Dianne Feinstein vs. Marilyn Chambers

[paulsby]

http://www.counterpunch.org/hinckle05082009.html

(an interesting chapter of difi's past. one i never knew about)


When the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Street Theater began presenting live acts on multiple stages -- one set was built as a giant shower room -- the Savonarola inside Mayor Diane Feinstein was awakened. As Mayor the convent-bred Feinstein was about as hang-loose as an Easter Island statue. Her mayoralty was firm on primness -- women working in the mayor's office were expected to wear dresses, no pants; formerly as a city Supervisor she had tinkered with ordinances attempting to regulate the commerce of sex in the famous seaport city, even unto suggesting that all the city's sex emporiums be relocated into a single Red Light combat zone in the largely black Bayview District; she was actually taken aback when the residents didn't cozy up to her idea.

If Dianne hadn't fallen into an upwardly mobile career in politics -- she became Mayor when her predecessor as Mayor, George Moscone was assassinated with Harvey Milk at City Hall -- she would have had an excellent future as a disinfector of public telephones.

Feinstein empowered the vice squad of the SFPD as a sort of screwball comedy Papal Swiss Guard with the sworn duty of putting the Mitchell Brothers out of business. The O'Farrell, which Hunter S. Thompson called "the Carnegie Hall of sex in America," was raided the way the Allies bombed Dresden. Every one of the Mitchell Brothers’ prostitution busts -- there were hundreds in the 70s and 80s -- was thrown out of court, a reality but that did not deter Feinstein's finest from continuing to hit on the O'Farrell with metronomic regularity. Led by vice lieutenant Dennis Martel who paid proud to the flashlight prowess of the SFPD -- he was frequently spied crawling about the O'Farrell's back stairwells carrying a long black flashlight, and once sent 12 officers throughout the premises with flashlights in search of Marilyn Chambers' W-2 form.

Flashlight-carrying cops invaded the darkened Kopenhagen Lounge, which already had a surfeit of flashlights. Customers sat on overstuffed sofas while undressed ladies cavorted about in the altogether carrying red flashlights which they used to illuminate their endearing young charms.

The trials became so frequent that sometimes there were two in one week. The ending was always the same, with dismissal of the "prostitution" charges against the O'Farrell. These repeat legal performances left Feinstein open to the quip that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.