Can you believe oral sex at one time oral sex captivated our great nation? And that our president had nothing to do with it?

So was the case with the pioneer porn flick “Deep Throat,” a movie made with a budget of $25,000 that would go on to gross more than $600 million. “Deep Throat” is without question one of the highest grossing movies of all time, and definitely the most profitable.

The new documentary “Inside Deep Throat” chronicles the public craze that surrounded the release of the film, its creators and the Nixon-led government cause to shut the film down.

What makes “Deep Throat” such a worthy revisit is not the film itself, but the public frenzy it created. “Inside Deep Throat” shows us clips of comedians like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope cracking jokes about the film on national television. Even Jackie Onassis reportedly saw the film.

It was the first time, and perhaps only time, that common Americans went on dates to a porn film. But “Deep Throat” wasn’t about the film itself (which was quite horrible), or about the sexual talents of its star, Linda Lovelace – it was a chance for a sexually-repressed America to celebrate sexuality. This outright display of acceptance and love for sex angered the uptight conservatives in America and found them doing everything in their power to shut the film down.

The film became such a hotbed for the Nixon administration that the informant who leaked the Watergate scandal was dubbed “Deep Throat,” solidifying the term in our national existence.

“Inside Deep Throat” serves as both a nostalgic walk down memory lane for those who were around during the controversy, and as an entertaining educational piece for those who don’t realize the enormous impact such a dirty film made on our nation.

While pornographic film was completely changed with the inventions of the Internet and the VCR, at one point watching porn was all the craze. Screenings were often held right here in DeKalb in our Carl Sandburg Auditorium. Our student population was no more perverted then than it is today, but the open mind was apparently worth the celebration a few decades back.

That said, “Inside Deep Throat” works more when it focuses on entertaining us and celebrating the eccentricities of its main characters. It slowly fails as it turns its celebration of sexuality into a whiny complaint piece about President Nixon.

The film decides to warn us that people like Nixon still exist today (e.g. the Bush administration, pundit Sean Hannity) and that their main quest is to rob us of any sexually-stimulating material that currently invades our video collection, television, or hard drive. Instead of leaving the theater happy that such a miniscule film made on a nothing budget can change the lives of those who saw it, we are supposed to leave scared that big brother Bush is going to yet again try his hardest to ruin our lives.

I’ll try to conclude this review on a lighter, more comical note. “Deep Throat,” a film based on nothing more than a woman’s ability to please a man with her mouth, grossed just as much worldwide as “The Passion of the Christ.”

I wonder what Sean Hannity would say about that.