She's contending that there has been no actual change in sexual morality. This is laughable. To be sure there were many cases of sexual imorality in every era, what changes is the rates. The most casual examination of the facts will show more people engaging in sex outside of marrage than earlier. Every era has its own publically aceptable sin, so while we have more problems with sex, public drunkeness is way down from ealier eras.
Richard J Stuart | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 6:56 am | #

As usual, her post is so full of nonsense, there is no teasing apart the arguments. Hence, the blanket condemnation.

If the music did reflect a much more sexually charged reality than a reading of the words suggest, it escaped us younger types completely. When the Beatles sang "I want to hold your hand" we believed that that was the summit of the ambition of most decent young men.

It is simply absurd to assert that we were as "liberated" as today. There may be some class differences and rural vs city differences to be taken into account but as someone who came of age in a solidly middle class family in a solidly middle class high school I can tell you that us teens were generally horrified by pre-marital sex and were extremely harsh on those we suspected of "going all the way". There was still a Florence Crittenden home (refuge for pregnant teens to hide out in until birth) in my town. We used to peek at the girls going in and out with a combination of horror and sympathy.

My best friend did get pregnant and the gymnastics I went through to deny it to our snoopy classmates and her parents sending her out of state to stay with relatives until the baby was born are still fresh in my mind.

I also remember when "living together" without benefit of marriage became a topic. There was a time when that was so disapproved that it was a matter to be hushed up by the family. It was possible (as my parents did) to refuse to rent an apartment to such a couple. I still remember the hysteria in the media (newspapers, magazines, etc.) about the growing phenomenon and the gradual slide towards unwilling recognition to final acceptance.

Even when I went off to college, premarital sex was still the exception and not the rule in relationships, so far as I can tell. At least, we did not admit to it and certainly did not approve of it in public. Woodstock, which occured in the same year that I went off to college, was not universally seen as something liberating and worthy. However, things had definitely started to change and the rot was infiltrating the middle class...

I could go on but that will give you some idea of one oldy's perspective.
Colleen | 07.31.06 - 9:00 am | #

People who look at the newspaper and snivel for a return to a more innocent time obviously weren't there.

The 1950s were a very bad time to be black. It wasn't particularly a good time for single women or women who wanted to work outside the home. If you were clinically depressed, you got electroshock therapy. And if you were gay, you could lose your home, your job, and go to jail. If your political views were leftish, you could find yourself having a chat with good old Senator McCarthy.

Sounds like a blast, eh? Crank up "Love Me Do" and let's frug.

In spite of it all, there was plenty of fornicating - both heterosexual and not - going on; pick up any Cheever novel for a little glimpse of the underbelly of the fabulous '50s. The only thing that's changed is that the media is now saturated with it.

Don't be so quick to hit the rewind button. We're all a lot better off now.
Anne | 07.31.06 - 9:01 am | #

One thing that has changed since 1950, the year I was born, is the open tolerance of vulgar and obscene language. I think that says a lot about the people who hold to Miss Marcottes views. Of course, this is not new, I read David McColloughs 1776 and in that book there is a complaint about the use of profanity among people of all classes way back then. And prostitution was a great problem in New York City as well, along with slavery. We know, as well, that our nations history includes lot's of other kinds of prejudice, that is why Catholics started their own schools, for example.
But, during the early days of our nations history, we did have the two Great Awakenings; and a time when the Bible was routinely read aloud in public schools, and when some school administrators would encourage their students to live devout lives. And sexual immorality was linked tightly with shame and social stigma. Those days are gone, perhaps forever. Today sexually immoral people are often defiant about the way they live, as Miss Marcottes post implies.
JOhn Mark | 07.31.06 - 9:53 am | #

The parochialism is what gets me--and the lack of imagination. Isn't it possible that the world has ever been different from what she observes in her little slice of it?

No one can really believe that there was as much sex before the Pill as there is today. The pre-60s culture simply couldn't have sustained the taboos against out-of-wedlock births; there would have been too many of them. No one can really think that junior high-age kids have always had oral sex with the frequency that is now reported.

It really is possible to have a culuture that isn't sex-saturated. It really is possible--and it's healthy--for teenagers to feel that hand-holding and kissing are a big, exciting deal. Been there.
DGus | 07.31.06 - 9:59 am | #

JOhn, if sexual morality is supposed to be about self-control, why do so many small-minded people obsess about what other people do in the privacy of their homes? Why do those same people seek to control it, via law, 'shame' and 'social stigma'? Haven't they got enough to handle with regulating their own gonads?

I don't think Ms. Macotte is defiant about being sexually immoral. I think she just rejects the concept that you can tell her what to do with her body. That's a view I share.
Anne | 07.31.06 - 10:04 am | #

Frankly, her arguments are so superficial, they aren't worth discussing, if anyone has any sense of the social or musicological history of popular music in the post war period.

Music is at once reflective of the past, and fortelling of the future. Especially pop. One needs to be mindful of the different social role pop music played prior to the summer of love, it was a uniting force, one that helped enabled transition to adulthood, rather than what happened after 67, which is Pop music as permanent childhood.

One should ask the Brill writers, maybe this wasn't repression, but rather the outlet....

Martha Bayles Book "A Hole in Our Soul" also addresses this.
Tom K | 07.31.06 - 10:05 am | #

Anne, you have the terrible and glorious freedom to do what you want with your body, unfortunately. I personally believe, however, there is a Supreme Being to whom we will one day all give an account of how we have lived. And I think when this was (however superficially) the prevailing view of our culture, people felt shame over sexual misconduct. Billy Graham has suggested that man is born with two basic needs, the need for forgiveness and the need for goodness. When we ignore those needs, we damage ourselves first, and many others, usually, in the process. I deal with the fallout of this kind of behavior on a regular basis.
JOhn Mark | 07.31.06 - 10:44 am | #

I was born in 1957 and was in high school from 1970-1974 in Los Angeles, in a high school of about 400 graudating seniors.

