Sex Business Backs the Party Animal

“Bondage-gate,” as it’s been called — the unfortunate convergence of Republican Party donors and a Hollywood sex club with a lesbian theme — has led to the dismissal of a party staffer, an inquiry into the use of donor money and gleeful late-night television jokes (“Me likey,” Jon Stewart quipped), but, really, is it such a big deal?
Yes, the venue, Voyeur, was somewhat kinkier than your father’s topless joint and, yes, the men in question were not convention-going salesmen. Still, to discover Republicans at an adult establishment? Who knew?
“Politicians and business people have been taking clients to adult-entertainment clubs for decades,” said a baffled Angelina Spencer, executive director of the Association of Club Executives, which represents 3,800 strip clubs around the country. “Unfortunately, due to the nature of the entertainment — i.e., scantily clad ladies — people get up in arms.”
Nudity and politics have never mixed well in America — George Ryan, a former governor of Illinois, once returned a check to a man who merely used to own a strip club — but the current storm, which has battered Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, left those in the industry (perhaps self-servingly) thinking we were past this.
Gentlemen’s clubs are not only legitimate businesses, they say, but profitable businesses. High-end clubs, in Atlanta or New York, might take in as much as $300,000 a week. All told, Ms. Spencer said, the industry in the United States earns a “respectable” $15 billion a year.
“It’s big,” said Eric Langan, president of Rick’s Cabaret International, which runs 19 clubs and trades on the Nasdaq under RICK. “You’d think in this day and age nobody would care. We’re a legal enterprise. It’s not like they hired call girls.”
When asked to describe his preferred clientele, Mr. Langan drew a demographic portrait that either party might be pleased to have among its supporters.
“We cater to males, 25 to 55 years old, with high disposable income,” he said. “Businessmen, business owners, corporate executives. That’s who we market to. Our clubs are set up with the same decorations and customer service as any major steakhouse.”
The operative difference being, of course, those scantily clad ladies. And, in this case, their proximity to members of a party with a family-values brand.
Responding to the scandal-ette last week, Doug Heye, a Republican spokesman, said the visit to Voyeur — where the party dropped $1,946 — was improper “because of the venue.” But club executives countered that the impropriety had less to do with g-strings than with perceptions of the party itself.
“The whole situation here is the image of the Republican Party, which seems to view itself as a group with extremely high standards of morality,” said Steve Karel, the marketing director at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club in New York. “The problem is not that strip clubs are risqué environments.”
Don Waitt, the publisher of Exotic Dancer Magazine, went so far as to suggest that strip clubs were a classic piece of Americana: Norman Rockwell in a pair of Lucite heels.
“The analogy I always use,” he said, “is to the ‘smoker rooms’ our grandfathers went to. They’d have cigars, drink some drinks, maybe play gin. That’s what gentlemen’s clubs are today. Guys go there. So the entertainment happens to be girls dancing on a stage rather than TV’s showing football.”
“It’s just the mentality in the United States,” Mr. Waitt added. “Anything that’s lascivious, people are quick to judge. It’s surprising there would be any consternation at all about this in the year 2010.”
After all, he said, “Demi Moore made ‘Striptease’ almost 15 years ago.”