)? Oh... right... of course. How could I forget?

I'm especially amused by the absurd and occasionally illuminating juxtapositioning of certain names. For example, having once employed the porn star Missy Manners, this is probably not the first index that has Orrin Hatch (pg. 142) on top of Annette Haven (pg. 139). But I suspect that it is the first index to have the porn star Eric Edwards (pgs. 60, 108) in the middle of a Thomas Edison (pgs. 131, 164, 197)/Albert Einstein (pg. 115) sandwich.

To check out more of the index, or any other part of Beaver Street, get your copy now directly from Headpress. Support independent publishing! Read More 

Senator, how did your experiences employing Elisa Florez, who after working for you became the porn star Missy Manners, influence your views on the porn industry?

I will let the Honorable Orrin Hatch, Utah's senior senator and former employer of porn star Missy Manners, aka Elisa Florez, speak for himself.

Now that's the kind of headline I'd like to see on the front page of the New York Times or at least the National Enquirer. If you've been following this blog, then you know I'm talking about the Honorable Orrin Hatch and his former aide Elisa Florez, aka Missy Manners, star of the XXX-rated film Behind the Green Door: The Sequel. And I'm hardly the only writer who's skeptical of Hatch and his 41 anti-porn colleagues. Check out this piece from Time. Read More 

Orrin Hatch of Utah is one of the leaders of the pack of senators calling for vigorous pornography prosecutions. I mentioned him in Beaver Street because his former aide Elisa Florez is “Missy Manners,” who starred in the Mitchell Brothers' XXX film Behind the Green Door: The Sequel (1986). Check out her photo here. Read More