Tip One Out Tonight For Al Goldstein, One Of The Men Who Made Porn What It Is Today

(Source) — Al Goldstein, the publisher of the pioneering hard-core pornography magazine Screw, died Thursday at the age of 77. Initially published in 1968, Screw was the first pornography magazine to present its subject without the discretion or glamorous packaging of a Playboy. “We promise never to ink out a pubic hair or chalk out an organ,” the magazine’s manifesto read. “We will apologize for nothing. We will uncover the entire world of sex. We will be the Consumer Reports of sex.”

Powerful men always worry about their legacy. They worry about the footprint they’ll leave on this world, 100s of years after they’ve gone. Well, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know who Al Goldstein was until 10 minutes ago. I’m ashamed to say that I’d never heard of Screw Magazine. And that’s embarrassing for me. It’s like not knowing who Ruth or Orr or Montana was. Al Goldstein was one of the greats. Al brought pussy and dicks and dicks in pussies to those glossy pages. Not fucking Hugh Hefner. Hugh Hefner gets way too much credit for the sexualization of this world. Hugh showed tit and nothing else. The whole “I read Playboy for the articles” joke was funny because that was something you, theoretically, COULD do. It was boobs and articles. That’s hardly a smut magazine, that’s a newspaper with a classified section. But that’s not the world Al wanted to live in, and for that we owe him remembrance. Maybe Hef landed the Lunar module on the moon, but Al Goldstein jumped off and said if we start putting people fucking on those pages then that’s one giant leap for mankind. Al Goldstein opened the doors for the kind of stuff you open on your computer every night. Godspeed Al, an American hero.