In high school, "going all the way" was a huge accusation, something the other girls whispered about. Good girls may have fallen too, but the only girls generally known to do so were sluts. Same with drug use. This was still the case when I graduated in 74, but it disintegrated fast after that.

We had our homos, public and private--Paul Lynde, Liberace, etc, and two boys in the neighborhood grew up to be gay. One of our gym coaches was assumed to be lesbian. These people weren't shunned or persecuted. Because what sexually active homosexuals actually do to each other wasn't widely known, homos were looked on with bemusement rather than disgust. Homosexuals belonged to the world of broad comedy--check out old movies--but aggressive, predatory homosexuals were perverts of the darkest morality and we didn't know much about them other than the occasional lurid news story. As for the neighbor boys, I remember sensing something was off and feeling concerned and dismayed. They gravitated away from us rather than we from them.

It was during the Vietnam war, and the political science and other soft-subjects teachers were liberals. When abortion was legalized in 73, the correct position in speech class was that it was a good thing, and no big deal. I never heard of these teachers exciting controversy or public attention. All of us, teachers included, pretty much thought of the issue as abstract, nothing more than a debating point. Certainly no one dreamed of the 40,000,000 abortions that have taken place since.

On graduation I went to Cal State L.A.--Angela Davis and other radicals were giving speeches, there were bomb threats on campus and the Marxists were in fine feather, but no one was shut down. Indeed, the faculty preened themselves on their hip attitudes. Homosexuality and a homosexual agenda were not a part of this radicalism; rather, it was perceived as the time of women's lib and hetero license. During this time, the expression "making love" completed its transformation from the old meaning of "courting, inspiring love in another" to "getting laid."

At Cal State, I was on the track team for three years and only towards the end did I realize that two of the coaches were lesbians. We didn't have a finely tuned gay-dar in those days, not because homosexuality didn't occur, but because it wasn't a topic of interest or concern. Homosexuals, like heteros, were more sexually discreet. I guess you could say everyone had more class.

Advertisers and schools did not sexualize children. We were allowed innocence and gradual awakening, even in L.A. in the 60s and 70s. Decent people, especially girls and women, did not spout four-letter words or make lewd jokes, and the while we girls worked hard to be sexy and win erotic attention (as has been the case from time immemorial), we were more sophisticated about it in the way we dressed--not exactly modest by historical standards, but not like the sad girls of today either, who hang out our wares like fishmongers with a load to sell before it rots.

Seeing the menacing, weirded-out hippies on the streets from the time I was ten or so, and growing up with classroom leftism as the daily dose, I learned as a tempermentally conservative youngster from a Christian home to keep a low profile and muzzle my own opinions. I still struggle with reflexive diffidence when I should be a bolder witness for Christ.
kwerna | 07.31.06 - 10:53 am | #

JOhn writes: I personally believe, however, there is a Supreme Being to whom we will one day all give an account of how we have lived.

I concur. And I'm content to limit my judgment and commentary on that process to my own life. It's truly sad that so many seek to usurp God's ability and duty to do that for others.

During the time during which you seem to be waxing nostalgic over, there was little to no sex education at all, children were molested and were afraid to tell anyone, and sexual discussion of any sort was taboo. Do I have to catalog the evils this environment perpetrated?
Anne | 07.31.06 - 10:55 am | #

The 1950s were a very bad time to be black.

Except living in Harlem then was safer then it is now and it was a much more family oriented neighborhood. There were more black families, and now 80% of black children are born out-or-wedlock compared to 12% then.

While I agree that we should never "go back" so to speak, because realistically, we just can't. And yes, somethings have changed for the better, some for the worse. But let's give credit where credit is due about things that were fixed that weren't broken and visa versa.
Pansy Moss | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 11:17 am | #

As a child of the 50's I can honestly only relate to Ms. Marcotte's comments based on my own experience. It was a better time. Yes, we had "duck and cover" but we could be children. Our parents did not have to worry about what we would see on TV, day or night. No warning labels on the 45 rpm records we purchased. While I cannot speak for everyone, I am sure my contemporaries can vouch for what I am saying. No, it was not Leave It To Beaver land, but it was not a place of impossed naivete' either. There was a time and a place for everything, including knowledge. In my diverse town of 40,000 Children from single parent families were the rarity. I had one relative that was divorced and I did not find out about that until I was 15! Around each other they were civil and attended all family functions. Ms. Marcotte is creating a 1950's in her own image. It is a world she obviously knows nothing about. So her response is to try and tear it down. Despite Ms. Marcotte's tome to the contrary, the world is not a better place in 2006.
AJ | 07.31.06 - 11:49 am | #

I was born in 1964 in middle-class, mid-Ohio, and Colleen's comments from a slightly earlier period were still largely true when I was younger. During my most formulative years, until about age 8, I was of the impression that men should and did respect women, and that women wanted to be respected. Even in the early days of what we used to call "women's lib," one of the main demands of then-feminists was to not be treated as a "sex object." Today, of course, objectification is the norm, and is desired by feminist-types.

As for me at that time, Colleen nails it, "If the music [and movies and TV] did reflect a much more sexually charged reality than a reading of the words suggest, it escaped us younger types completely." Maybe sexual morality was all a lie, as Miss Marcotte argues, but if it was a lie, I and many others did not know that it was all a lie. In fact, I went on continuing to believe such things long after the times had changed. Later, of course, I became infected too. But I was just a little disappointed in my parents and family when absolutely no one objected that me and my girlfriend were living together.

Today, I am a guy (cursed) with a middle-class, pre-sexual revolution morality that is combined with a typical, modern, constant and never-ending sexual urge. And I have to believe that, in many respects, it was a more emotionally peaceful time back then. Without a sex-saturated society, without gratuitous and constant sex being the norm, as it is now, people could actually spend their days accomplishing things without thinking about sex all the time. These days, try as we may, sexual thoughts and desires intrude upon us every ten minutes because there is no place to go for relief. The promotion of sex is everywhere.

