What do a deputy sheriff and a porn star have in common? I’ll get to the sheriff’s deputy in moment.  But first,  let’s talk about Ron Jeremy.

The Case of Porn Star Ron Jeremy

This is not meant in any sense to be en exculpation of porn star Ron Jeremy, who is very famous and powerful. Over the years, Jeremy has had sex with a staggering number of women on camera, and a similarly staggering number off-camera, often under shadowy circumstances.  It was not that all these young women were keen to bed Jeremy, because he is apparently a kind of gross figure: smelly, a pot-gut etc.  Those who consented — in these pick up bars or in the back seat of someone’s car —evidently did so to advance their careers.

Bu there were, apparently, a  number who didn’t consent as well, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in its new porn-industry sex crimes division, is now prosecuting him for these. Jeremy, therefore, is looking at about two million years of prison time.

There has been so much fog-horning about bringing down Ron Jeremy, whose actions are actually kind of typical of the way many males in the industry used to behave, that the prosecutors don’t realize that this is industry-wide behavior,  (I document this in my book, Stormy’s World: Inside Porn).  Talk about a “casting couch!” Every couch in every director or producer’s office was a casting couch,  but the noise of moralistic self-congratulation over Jeremy has been deafening.

The Case of the Deputy Sheriff

This brings us to the hapless deputy who is being frog-marched out of the sheriff’s office because he had sex with someone on the Universal lot.  And with all her groans of pleasure, she made so much noise that the deputy didn’t hear the dispatcher’s frantic efforts to get him to turn off his mic.  It’s not clear why this is actually so awful. You can’t have sex on duty?  Sure, we get that, but still . . . .

Here is the point:  Now the shoe is on the other foot. It turns out there are bad boys everywhere, not just in the West LA bars, where Jeremy forced himself upon so many young women.  Even the LASD had its Ron Jeremys, despite all the prissy posturing!  Who will watch the custodians is a saying as old as time.  “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Males Behaving Badly

So, no, I’m not trying to get Jeremy off the hook. I’m only pointing out that there are a lot of layers in this question of males behaving badly. Why did these young women surrender to Jeremy?  They later said they were just victims, and maybe so.  I’m not challenging that.

And in the Universal parking lot?  She apparently loved it, but if you pay an escort a thousand dollars a night, she, too, will seem to love it.  The cop may have paid her nothing, but there are all kinds of reasons — some quite self-serving — why women have sex with police officers. I have no doubt that Jeremy was a bad boy, indeed, a very bad boy.  But he and the cop came out of the cultures they were part of.