Per Fox News:
Ted Cruz’s latest political ad turned out to be too hot for TV.
The Texas senator’s campaign confirmed late Thursday that it had pulled a commercial hitting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio over illegal immigration because one of the actresses had previously appeared in pornographic films.
And this is a problem because . . .
Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said Lindsay had responded to an open casting call for the ad.
“Unfortunately, she was not vetted by the production company,” Tyler said. “Had the campaign known of her full filmography, we obviously would not have let her appear in the ad.”
Here’s my question: Why not? What’s the problem here? Why can’t soft-porn actresses be in campaign commercials? Or in anything else for that matter? She wasn’t performing soft pornography in the commercial, nor was she doing anything else that would be inappropriate for a political spot. It was not the case, as Fox suggests that the “ad turned out to be too hot for TV”; rather, it was the case that one of the people in the ad had previously appeared in unrelated films that are “too hot for TV.” So what?
As for the idea that she would need to be “vetted”: Again, why? She wasn’t applying for a job at the State Department, or for a position on the board of the Anti-Pornography League. All told, there is only one question that a person who appears in a commercial needs to be asked: “Can you act as we want you to?” Clearly, she could.
Fox reports that, in addition to her adult-film work, she has:
appeared in the TV series “Star Trek: Voyager” and the 1996 film adaptation of Henry James’ novel “The Portrait of a Lady.”
Should those episodes be pulled as well? Are they “too hot for TV”? Or is it reasonable for us to draw a distinction between porn per se and TV shows that feature people who happen to have appeared in porn? If we’re going down this road, we might stop showing Sylvester Stallone movies in prime time. As Rolling Stone notes:
Six years before he broke big with Rocky, Sylvester Stallone was a struggling 24-year-old actor desperate for work of any kind, which explains why he agreed to star in a low-budget skin flick called Party at Kitty and Stud’s. The legend of the movie has grown over the years — many have become convinced that it’s a hardcore sex film — but the truth is far less interesting: It’s merely a supremely boring and inept softcore affair.
Alternatively, we could all grow the hell up.