Sex sells
And pontificating about sex and the evils of sexually tinted programming on tv, in movies and games may keep tired, clapped out Democrats in name only from becoming entirely obsolete, or so they think. But Big Media Matt calls their bluff:
But taking this crowd at their word and assuming they actually don’t want to see censorship, what do they want? Feckless posturing a la Joe Lieberman, I suppose, where politicians will publicly denounce various shows, movies, or video games they find distasteful and then not do anything about it. That’s better than censorship, and if it’s really what the Democrats need to do to win elections I guess I’ll live with it, but it’s pretty silly. Does anybody really want to see America’s elected officials operating as freelance cultural critics? Wouldn’t that be a little silly? Aren’t they bound to do a bad job of it? More to the point, such an effort would only be meaningful if the (implicit, at least) threat of censorship lurked in the background, just as the politicians of several generations ago convinced the comic book industry to start censoring itself by making it clear that if they didn’t do it, Congress would. This isn’t an improvement over actual censorship by any metric I can think of. Which would all be worth contemplating if there were a substantive problem this was supposed to be addressing, but it seems to be nothing more than a crass stunt.
And Atrios goes to the heart of the matter:
To me it isn’t the acknowledgment of sex, it’s the schizophrenic hypersexualization (young Britney Spears videos) combined with the “pretend it doesn’t exist” attitude towards sex itself which is a problem.
Of course there are problems with how sexuality is presented in the media, where it’s used almost exclusively as a way to sell things and of course there is a need for a change in which Western societies need to deal with sex, but this isn’t what this Kulturpolizei are interested in.
What they’re interested in is “getting this filth of our screens”, as a cynical ploy to win votes from the mythical “American heartland”, where “this filth”, be it Desparate Housewifes, Grand Theft Auto or whatever other example these people drag up is just as popular as in the “perverted metropolises of
America’s coasts. It is the only thing people like Lieberman can do, as on any of the real problems facing America they’ve sold their soul to the Republicans.
Talking about all this dangerous sex, sex, sex on the television, in movies and in “our kids” games is just a distraction, to divert attention from the War, the Social Security kerfluffle, the crumbling economy and the coming ecocatastrophes.
That people like Lieberman or Amy Sullivan now dare to admonish their own party about this issue is disgusting. The Democratic Party cannot afford clowns like this
and it’s time for the grownups to take charge of the party.