I OPEN A SECOND FRONT IN THE CULTURE WARS

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.

An Appeal for Sanity

"In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly." (Robert A. Heinlein)

The Arab "street" evidentally can't handle a Danish cartoon or a statement from the Pope without going batshit. In their defense, it must be said that Muslim clerics and governments are distorting what is said in Europe and America for their own reasons. The fairly innocuous Danish cartoons were distributed by Arab clerics in a pamphlet containing cartoons that definitely WERE inflammatory. As long as they can keep the masses whipped into a frenzy against the Western infidels, the masses won't start asking questions about their own conditions at home.

And our president-- can we impeach him YET?-- can't open his mouth without making things worse. I am personally in favor of parachuting the administration and their "advisors" into Iraq and letting them clean up the mess they made-- but that mealy-mouthed sonofabitch is going to get us into so many wars, we're going to wind up having to protect his sorry ass even though we hate his guts.

Pope Benedict ought to have known better. Quoting a Byzantine emperor--"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"-- is probably not the best approach to bridge building. We used to call this guy Cardinal Ratfuck-- I mean, Ratzinger-- back when he was in charge of the Inquisition; now he commits this public relations disaster and Machiavelli won't take his calls.

Not to worry-- we have the noted Islamicist Karen P. Hughes leading the defense of Western civilization.

I offer this, an appeal for sanity, one of my favorite short essays from Monty Python's Flying Circus:

Voice Over: And now, an appeal for sanity, from the Reverend Arthur Belling.

[Cut to studio. Close shot of a vicar sitting facing camera.]

Reverend Belling [played by Graham Chapman]: You know, there are many people in the country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane. Some of them were born sane. Some of them became sane later in their lives.

[The camera pulls back and we can see that the vicar has an axe in his head.]

Reverend Belling [continues]: It is up to people like you and me, who are out of our tiny little minds, to try and help these people overcome their sanity. You can start in small ways with ping-pong ball eyes and a funny voice and then you can paint half of your body red and the other half green and then you can jump up and down in a bowl of treacle going 'squawk, squawk, squawk...' And then you can go 'Neurhhh! Neurhh!' and then you can roll around on the floor going 'pting pting pting' ... [he rolls around on the floor]

Voice Over: The Reverend Arthur Belling is Vicar of St Loony Up The Cream Bun and Jam.

Remember When We Thought the Nuttiest Idea in Heinlein's Science Fiction Was His Loony Prediction of a Religious Dictatorship in the United States?

"Last December Peter Panse was suspended from his teaching job for apparently recommending that some of his advanced students consider taking figure drawing courses that included nude figure drawings.

"In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.

"Panse was suspended from his teaching job pending hearings. Depending on the outcome of these hearings, he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career. Panse is a National Board Certified Teacher (in Adolescent and Young Adult Art), the highest level of certification that a teacher can achieve in America. He is also one of only two National Board Certified Teachers in his New York District, and “is a trained Facilitator for helping teachers explore and pursue the requirements needed to achieve National Board Certification."

Links, with lots of comments, at Drawn! The Illustration Blog , a detailed account of the facts at Art Renewal, and an online petition HERE

AMERICA THE CHICKENSHIT

“They said I was protesting. I said, ‘Read my shirt, it is not a protest.’ They said, ‘We consider that a protest.’ I said, ‘Then you are an idiot.’”

Nope, it's not Cindy Sheehan this time. It's Beverly Young, wife of Republican Representative C.W. Bill Young from St. Petersburg. She was ejected from the gallery during the State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt that said, "Support the Troops Defending Our Freedom".

In case you didn't know, Cindy Sheehan was cuffed and booked the same night for wearing a t-shirt in the gallery that said "2245 Dead. How many more?"

Sheehan was an invited guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Beverly Young's husband is chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. The Capitol Police have apologized to both.