I could do without a lot of the things that Anne objects to from back then, but there was also some good from that era too.
Bender | 07.31.06 - 12:07 pm | #

If I suggested there was NO good back then, that was a mistake on my part. I'm just pointing out that Ms. Marcotte did have some valid points in that society is a lot more candid about sex in general now. This is not the same thing as applauding the general coarsening of our culture. Honesty isn't always pretty.

Sex is a gift, not a dirty secret. And I repeat that it's no one's place to look on pregnant teenagers with 'horror' (should they have abortions now so that Colleen is spared the sight of them?), wish gay people back into hiding, or stigmatize or shame others who don't share the same views on the subject. Doing so is the hallmark of the small.

And FYI , Pansy Moss, your info is dated. You're correct about the out-of-wedlock births, but Harlem is actually quite safe to live in now - it's become gentrified.
Anne | 07.31.06 - 12:21 pm | #

I don't know that many people wish that gay people would go back into hiding, but I do think that many people wish that sexuality would return to the privacy of the bedroom where it belongs. Most people, "small-minded" social conservatives included, simply do not care, much less obsess, about "what other people do in the privacy of their homes." But we do care that such sexuality has been forced upon us. We do care that the sexuality of supposed privately-minded people gets publicly imposed upon us.

Lance is gay? What business is it of mine that Lance is gay? And why does he and his publicist and People magazine think that it is appropriate to impose it on the world? It is none of my business, just as it is none of my business what Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock do in their bedroom (no matter how many video cameras she brings in with her).

You want people to respect the privacy of other people's homes and bedrooms? Fine. Then keep it in the home and bedroom, rather than putting it on display in every movie, TV show, music video, song, magazine, newspaper, and blog. That's not returning to the closet, or going into hiding; that's simply keeping private what is private.
Bender | 07.31.06 - 12:45 pm | #

but Harlem is actually quite safe to live in now - it's become gentrified.

Is that considered a step up? It should not have had to become gentrified. The year 1950, that you brought up was the year my mother was born. She grew up in a neighborhood populated by working class families who always knew where their kids were because everyone in the neighborhood felt responsible for the children.

I don't see inner city minority neighborhoods like that. A decent neighborhood to raise children does not have to have a Starbucks on every corner. It needs a community of family values. Granted, I didn't grow up alongside my mother, just heard the childhood stories around the dinner table so maybe I am in no position to speak.
Pansy Moss | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 12:52 pm | #

Bender, you forgot "Gay Pride parades" which are, of course, just about tolerance and understanding.

John Mark
JOhn Mark | 07.31.06 - 1:10 pm | #

Colleen, the giveaway on the Beatles "I want to hold your hand" -

Someone much more clever than I suggested once that John's going up a full octave on the word "hand" tells you he had his sights on something more than your hand.
doctor J | 07.31.06 - 1:19 pm | #

Anne:

I obviously didn't make my point clearly enough if you think we looked at pregnant girls with horror because of "sex". The horror we felt was not of pregnancy or of sex-- it was the horror of seeing the result of violating the prohibition on premarital sex-- the separation from one's family, not being in school (our whole life, in a real sense, at that age) and above all the horror of knowing that the girl would have to give up her baby.

The idea of abortion, if such ever crossed our minds, was too hideous to contemplate. In my middle class world it wasn't until I was college age that the possibility was ever talked about. And, whatever an individual might have done, the idea was morally repugnant. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that anyone ever admitted to having one and abortion was legal by then.

You certainly seem to be a thoroughly modern miss, if you really think that an activity that has so many unhealthy public repercussions is nobody's business and the "hallmark of the small". If nothing else, the huge number of fatherless children, the growing number of children who have to be drugged into behaving in school, etc ad nauseam, ought to be sign enough that we do need to think through the problems a thoroughly vicious (full of vice) attitude to sex and morality brings.
Colleen | 07.31.06 - 1:20 pm | #

I'm not entirely clear what ADHD has to do with sex, Colleen. Perhaps you could explain that more fully?
I doubt the 50s were any more moral than today, in the sense of people's inherent morality being any greater; from your description it wasn't God that people feared, for the most part, but Mrs. Grundy.
Ledasmom | 07.31.06 - 1:47 pm | #

Ledasmom: ADHD has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with children who result from ... sex. I am appalled by the way we treat children in this country and I do attribute that to the way we treat sex-- and that gets us back into a discussion we have had here before about the breaking of the connection between sex and procreation and the value of waiting for marriage, etc. Let's defer refighting that battle for now!
Colleen | 07.31.06 - 1:57 pm | #

Dang. I just spent fifteen minutes typing a long comment and lost it to a network timeout.

Main points: I was there, she's wrong.

Some things have changed for the better since the '50s, some for the worse. Sexual morality is among the latter.

Many people seem unable to separate media images of the past from the reality. People were not really all that different then, but on the whole they behaved better as far as sexual morality was concerned.

I would not swap the sweet yearning of my unconsummated teenage romances for any amount of cold-hearted hooking up.
Maclin Horton | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 1:59 pm | #

Maclin,
I'm not sure there was anything "sweet" about the "yearning" sometimes expressed in the pop of our nostalgia!

Remember Gary Puckett's hit "Young Girl" with its Humbert Humbert lyric?

"Young girl, get out of my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run, girl
You're much too young, girl..."

Thank goodness they don't always write 'em like they used to.
jody tresidder | 07.31.06 - 2:13 pm | #

Marcotte seems to be mistaking the cultural leftovers of the 1950s (the music, the TV shows, the advertisements) for what it was really like. No, life was not all Leave it to Beaver at that time & I don't think anyone with any historical credibility can ascert such a silly notion. Please recall that The Untouchables was on TV at the same time.

Innocent? Hardly. But Marcotte needs to brush up on their Shakespeare; it's all about the message. Look at the messages (dare I say the "morals") of Leave it to Beaver or The Honeymooners. Look at the justice the heroes of The Untouchables were meant to mete out. The morals to these stories are still valid today, whether Marcotte wants to believe that or not. (Methinks she's not watched them recently, if ever, & is taking other's words for it.) Even the silliness of Uncle Milty or Sid Ceaser or Jack Benny, for all their envelope pushing, was not the 1950s equivalent of the vulgarity we can see practically 24/7 on Comedy Central today (Stephen Colbert excepted).

