Reasonable people can disagree about most things, but I hope we can all come together around the proposition that Joe Francis is the 21st century equivalent of Nelson Mandela:
The smiling founder of the Girls Gone Wild video empire stands shoulder to shoulder with President Bush, the White House in the background, in a series of online advertisements running on newspaper Web sites from Pensacola to Tallahassee.
Joe Francis, 34, engineered the ad campaign to gain support from any audience that will listen to his twisted legal story, which began in Panama City Beach in 2003 and now has him in a Nevada jail cell.
"Marketing is what I do best," Francis told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Francis, who makes at least $29 million a year from his videos of young women baring their breasts and in other sexually provocative situations, says he's now in a marketing fight for his own freedom.
"I have been vilified," he said.
He said he has been treated like a terrorist and likens himself to an enemy combatant in legal filings. He says that is why he chose to feature a picture of himself in the ads taken during a 2004 White House visit - a campaign donor's perk.
I'm no marketing expert - like Francis - but it seems that referring to oneself as an "enemy combatant" when you haven't actually done any...combatting...might not be the best way to drum up sympathy for your cause
Francis, who became famous in the late 1990s after he came up with the Girls Gone Wild slogan and began filming spring break debauchery, has been in jail since April when he was cited for contempt after yelling at attorneys during mediation in a federal lawsuit brought by women who were underaged when his production company filmed them in 2003.
That lawsuit has since been settled, but Francis' bond was revoked on criminal charges related to the 2003 filming when he was charged with having contraband - $700 and prescription anti-anxiety medication - in the Bay County jail.
Federal officials then extradited him to Nevada to face tax evasion charges.
Francis could bond out of jail on the federal charges, but would face extradition back to Florida to face trial on four felony charges related to using minors in a sexual performances and two misdemeanor prostitution charges. The charges are all that remain in an original 73-count indictment in the 2003 Spring Break filming.
Francis would rather stay in jail in Nevada than return to Florida.
A cunning strategy, until you remember how they got Al Capone. That's what happens when you start pinging on the Feds' sonar, though.
In a prosecutorial misconduct motion, which [lawyer Roy] Black filed Tuesday, Francis asks his case be dismissed and alleges Bay County officials have a vendetta against him dating to 2003 when he successfully sued Panama City Beach for First Amendment violations after the city threatened to ban him from filming Spring Break.
[...]
Francis says his legal fight is about more than his own freedom, it's about bringing freedom to the people of Bay County."I want them to rise up against the good old boys," he said. "I filed a lawsuit standing up for my First Amendment rights and these people came after me. I believe I was set up."
Even if Francis' resolves legal case, he has other legal fights ahead.
A former sales representative of his Mantra Films Inc. and Girls Gone Wild filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against his companies and him in July.
The federal indictment handed up in April in Nevada alleges his companies - Mantra Films Inc. and its marketing arm, Sands Media Inc. - claimed more than $20 million in false deductions on the companies' 2002 and 2003 corporate income tax returns.
The indictment also charges that Francis used offshore bank accounts and entities purportedly owned by others to conceal income he earned during the same time.
This, along with all the money, pretty well illustrates the disconnect between middle-class shmucks like myself and gazillionaires like Francis. Here's a guy who amassed a vast fortune by doing little more than convincing drunk women to flash their goodies on film - which most anybody else would enjoy for a while before insulating themselves against charges like he's facing now by hiring nothing but attractive coeds to do the camera work while spending the bulk of their time in a king-sized hot tub filled with Cristal and Pop Rocks. This whole story, however, is a testament to the guy's delusional megalomania.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and the discontented masses of Panama City are just waiting for a firebrand like Francis to incite them to rise up and defend their right to see boozy barely legal teens degrade themselves on tape.
Francis also is charged with misdemeanor sexual battery in Southern California for allegedly groping an 18-year-old woman at a birthday party in Hollywood.
And then there's that.
How about a little Joe Gone Wild: Jail Bait. I just can’t help but wonder, is it more sad that some douchebag makes $29 million exploiting drunk coeds, more sad that there are that many people willing to bare themselves, or more sad that people ponied up $29 million to watch drunk coeds? C’mon people, the internet is full of FREE porn. With penetration. I gotta go…