christian4dean (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} christian4dean) wrote,@ 2004-02-11 08:41:00 |
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Moral Mob Mauled Blind by Janet's Areola Borealis
Wow--quite a title, there! That's why I stopped to read it, even though I was scanning Common Dreams for articles about the Democratic primary. I was trying to find the article about why it's too soon to be thinking in such "practical" terms about a general election that won't occur until it is almost next winter. But then I read this article, and it really expressed much of what is troubling about they way Americans "think"--or perhaps, don't think. At least not deeply enough. We don't just take in too much fast food--we take in too much "fast news". Now that I think about it, the reasons are pretty similar. Anything else seems to time consuming--too overwhelming--given our stressed, busy lives.
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This country hops between the Puritan and the whorish faster than Jim Bakker could unzip his pants off camera. It explains how the nation's moral mob could howl at the only glimpse of something natural in the whole halftime spectacle at the Superbowl while finding nothing offensive in the simulated orgy that had preceded it. We are the dirtiest-minded nation on Earth, peddling the sluttish and the puerile in every other frame out of Hollywood and Madison Avenue. We dress up kiddie porn in leather and croons and call it pop. We accuse a president of sneaking in a couple of pitiful extracurricular dates when the whole culture is stuck on winks and nudges. Yet when a woman's breast appears on national television for less time than it takes to say boo, we revert to being what we are most at our worst, what H.L. Mencken summed up in one word: boobs.
It's really too bad, given the seeming progress of the last few decades when words like "breast cancer" could finally be uttered without someone's obligatory titters (and when the disease could be treated more honestly), when breastfeeding is increasingly esteemed and decreasingly segregated, when women's bodies have, here and there anyway, been less worshipped than respected. The message from the Superbowl is: The breast, and by extension female "virtue," is still a political football. Two Sundays ago it was picked up, pounced on by variously opportunistic lechers, and used to score the only touchdown that counted. Score another one for the conservative rollback to Ozzie and Harriet's imaginary values.
Wow--quite a title, there! That's why I stopped to read it, even though I was scanning Common Dreams for articles about the Democratic primary. I was trying to find the article about why it's too soon to be thinking in such "practical" terms about a general election that won't occur until it is almost next winter. But then I read this article, and it really expressed much of what is troubling about they way Americans "think"--or perhaps, don't think. At least not deeply enough. We don't just take in too much fast food--we take in too much "fast news". Now that I think about it, the reasons are pretty similar. Anything else seems to time consuming--too overwhelming--given our stressed, busy lives.
--
This country hops between the Puritan and the whorish faster than Jim Bakker could unzip his pants off camera. It explains how the nation's moral mob could howl at the only glimpse of something natural in the whole halftime spectacle at the Superbowl while finding nothing offensive in the simulated orgy that had preceded it. We are the dirtiest-minded nation on Earth, peddling the sluttish and the puerile in every other frame out of Hollywood and Madison Avenue. We dress up kiddie porn in leather and croons and call it pop. We accuse a president of sneaking in a couple of pitiful extracurricular dates when the whole culture is stuck on winks and nudges. Yet when a woman's breast appears on national television for less time than it takes to say boo, we revert to being what we are most at our worst, what H.L. Mencken summed up in one word: boobs.
It's really too bad, given the seeming progress of the last few decades when words like "breast cancer" could finally be uttered without someone's obligatory titters (and when the disease could be treated more honestly), when breastfeeding is increasingly esteemed and decreasingly segregated, when women's bodies have, here and there anyway, been less worshipped than respected. The message from the Superbowl is: The breast, and by extension female "virtue," is still a political football. Two Sundays ago it was picked up, pounced on by variously opportunistic lechers, and used to score the only touchdown that counted. Score another one for the conservative rollback to Ozzie and Harriet's imaginary values.