And it should also be said that the excesses of Hollywood (& they have been there from the very beginning of silent film - Fatty Arbuckle, anyone?) or the music scene have never, ever been representative of the rest of America. Here's a news flash: they still aren't! Those excesses most definitely did trickle down & had a hand in the creation of the Empty V culture we find ourselves in today. But the extreme behavior of some of Hollywood stars was only representative of them & the artificial world that has been created around them, not of what America was really like. They live in a bubble & the attention of the world (for whatever reason) is focused on them. We expend untold ink & ASCII on the various aspects of these "stars" lives & think, in comparison, that our lives are boring & slavish. But nothing could be further from the truth. It's they who are the slaves to their excessive & self-absorbed lifestyles. We even give them cute names like Bennifer & Tom-Kat. We obsess over why Robert Downey Jr can't get out of rehab & about the secret sex life of a has been member of a boy band. Why? Because we've been not so subtly indoctrinated to believe that our lives should be like that, too! But, deep down, that's not what the vast majority of America really wants. We look at them & shake our heads & wonder why the weekly tabloids think we care if anyone's actually seen baby Suri.

Ms Marcotte has fallen prey to a sad but very typical au courant mode of viewing the past by some people today who don't take the time to do their research: she's taking her personal views & imposing them upon the past, remaking it in the image of the society she'd like to be to support her personal views. "See, look! I told you I was right!" This (called for what it really is) is narcisicism.

There's also an old Latin phrase that describes it: post hoc ergo propter hoc. But just because there exists a specific perceived result, it doesn't mean the cause of it was what one perceives it based on one's limited knowledge.
Gene Branaman | 07.31.06 - 2:15 pm | #

Jody,

Three words: Walk Away Renee

(Sorry to use that tired device but it sort of invited itself.)

But I wasn't talking about pop music, I was talking about my own experience. On the subject, though: early rock was sometimes pretty raunchy, and either suppressed or misunderstood. What did Miss Molly love to do? Most white people didn't get the slang.
Maclin Horton | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 2:26 pm | #

I was born in 1960. Big-picture observation, based on what I've seen through the years:

Yes, sexual immorality in all its permutations -- promiscuity, porn, shacking up unmarried -- has long had a place in Western civilization. What has changed is that it used to be considered deviant. Its scent was on the breeze but didn't saturate the atmosphere. Its fumes wafted in from the counterculture and from various subcultures in increasingly powerful waves until, finally, they overwhelmed the mainstream. Today sexual immorality is the very air we breathe. It is the mainstream. You'd need a sealed oxygen mask to keep your metabolism from being affected by it.
David Pearson | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 2:49 pm | #

Yes, Maclin. And it wasn't just early rock that was raunchy. Take Shakespeare. If you think it sounds bawdy . . . it pretty much is. And yet Bill the Bard was one of the most moral playwights in all of history. He acknowledged that life is full of bawdy moments but bawdiness is not the focus of any of his plays. His work is obviously based in a specific Christian morality.

Modern pop music, likewise, runs the gamut (sometimes literally - there's a musical reference for you!) between the smutty & the sublime. But for every Tommy James singing "I Think We're Alone Now", there's a Brian Wilson countering with "Warmth of the Sun". For every "Hound Dog" (ever heard the original lyrics?) there's a "Wake Up Little Susie" (in which the kids were more worried about their rep than getting in trouble with their folks). Frankly, I think the jukebox is stacked on the side of Brian, Phil, & Don by a longshot. For every "Darling Nicky" someone can name, I can name 10 like "Pride In The Name of Love".
Gene Branaman | 07.31.06 - 3:10 pm | #

Anne wrote:
"JOhn, if sexual morality is supposed to be about self-control, why do so many small-minded people obsess about what other people do in the privacy of their homes? Why do those same people seek to control it, via law, 'shame' and 'social stigma'?"

Perhaps one reason "so many small-minded people obsess" is because we live in community and what we do in the "privacy of [our] homes" leaches out into our public lives and relationships.

If sexual relationships are casual then what will our other relationships be like? If what we do sexually doesn't really matter, how will that affect the message(s) we proclaim in a society that has become utterly saturated with the erotic? What will we say to those seeking guidance? What does it mean if all we have to offer our children is, 'what you do in the privacy of your own home is your business'? How does anyone find holiness? How do we help each other become holy?

Certainly, I don't believe the government should be policing our personal lives including our bedrooms. But those who know that what we do in private has a profound affect on what we do in public have a responsibility to speak up. In terms of abortion, pedophilia, decisions about those who will influence children and similar areas, we also have a responsibilty to work to pass appropriate laws to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

And please, all shame and all "social stigma" are not bad. They can be very useful to help us grow and become the people God has created us to be. So whereas no one should be ashamed of what he is, nearly all of us, at one time or another, have reason to be ashamed of what we do. The trick is to use that shame, which social stigma can bring to our attention, to repent.
Drusilla | 07.31.06 - 4:28 pm | #

There are many statistics that quantify our descent into moral degeneracy. Take for example illegitimacy rates. It the 1950s it was 3% (and only 2% in 1940). Today it is over 30%. The incidence of sexually transmitted disease has skyrocketed in corresponding fashion.
Dan | 07.31.06 - 4:28 pm | #

Anne writes: "If sexual morality is supposed to be about self-control, why do so many small-minded people obsess about what other people do in the privacy of their homes?"

The concern is not with what people do in the bedroom but rather is with the public consequences of what goes on there, for example: children brought up without a father (a major risk factor for depression, substance abuse and poverty), sexually transmitted disease and abortion.

I do not take as a given that the 1950s were a worse time for blacks either. Obviously they were worse in terms of civil rights. But the black underclass today is quite arguably worse off than it was in the 1950s. The cycle of poverty has gotten worse and the breakdown of morality is the reason. In the 1950s the black illegitimacy rate was 22%. Today it is nearly 70% (in the ghetto it is over 90%).

