A modest state of the nation address

It always happens when I see an R-rated movie in the theater. A parent will inevitably bring their child in tow, most likely in lieu of hiring a babysitter. Last week, during a screening of Dawn of the Dead, I couldn't stop watching the interaction between a mother and her son who looked about 8 years old. The child cheered as blood and guts were spilled, and his mother looked at him as if to say "how silly." Midway through the film, there is a short shot of a man and a woman engaging in near-pornographic sex. This shot, upon flashing to the screen, caused the mother to hide her son's eyes with much haste. Did she think seeing a graphically depicted sex act was going to harm her son more than seeing dozens of gunshots to the head and utterances of curse words?\nLet us quickly revisit the already clichéd topic of this year's Super Bowl. As America was collectively glued to the television screen watching one of the most brutal sports in modern times, interspersed with advertisements for alcohol, anti-tobacco propaganda and the Bush re-election campaign, a breast was bared. This breast set off a firestorm of controversy which managed, above all things, to get Howard Stern's classic radio program pulled from many markets. Why was it that no one seemed to care about the countless number of times the two teams' coaches were shown on the sidelines mouthing the word "fuck?" \nWhat is it about the current American culture which has us glorifying death, destruction and profanity, all the while hating and fearing our own bodies and the effect their exposition has on youth? Could it be the stagnant remnants of the Puritan ideology? Be reminded that the Puritans treated sex and nudity as a crime, while gleefully killing Native Americans because they believed it to be God's will. As Hugh Hefner states in his "Playboy Philosophy" (originally published December 1962), "It has long seemed quite incredible -- indeed incomprehensible -- to us that detailed descriptions of murder, which is a crime, are acceptable in our art and literature, while detailed descriptions of sex, which is not a crime, are prohibited. It is as if our society puts hate above love and favors death over life."\nThe Motion Picture Association of America's rating system has molded itself to fit the current national ideology on all things considered obscene. Violence and profanity will never again tag a film with an NC-17 rating. Films like Kill Bill and The Passion of the Christ can pour on brutal violence with no fear of being banned from most national theaters, yet a film like Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers is withheld from national release due to a couple sex scenes and full-frontal nudity shots. This is the sexual revolution of the 1960's in the process of implosion.\nBut let's get back to Howard Stern for a minute. Which is more dangerous to the public? A left-leaning radio program, such as Stern's, which takes humorous jabs at topics ranging from sex to race to flatulating little persons, or a radically right-wing radio show like that of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, which practically preaches intolerance and spite towards anyone who doesn't agree with the host's views? Upon reading Al Franken's latest satirical masterwork "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," it seems clearer than ever to me that this nation's moral leaders are more concerned with pushing their own twisted, First Amendment damning agendas than with actually doing anything positive for the nation itself.\nI was raised in a household where R-rated films and MTV were an accepted form of entertainment. I recall seeing Schindler's List at age 11. Am I scarred for life because of it? I certainly don't think so. In fact, I feel, if it has any effect on me, it at least made me understand and accept the ways of the world at a younger age than most. What often happens when parents shelter their children from the outside world is that when their child actually encounters the real world, they go off the deep end.\nA society in which Toby Keith can release an album aggressively advocating the invasion and conquer of foreign nations to little media resistance, yet Bill O'Reilly can lambaste rap star Ludacris for lyrics he believes are scarring the minds of children, is a society which needs to re-evaluate itself (and maybe consider seeking some new leadership). We certainly don't want to become the next Roman Empire, falling due to our own excesses, but let us not repeat the mistakes of those folks in Salem, Mass. in 1692, who vilified and demonized for all the wrong reasons.