And who are these craven assbandits, so afraid that someone might be offended by words and ideas? Maybe they were from the same litter that spawned the current Joint Chiefs of Staff who so bravely sent a letter of protest about a cartoon by Tom Toles? They tolerate that MacNamara retread Rumsfeld, but an ink drawing is too much for them?

I hate the kind of cops who jump like trained Alsatians to please their masters by beating down dissent. These are not reluctant cops enforcing ambiguous law. These are the guys who killed Becket because it would please Henry the Second, the crackers who busted black heads for George Wallace, who jumped to cover up Justice's nipple for John Ashcroft, the shitbirds who outed Valerie Plame because of something her husband said. They've probably got a fetish website of their own, where Gareth from "The Office" has masturbation fantasies about handcuffing women in potentially disruptive t-shirts.

See also Murrow on What We Were and Where We've Fallen From, Weimar America

Kill All the People You Want, but Cover Your Breasts, for God's Sake!

And You Ask What Has Driven Me Mad Dept.

From an unsigned editorial today in

The New York Times

".... A game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a lot to tell us, most of it unpalatable, about how American culture looks through certain eyes. But so does the reaction to this modification and the scenes it exposes. As always in America, sex and nudity create the scandals, not systemic violence..."

Way back in the Stone Age, Lenny Bruce complained about the response to Hitchcock's "Psycho", and a culture wherein violence was okay but nudity was verboten. I first grasped this when the moneymaker "Jaws" was rated PG and the much more humane "Harry and Tonto" was given an R rating for language and incidental nudity. More anecdotes on the phenomenon

HERE

I suspect a cultural historian could find the same hypocrisy going back at least as far as the Stanford White murder, when America cared less about Harry Thaw kiling a man than about the seduction of Evelyn Nesbitt.

Some of this weird kink in the American psyche is invented, whipped up by the entertainment media, looking for a sex scandal to enliven its stories. Sometimes the lip smacking is inconsequential, like the discovery that Janet Jackson is a mammal. Sometimes it harms the republic itself, as with the time wasted on the Lewinsky affair.

It should be noted that my own storytelling sometimes includes graphic sex and graphic violence, the former reserved for the heroes and the latter usually practised by villains. Cruelty to animals and innocent people upsets and enrages me as a monstrous aberration, but sexual activity as just another part of life's rich pageant. Sex and violence in the media are on a continum, like good cooking and bad cooking.

WHAT DRIVES ME MAD is the willful naievety of the American parent. "Grand Theft Auto" and "GTA: San Andreas" have been played in basements for donkey's years, and now the Righteous Outrage of Suburban Motherhood has only just awakened, because someone discovered that sex was involved-- not the imaginary killing of thousands-- and how many Iraquis HAVE been killed so far, in a war none of them volunteered for--? Does anyone else see a pattern?

From a posting by "CJs Girl" at

Gaming Tips

message board:
"Many things affects your sex appeal [within the GTA game]. The clothes you wear, the hairstyle you have, the car you last drove, how many and which types of tatoos you have. For the hairstyle, I'd pick the most expensive. Cornrows are good sex appeal hair cuts. The blonde CornRow is really good for sex appeal. Afro's are good too and the High Afro is too. When you get to the big city where the casino's are you can get Elvis styled hair, which is excellent for sex appeal. The car can be the best cars you can find. Each type of car lowers or brings up your sex appeal. Back tatoos give the most sex appeal. Don't have too many tatoos, because that can bring down your sex appeal, because you will be "full of ink". I guess the women don't like too many tatoos. I think 3 should be the limit if that. For the clothes: low top shoes give you more respect, which can help with sex appeal a little. I think when you wear the hat or cap backwards it brings more sex appeal. I think sideways does well too. I think when you buy clothes from the more popular clothing stores, it brings up your sex appeal. ZIP clothing stores work well and I think Binco works just as good. Didier Sachs works best from what I have heard, but I haven't gotten that store open yet. Make sure to have plenty of style. I buy all of the clothes available at each store I open to when I get to a dressing room at a Safe House I can have a variety of clothes to choose from. Your local Grove Street Gang Members help you out with your outfits. They'll tell you what they like and what they don't." ***

*** Readers are strongly advised not to ask sociopathic killers for fashion hints while engaged in reality.

One of these fantasies is destroying America in the mind of YOUR innocent baby right now.