I am convinced that the number one problem of our underclass is a one of morals and not one of lack of economic opportunity or racial discrimination. Why do I think this? Personal experience. From time immemorial, my father's side of the family knew grinding poverty far worse than anyone in the U.S. experiences now yet, when released from that poverty through emigration to the U.S., immediately produced middle and upper middle class families. Why did this happen? It happened because during all those centuries of peasant poverty a strong sense of morality (that included an extremely strict sexual code of behavior) and family was kept in tact. If the members of our underclass -- for whom far more economic opportunity exists than did for my father's family when it first arrived in the U.S. -- abided by that same morality, they would no longer be members of our underclass. But instead of selling them on this idea, our culture says to them: sex, promiscuity, abortion, no mom & dad together, no problem.
The problem that black underclass faces today is not a problem of racial discrimination or lack of economic opportunity. It is a moral problem that derives from the disintegration of the family.
Dan | 07.31.06 - 5:02 pm | #

Apparently believeing it supports her thesis that the 1950s were a bad time, Anne writes: "If you were clinically depressed, you got electroshock therapy."

A couple of points:

1) A person stands a far greater chance of being clinically depressed today than a person did in the 1950s. Since the 1960s, the rate of depression (along with rates of divorce, abortion, illegitimacy and sexually transmitted disease) has skyrocked.

2) Electroshock therapy is not a discredited form of treatment. It is still used today for severe depression.
Dan | 07.31.06 - 5:07 pm | #

This is a most interesting topic and can branch out a thousand ways. I am of Colleen's era-- Woodstock was the summer of my high school graduation and a couple of my friends went. The whole world went to hell about that time. Don't underestimate the effects of the drug scene on all this. When I was in high school there was a shocked rumor that someone might have tried marijuana. By our first year reunion half my class was stoned most of the time.

Consider this: Teenage pregnancy in this country peaked in . . .1957!
That's right. Most of them got married or were married, of course. But I think you can go back not too far and find the sociological impact of their fathers being absent during the war years. That rock and roll generation was a generation deprived of male influence, what with WWII and then Korea. My generation, mid baby boom, had our fathers home, but the peer influence of the older kids was really bad, now that I think about it.

The pill, drugs, JFK, Vietnam, the Yankees trading Roger Maris. It all adds up.
Robert N.G. | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 5:30 pm | #

I'm just pointing out that Ms. Marcotte did have some valid points in that society is a lot more candid about sex in general now.

I think it's a lot less candid, actually - it has no problem at all with discussing deeds, but cannot bear to hear what those acts may actually mean to people, their relationships, their lives, and their souls.

I saw a greeting card just yesterday that summed up this attitude perfectly: "My body is not a temple, it's an amusement park."

Well, even an amusement park charges some sort of admission, and the best-run parks are well-maintained: no trash, courteous help, and rides that won't kill or maim the customers. And even the best of them have lines for the best rides. But the biggest thing is that nobody LIVES in an amusement park. One eventually gets sick of roller-coasters, funhouses, the midway, the arcade, and the unhealthy food. Sooner or later even the kids want to get out of the sun and noise and just go home. And the adults who go have got to leave eventually, lest they lose their jobs and be unable to afford any trips whatsoever.

I disagree with anyone who says that a human person is only worth whatever thrills they can get for themselves. That they give thrills to others is almost an accident - it's like the price of admission for enjoying oneself, if the modern attitude is followed out strictly. What's worse, living for thrills only guarantees that you will soon find none - they won't be out of the ordinary enough. (As nice as an ice cream cone may be once in a while, it isn't good for you three meals a day; and what's more, you would soon get absolutely sick of the stuff.)
Nightfly | Homepage | 07.31.06 - 5:59 pm | #

Easy way to torpedo her argument:

The purpose for brining up the topic and framing it the way she does in the first place is to promote MORE CHANGE in the media along directions she thinks are more "healthy".

But her argument relies upon the premise that there was NO REAL CHANGE at all between the sexual atmosphere 40-50 years ago and today.

If nothing changed from before despite what she calls media "censorship" (I call it taste) then what she is really arguing is that media depictions of sex HAVE NOTHING AT ALL to do with society's attitude towards sex.

Hence, the media attitude towards sex is inconsequential.

Therefore the assertion that a further loosening of morality in media would somehow benefit the cause of sexual "liberty" (what we call "slavery") is undercut by her premise.

Hence, her post is meaningless circular conjecture.

The subtext of her argument, however, is really the focus of her statement. And that is this:

All along, everyone really secretly wanted to be sexually liberated (enslaved) but were too cowardly to act on these desires because the religious right held society (against the greater will) in an iron grip of oppression and taboo.

The boogeyman of the left is really a reincarnated Papist boogeyman of the anti-Catholic Protestants. Both never existed -- at least in the cardboard cutout sense that the narrow-minded propagators of these myths suggest.

There is a growing intellectual honesty about the real role the Church played and creating Western Civilization. A reality once known only among Catholics is finally finding root in Evangelical and Secularist bastions. And that is: just about everything that we value as an advanced civilization we owe to the Catholic Church.

This always was the way it was, but such meddling facts tend to get in the way of justifying the existence of your renegade schismatic denomination. What to do? Why slander and lie, of course!

For example, we are taught at school that Jesuits tried to stop Columbus because they thought the world was flat (absurd! In the same school in math class you learn how the Greeks used math to determine the curve of the Earth. Jesuits said Columbus' calculations about the size of the Earth was too small. And they were RIGHT!)

So now you have a new group of people whose ideals for government are Secularist-only (exercise extreme prejudice against "wingnuts"). But they have a hard time justifying that when faced with the track record of Secularist-only governments (ie, North Korea).

What to do? Take the evil plotting bishop, sexually abused nun and assassin monk and transmogrify them into totalitarian despots who never existed. Beautiful.
StubbleSpark | 07.31.06 - 6:36 pm | #

Don't underestimate the effects of the drug scene on all this. When I was in high school there was a shocked rumor that someone might have tried marijuana.

