Porn purveyors Larry Flynt and Joe Francis are seeking a government bailout, according to TMZ. The two high profile adult film makers are going to Washington to ask for equal consideration for the adult entertainment business. If the government can bail out the banking and auto industry, they reason, it’s surely open to ensuring that Americans can continue to receive quality adult-oriented escapism.

Joe Francis and Larry Flynt claim the economy has made America’s sexual appetite go limp, so they’re going to the one place where sex is always rampant — Congress.

Flynt (the “Hustler” guy) and Francis (the “Girls Gone Wild” dude) are asking the government for a $5 billion bailout, claiming the adult entertainment industry has taken a huge shot to the face because of the downturn — citing the fact that XXX DVD sales are down 22% from a year ago.

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind,” Flynt says. “It’s time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America.”

Francis sees his industry like the big three automakers, only BIGGER: “Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation’s most important businesses; we feel we deserve the same consideration.”

[From TMZ]

This is a calculated move by Flynt to get publicity and highlight the absurdity of the government bailouts. It’s not a serious proposition and is a smart way to emphasize the importance of porn to the US economy. By most accounts porn is thriving in this struggling economy and isn’t suffering like other industries. It still faces some, ahem, stiff competition from free online sources. X-Tube has plenty of scintillating videos for free and works the same way that YouTube does in that higher quality amateur videos quickly become popular. Competition online is fierce and unrelenting, but porn has shown that it’s willing to adjust to the market in a way that music and film has only done reluctantly:

Relatively small, fragmented, and unaccustomed to outside investment, the U.S. porn industry (which generated roughly $12 billion in 2007) is some what buffered from today’s credit crunch, but it has its own problems. Video sales have been falling by 15 percent a year since 2005, and online content doesn’t deliver the returns it used to, now that Web sites such as RedTube and PornHub basically give it away. Struggling companies need investors to help right their operations, and those that are thriving in a brutal market need funding for growth.

Enter Koenig and AdultVest. He sees the porn downturn as temporary and believes that technological improvements will trigger a turnaround. One example: iPorn, a start-up in AdultVest’s portfolio that is developing an application to deliver porn to the Apple iPod. “The industry’s not going anywhere,” Koenig says. “You’ve got 6 billion people on the planet,” he laughs, “and they’re all horny.”

[From The Atlantic via The Huffington Post]

Porn isn’t going anywhere, and if these guys are hurting they’ll just suck it up and continue to produce trashy content as always. I wouldn’t care if either of them went under, especially Francis, but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.