"People who censor books are usually illiterate."

"People who censor books are usually illiterate." --John D. MacDonald

I've no empirical data, but I have anecdotal experience with people who censor comic books and yes, they are illiterate.

... A high school senior, male, borrowed a comic book called "Arrowsmith" by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco, clearly labeled "for mature readers"-- about PG-13. "Arrowsmith: So Smart in their Fine Uniforms" is an alternate history of World War One-- if magic had been used as a weapon. The student's father brought "Arrowsmith" back to the school and withdrew permission to borrow books, NOT because of the explicit World War One gore-- the book's main theme is the loss of innocence-- but because of shadowy panels of a nurse making love with a soldier (shades of Ernest Hemingway and "A Farewell to Arms"). Sex bad, violence okay; Lenny Bruce used to complain that the violence in "Psycho" was permitted, but Janet Leigh's bare breast was forbidden.
The same father told the teacher that as far as he was concerned, "Where we really went wrong was back in the Age of Reason, because that's when religion started to veer off from daily life." If I'm lying, I'm dying. There are at least two witnesses.


In another case, a parent complained about "Death: The High Cost of Living" by Neil Gaiman. This is a variation on "Death Takes a Holiday", with the Reaper spending one day a year as a mortal in order to experience death herself. Two of the characters are "lesbians". Thank God this parent never saw Gaiman's "use a condom or die" message involving a banana. Censors never seem to actually read the books they complain about-- they just skim for the dirty pictures. Don't they know what that says about them?
I also worry about the souls of adolescents so trained to go running to the church police if they see anything upsetting. Shades of the Nazi Youth Movement, with every deviance reported! In Benton Harbor we were made of sterner stuff. Uncensored material was cause for celebration, and could only add to a book's popularity.
...The dastardly author, Neil Gaiman, was kind enough to e-mail his support to the teacher. The book, "The High Cost of Living", is still listed as a "recommended book for teens". The student took the book -- clearly labeled for mature readers-- off the teacher's desk without permission, but the teacher clearly should have been more... limited?

... A Sherman Alexie book of short stories, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" was banned from the same high school because of language; too bad, since it was recommended in a Western Michigan University adolescent literature class.
I'm told by teens that if you say the F word once in a movie, it's still PG-13; any more than that and it's rated R. They learned this from watching John Travolta in "Stay Cool".

Lastly-- you're gonna love this one-- a high school teacher was told not to read "Mr. Roberts" in drama class next year, because the sailors talk (mildly) about booze and nurses. Yes, that's right-- the World War II, Greatest Generation, Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, William Powell and Jimmy Cagney "Mr. Roberts". [Well, he wouldn't let his mind be put in prison, for one thing. Sadly, the nimrod in the photo was trying to evoke Mr. ROGERS-- Oh Literacy, Where Art Thou?]

This is just one year in one rural district in Michigan. Earlier complaints were made against "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" and "To Kill A Mockingbird"-- not because of the rape trial, but because Scout said, "Pass the damn ham!" School administrators in small towns are notoriously afraid of conflict. American schools emphasize sports, so the kids who love books and their parents have no real pull in the community. These same children, like their peers, report watching R-rated movies and worse-- but hypocrisy is a way of life here. Better to be an American Idiot than be called a pornographer.

Alas, public schools are for the most part under control of people who hate books, ideas, and independent thought. Censors especially fear the sight of a bare breast; perhaps they are more reptilian than mammalian. I'll save you a spot in the detention camp.