After moving in the early 70s to Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the "Hash Bash" on the University of Michigan campus, when simple possession of pot was a civil infraction with a five-dollar fine, it was no wonder that I saw a lot of young kids getting high. Of course, we even had a fairly large group of "burn-outs" in the seventh grade (that's 12-13 years old!). It didn't seem to bother teachers too much that large numbers of students were constantly half-awake, with red eyes, and clothes that reeked of marijuana.
Bender | 07.31.06 - 7:06 pm | #

Ann Arbor!

Bender, I grew up just off the corner of Stadium and Main. Alright, I'm going off topic. Sorry Dawn, but you know: It's a small world.

...ah, Ann Arbor...
*sigh*

(Go Blue!)
Leif | 07.31.06 - 7:48 pm | #

"an iron grip of oppression and taboo"

If taboos have an iron grip, it is the grip of a candle holder, not a shackle.

Privacy itself is a taboo; it is one that keeps certain activities "in the closet" -- an old word for bedroom, I think. It is not, no matter whch liberal opines, a place of autonomy, outside of social control. The law does not stop at a locked door (though neighbors do), but simply needs a warrant.

You are free to disagree; that's all.
philip | 07.31.06 - 8:19 pm | #

David,

I am about 4 years younger, born in 1956.

To us I would think the 1950's & 1960's were different because we were just kids.

Sure there was sex...more rampant in the latter part of the '60's but we weren't aware of it.

Or maybe I would have been if I had older siblings or had lived much closer to my cousins...I lived much of that time far away.

Looking at television, I often realize that it can be a mirror but it only reflects the intentions of writers and depending on your viewing habits it can color your judgement.

Today though, there is a heck of a lot of sex you only have to look back at the old sitcoms and realize what could not be shown on the tube. And up until cable & satellite there were still some regulations.

Can you think of movies that don't need to show even a hint of more flesh than you would want to see?

I can.

There were so many, oh so many, great movies done without so much sex...a hint or a few words gives enough color if warranted.

And yet, we need to reflect on what is really happening out there as there are a heck of a lot of us who are unattached but hoping and yearning for real love.

Blessed Mother Theresa liked to observe that the great problem of the west was loneliness.

No one can argue that point.
P. Edward Murray | 07.31.06 - 11:06 pm | #

That of course should read 4 years older...heck I wish I was really 4 years younger!:)
P. Edward Murray | 07.31.06 - 11:07 pm | #

I was born in early 1960's and my father who grew up on a farm in Ireland said they would send to slaughter any cow caught on a another cow ( they had a name for the cow). It would confuse the males. The other cows would start doing the same thing and create a lot of confusion in the herd. Perversity does spread and grow like that. I think in the last 40 years its been allowed to flourish. But what do I know I'm just a dumb ox.
John | 07.31.06 - 11:15 pm | #

And ADHD? I would hope that if folks want to talk about it they should refrain unless they really know about it.
P. Edward Murray | 07.31.06 - 11:17 pm | #

Anyone who doesn't link up the high diagnosis rate of ADHD with fatherlessness is not that bright. How are single women and female teachers supposed to control boys they can't smack? They can't, so they're going to drug them.
Common Reader | 08.01.06 - 12:10 am | #

Ann Arbor . . . I grew up just off the corner of Stadium and Main.

I am truly sorry Leif, but we all have our crosses to bear in life.
Bender | 08.01.06 - 1:25 am | #

Anyone that doesn't have ADHD,doesn't know someone or isn't a family member or is not a md or psych shouldn't be talking about ADHD.
P. Edward Murray | 08.01.06 - 1:28 am | #

If one more person reminisces here about their days of childish innocence - and how the world has gone to blazes ever since, I shall scream. (Politely).

Seems you are mixing your perceptions of reality with reality itself.

Youthful pictures of the way the world works are, by their very nature, incomplete and selective.

I can still remember the name of the first girl I knew whose mother was a divorcee in the sixties. And I can still recall the terrible, melodramatic fiction I built up in my mind about the unfortunate woman.
I suspect I was probably a sheltered, judgemental little creep - as middle class kids often are.

I knew a lot of total rubbish about the world when I was young. I don't deny this was the way I felt. I just don't base my evaluation of the world today on such shaky foundations.
jody tresidder | 08.01.06 - 6:46 am | #

I do not take as a given that the 1950s were a worse time for blacks either. Obviously they were worse in terms of civil rights. But the black underclass today is quite arguably worse off than it was in the 1950s. The cycle of poverty has gotten worse and the breakdown of morality is the reason. In the 1950s the black illegitimacy rate was 22%. Today it is nearly 70% (in the ghetto it is over 90%).

I am convinced that the number one problem of our underclass is a one of morals and not one of lack of economic opportunity or racial discrimination...

Dan,
Can you like go on the road and start saying this at school assemblies?
Pansy Moss | Homepage | 08.01.06 - 10:01 am | #

Maybe I should not be answering here, but here I go:

I'm Southern European, (not from the USA) born in the 1970s, suburban/urban. I can tell you that, around here, sexual morality changed quite a bit since my childhood. My personal perception is that the differences between childhood and adulthood are being effaced. In my childhood, nobody would dress a 7-year-old girl like a hooker, and nowadays I see mothers who do that. I cannot understand how do we say we want to protect our children from sexual predators and at the same time sexualize them. On the other hand, curiously, some of our adults seem to have acquired some sort of "secondary innocence". 30-year-olds have tried (or seen their friends trying) a life too focused in sex "per se" and found it disappointing.

knit_tgz | Homepage | 08.01.06 - 10:07 am | #

Please,everyone, don't go on about this ADHD stuff, as it's not very interesting for people who click on the comments link just looking for an answer to the question I posed. Thanks.
Dawn Eden | 08.01.06 - 10:36 am | #

I don't know about the 60's, but I have seen great changes in my own lifetime. In my home town, at least, today's high school kids are far more sexualized than any I knew when I was in high school in the early 90's. I don't think I led an overtly sheltered life; I really didn't hear kids openly talking about blow jobs and condoms and so forth.

