(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
The premise of an op-ed essay I'm writing: The right blames liberalism for our culture's decadence, while in reality that decadence is caused by the same free market capitalism that the right claims to embrace.
One of our local stations-- professing right-wing, conservative, "family friendly" values-- broadcasts "Jerry Springer" without regard for its effect on our culture and gives us "Survivor" updates as part of the morning news.
If radio, television and advertising are steeped in vulgarity-- with reruns of smarmy sitcoms and cop show murders, originally meant for adult audiences but now shown during "family friendly") hours-- that vulgarity is NOT foisted on children because of careless liberals, but because of advertising revenues. The logic of capitalism insists that it must be so: maximize profit, no matter the consequences.
A cursory examination will show that the Bible Belt and Mountain"red-states" have higher rates of divorce, alcoholism, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, spousal abuse and general brutishness than all us liberal sinners in the blue states. The pharisees and puritans are attacking the wrong targets when they pretend to have moral superiority and its time their libels are rebuked and scourged into oblivion.
6 comments:
Here, here! I now live in the "dumbest" state. According to reports (and published in the Arizona Republic newpsaper) AZ spends the least amount on education, has the lowest teacher salaries, lowest SAT scores, and highest teacher-student ratio. ARGH! No wonder they paid me to move here.
Sigh, Dee Ann (living in a 'red' mountain state with a conservative "Demoncrat" governer)
Hypocrisy has been elevated as one of the core values in our country. I plan on teaching it to my kids and petitioning the govenor to add appreciation of it to our benchmarks.
I look forward to reading that essay.
Okay...Mike...did you see the Lynn Cheney interview with Wolf Blitzer? On one hand I thought: Blitzer is doing what Wallace did to Clinton on CNN. But as I watched the interview unfold, it occured to me there was something horrifying being unfolded in the woman's words. I realized I was listening to the wife of the anti-Christ. It was a Halloween fright the likes of which I do not care to experience again.
If you haven't seen it, then go to Rawstory.com and you will find a link that will get you to a stream of the interview. Really disturbing. I mean, Dick is a manipulator who uses the neocons to further his greedy pursuits. Lynn Cheney is obviously a true believer. I wonder if they had to hire a surrogate to produce offspring.
The June issue of Vanity Fair had an interesting profile on the mystery of Cheney... Apparently in the Ford days he used to be considered "the funny one". After a life threatening illness, most such characters would become kinder, more tolerant, more focused on what's essential in life. Cheney instead has become meaner, in all senses of that word. And "9/11 changed everything" isn't enough to explain this change. Wouldn't it be interesting if our modern history were being shaped by the VP's arteriosclerosis and the signs of organic brain syndrome caused by the president's history of substance abuse?
No. It wouldn't be funny. It frightens me. I keep thinking..two more years. We can do it. What can Bush do in two more years. Then I think back at the last six and shudder.
A new mathematical formula from MIT correlates the potential damage by GW Bush with the havoc wrought by a monkey with a chocolate bar on a hot day. 2 years of president time is roughly equivalent to 2 hours in monkey time. Variables are being developed to measure the damage done to various departments such as State, Interior, etc.
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