John Hickenlooper Reveal Shows How Far We've Come

DENVER, Colo.—Anybody remember this?: "When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two—and didn't like it—and didn't inhale and never tried inhaling again." Yup, that was then-candidate William Jefferson Clinton on CNN during the 1992 presidential campaign, and sure enough, almost no one believed him when he claimed not to have inhaled the burning leaves. After all, how do you "try" a smokeable product without inhaling it? Fast-forward 27 years to fledgling presidential candidate John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado (where, BTW, recreational pot is legal), who took part in a town hall on March 20 sponsored by CNN, and for those who hadn't read Hickenlooper's 2016 autobiography, The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics, what he said from the stage was quite a revelation. "My dad died right after I turned 8, and my mother and I had a pretty tempestuous relationship," Hickenlooper told correspondent Dana Bash. "She was just the most amazing person. And I went off to college, and for the first time she was alone in the house. And I didn't realize how powerful that was until I got home at Thanksgiving. ... I had called a friend in Philadelphia—I didn't know what an X movie was. We thought it was a little naughty, but we didn't think it was that bad. Again, you've got to understand, I was 18 years old. [Actually, he was 20, but who's counting?] "And so I came home. ... And I said, 'I promised Jed that we'd go to the movie theater and see this new movie; do you want to come?' And it's an X-movie, and you know, I was sure that she would say no. I made a mistake. And she said, 'I'd love to go,' because she didn't want to be left alone in the house again. So I took my mother to see Deep Throat, and to her credit—the first scene is—I didn't ask the question—but I will tell you that my mother was—I'm sure she was mortified. And I said repeatedly, 'I think we should leave. I think we should go' ... once she paid, she was going to stay. And at the end she knew that I was humiliated. And as we drove home, and you know how the dashboard in the old cars had a kind of green light? And you know, I asked her, I said, 'Well, that was some experience.' And she goes and says, 'Well, I thought the lighting was very good in the movie.' I thought I saw a little grin in that green light." (Hickenlooper, who lived in Narberth, Pa., at the time, would have taken mom to the Levick Theater in northeast Philly, as that was the only theater in town that dared to show Deep Throat when it was first released—and it's where this author saw the movie as well.) Sure, for religious conservatives, this is just the type of revelation that, if The Hick winds up getting any traction as the 2020 presidential primaries approach, they will bring up in just about every "news" story they write about him, but for most of America, its shock value is on a par with the "revelation" that Donald Trump paid off Stormy Daniels so she wouldn't ruin his election by letting everyone know he fucked her. After all, for pretty much any American who doesn't "religiously" attend a church, synagogue or mosque every weekend (and probably for a good number who do), the fact that a candidate saw the world's most famous porn movie not only isn't a surprise, it's probably something they themselves have done at least once—and that puts them in pretty good company. Let's face it: Is there anyone who doesn't think President Grab 'Em By The Pussy doesn't have a Deep Throat DVD squirreled away somewhere? And he'd be in good company; celebs such as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Truman Capote, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Carson, Spiro Agnew, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Walters, Amy Poehler, Miley Cyrus, Amanda Seyfried (who played the title character in the docu-drama Lovelace) and co-star Peter Sarsgaard, Scarlett Johansson, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Juliette Binoche and Cameron Diaz all admit to having seen it, with Diaz telling Now magazine, "I love porn. You know what I love about hotels? How discreet they are. They always give you that little thing at the bottom: 'Your room will be charged the same as any other room, no titles will be used.'" So while his having seen at least one XXX movie isn't necessarily a reason to vote for Hickenlooper, at least (most of) American society has advanced to the point that having smoked a joint or watched porn is no longer an automatic disqualifier for being President of the United States!