That's not to say there was no such thing as teen pregnancy or teen sex - far from it, we had a lot of both. (In fact, my HS had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the city.) We certainly had sex on our minds, too. But things hadn't quite made it to the casual oral sex culture or hookup culture that now seems so prevalent. (For instance: nymag.com/news/features/15589/index.html
cantemir | 08.01.06 - 12:37 pm | #

Jody,

I understand your frustration with these countless anecdotes about the good old days. They are limited, but they're true, and they shed more light, I believe, on our society's problems than the generalizations of politicians or the emarrassing period pieces that come out of movie studios.

Regarding cultural trends in recent decades: A friend of mine, who like myself was born in the early 70s, had a brother several years his senior who had grown up as a textbook case
of 1970s decadence, heavily immersed in drugs, casual sex, etc. My friend couldn't help but take this as a lesson on what sort of life-style to avoid.
What I observed in his family was a microcosm of a moral re-strengthening that occured on a larger scale following the seventies.
Leif | 08.01.06 - 12:53 pm | #

One key point is that the children of the 50s and 60s were just that in the 50s and 60s -- children, with children's perspectives.

Kids and adults don't see the same picture with the same eyes. Or at least in my house they don't.

Might it be worthwhile to ask the question of people who were ADULTS in the "Leave It to Beaver" era?
C.J. | 08.01.06 - 1:33 pm | #

Good point about the perspective being one of youth. The descriptions of the sexual mores of the 50s and 60s here don't seem all that different from how I experienced the 80s, but I'm sure it's vastly different than how the folks born a generation before experienced it.

We seem unwilling to acknowledge that at least part of what we observe is not a change in society, but a change in ourselves.
jfpbookworm | 08.01.06 - 1:59 pm | #

"Seems you are mixing your perceptions of reality with reality itself."

That's exactly what Marcotte is doing. The Leave it to Beaver depiction of the 1950s must be accurate & reliable since it's of the era &, therefore, a wonderful foundation for her point.

Except for this: When was a Hollywood depiction ever accurate or reliable? And I'll take that further: When was a dramatic depiction ever accurate or reliable? Which leads us back to Shakespeare. And back farther, in fact, to Euripides, Sophocles, & Aeschelus. If one knows one's history, one will know that the arts are & have always been a commentary on history rather than a direct representation of it. This point alone negates Marcotte's whole post.
Gene Branaman | 08.01.06 - 2:27 pm | #

On the general issue of the coarsening of society--
One thing that I've found unfortunate & depressing is the current overly casual use of the F word. It sort of sprung up like the cell phone.
Recalling highschool in the 80s & college in the early 90s--
friends, even in the midst of the lowest story about some drunken sexual exploits, at least mustered some restraint in the telling of those stories-- and avoided the F word.
There was a sense, even so recently, that that word was reserved for the rarest moments of extreme anger.
Now, I find that word is used for emphasis the way the valley girl of yesteryear used "like".
What a change in so few years.
Leif | 08.01.06 - 2:55 pm | #

Leif,

And a shame too! Part of the "delight" of the F-bomb is that it should be rarely used, and only in most extreme of circumstances. I believe it has a use, and a perfectly good one, and that to overuse it is to dishonor it.

On the other hand, I find myself bristling at using the Lord's name in vain far more than I do at f---.
Fallen Sparrow | Homepage | 08.01.06 - 3:03 pm | #

I agree.
The best example in pop culture of strictly reserving cuss words for just those rare moments when they actually seem appropriate is "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" ca. late 80s.

As I recall, the entire film is very clean with the language, until a climactic scene at the end where Steve Martin's character is so frustrated with the beaurocracy he's encountered that he lets loose at some customer service type, with a string of four letter words.
The colorful language has been so absent in the film up to that point that when it finally appears it really has power.

There's definitely a lesson in there.
Leif | 08.01.06 - 3:29 pm | #

Leif,

I agree wholeheartedly.
I find it very unappealing when a woman uses it just as another form of speech.

So much so that I decided not to date her at all.
P. Edward Murray | 08.01.06 - 4:51 pm | #

Dawn -
Nowhere does Amanda claim that early-'60s pop music `masked rampant homosexuality'. Her thesis seems to be simply that pop music of that time displayed an ideal of human sexuality that was little more than an elaborate fantasy.

Gene Branaman -
Did you actually read Amanda's post? Her thesis is that pop culture was not a good representation of early '60s society. In this comment, you're ferociously savaging an argument being made not by Amanda but by your fellow social conservatives, including Richard J Stuart, Colleen, and yourself.
Noumena | Homepage | 08.01.06 - 6:12 pm | #

Read the post again, Noumena. She says the "fantasy" masked an illusion that included homosexuality. Whether or not her intention was to imply it was "rampant" is a matter of interpretation. At any rate, we're getting off-topic here.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 08.01.06 - 6:21 pm | #

"Except for this: When was a Hollywood depiction ever accurate or reliable?"...

Gene,
I think you are side stepping my point?

I was talking about YOUTHFUL perceptions of the way the world is - which some posts here indicate that some posters never abandon.

I'm not talking about the more complex depictions of adult screenwriters - with their mixed intentions - nor of the artistic commentary of adult playwrights/thinkers etc.
jody tresidder | 08.01.06 - 8:56 pm | #

Jody,

"Youthful perceptions"?

Let's remember that Christ talked about being more like children and that to Jesus & Mary & God himself we are children.
P. Edward Murray | 08.01.06 - 9:14 pm | #

Jody, what makes you think we never abandoned our youthful perspectives? We are certainly reflecting on our youthful experiences, as we were invited to do. But how you can conclude that that somehow invalidates what we have to say escapes me.

If, as Noumena says, Marcotte's sole point was to say that the music displayed an ideal of human sexuality that was little more than an elaborate fantasy, all I can say is "duh!" That was an era in which the arts (at least those actually depended on being paid for by a willing public) still reflected not just the tastes but also the ideals of the audience.

Are we better served today when so called musicians can throw in our faces the most vile, sexist, violent language and images? How about the violence in our movies? Do these not coarsen us, too? I long for a little idealism again!
Colleen | 08.01.06 - 10:11 pm | #

Colleen: you ask: "Jody, what makes you think we never abandoned our youthful perspectives?"

Two quotes that illustrate what I'm fussing about!

From Bender: "Maybe sexual morality was all a lie, as Miss Marcotte argues, but if it was a lie, I and many others did not know that it was all a lie. In fact, I went on continuing to believe such things long after the times had changed."

From kwerna: "Good girls may have fallen too, but the only girls generally known to do so were sluts. Same with drug use>".

I think they both show, in slightly different ways, a tendency to cling trustingly to early perceptions - without seeing how very limited these perceptions were.

When we are young, in short, we often make unreliable witnesses because of our naivety or a priggish streak, because of idealism and lack of experience.

Even when we later reflect on these youthful assumptions, we don't always understand how little we really knew.

Neither of the authors of these quotes seemed fantastically keen to wonder just how highly selective they were. And if innocence is based on ignorance, then it's not a useful measure of the fallen state of the world ever since those apparently halcyon days.
jody tresidder | 08.01.06 - 11:42 pm | #

I don't know, Jody. Innocence tends to allow one to see a higher truth. Eating the fruit of reality does not necessarily give you greater sight. Often it merely blinds you. It is paradoxical, but often times, ignorance is learned. The virtue that the innocent know and can see is a much greater and purer truth than the vice that is known to the experienced realist.
Bender | 08.02.06 - 12:23 am | #

Beautifully stated, Bender.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 08.02.06 - 12:36 am | #

I was not born at this time (1971 baby) but I have had numerous discussion with my Mum after shows that supposed so what was really going on it the 1960s.

Maybe Australia, and rural Australia particularly, were behind America but pre-martial sex was uncommon. Mum did say that she knew a girl that got pregnant and took of to the city for fear of her father. Her father wasn't like that though and went to the city to get her back and take care of her. Also there were families that would have an extra child at the end after one of the girls had gone away for a while.

No, it wasn't perfect but it never will be. What is different is that there was a stronger moral code on sexuality. I've heard people describe it as a fear of sex but that ignores the evidence of the large families that were around.

One thing Mum does talk about is that there seems a lot more stress in growing up. They started work earlier, my Mum left school at 14, but socially it was a lot pressured and more relaxed.
Peter - Australia | 08.02.06 - 3:00 am | #

Leif,

I agree wholeheartedly.
I find it very unappealing when a woman uses it just as another form of speech.

So much so that I decided not to date her at all.

I was born in '72, and there was a time in my lifetime that even though boys were able to get away with being a bit more crass, girls really were not supposed to curse, or be too loud. I saw that start to change with one wild and crazy free-spirited girl in HS, then two, then three. I have to admit, at the time I thought the one girl like that was cool. Now all girls are wild, crazy, free-spirited and speak their minds with all kinds of four-letter words, and a lack of any original adjectives, it is almost a cliche. And the respect for becoming ladies has all but vanished.

On another note, just to mark the differences between my teenage years in the '80s and the current times, I went back to college last year. I was surrounded by many recent HS grades who every Monday morning would tell the tales of their weekend adventures. A common pasttime among girls was frequenting strip clubs, sometimes with their boyfriends, sometimes with just a group of girls. At 17-18, I never would have been caught dead in strip paying for lap dances, and I was not exactly a girl of morals then. This was a common pasttime as well. They knew which clubs were the best, and the ones that had the "nasty" girls.

Anywa, if that was the leap from the 80s to '05-'06, I am sure there was a leap from '65-'85.
Pansy Moss | Homepage | 08.02.06 - 6:42 am | #

Bender,
But what has your "higher truth" definition of innocence got to do with prim-sounding denunciations of sexual behavior you don't like?

In the specific context of this thread, it can appear like putting on white gloves to disguise crabby, age-spotted opinions.
jody tresidder | 08.02.06 - 9:12 am | #

Pansy Moss, to be honest I noticed a big change from the late 70s/early 80s to now. When I was growing up you still treated girls very differently than blokes. You watched your language around the girls even after swearing lost any shock value amongst the blokes.

One comment I found interesting, made by a girl at the local pub, was that country blokes were a lot less forward than city blokes and she felt safer going out amongst them. If a fight started and a women stepped in the fight stopped, whereas in the city it didn't matter. I was told the same thing by a female publican (owner of bar). In 30 years of breaking up fights in pubs (that doesn't sound too good) she has never been touch. The fight always stopped when she stepped in. This could be the experiences of these two women but I found it interesting.
Peter - Australia | 08.02.06 - 10:45 am | #

"Prim" is underrated. =) So, for that matter, is innocence; one of the other themes of music is the pain of innocence lost.

Give Christianity a little more credit than "sexual behavior you don't like." People like a lot of this behavior quite fine, but simply think that in order to stay good, it has to be exercised properly. Sex, as everyone knows, is powerful; the more powerful something is, the more damage it does when misused. Anyone can ride a bike, but we make people get licensed to drive cars, and flying jets is reserved for those who pass rigorous training.

Sexual morality is not merely a matter of stuff we like or don't like, as if morality was a personal taste. Sex misused is a serious matter - it destroys lives. The world may never have been wholly innocent, but that's no reason to suddenly embrace the Fall as a good thing. That's why Marcotte is really wrong about the sexual honesty of society compared to the 50's. At least back then, people admitted that there was an ideal worth pursuing; of course they knew that they weren't keeping it, but they wanted to inspire their kids to do better, and reap the benefits. Now we're not even honest enough to admit that there ever was an ideal. The failure of the people to keep any sexual standard has been blamed on the standard itself, and not the people who fell short - the flaws of the past are heralded today as great triumphs of liberation. It's as if a man with a broken leg thought that the solution to his injury was to cut off the legs of everyone else, in order to say that broken legs were an advantage.
Nightfly | Homepage | 08.02.06 - 10:51 am | #

what has your "higher truth" definition of innocence got to do with prim-sounding denunciations of sexual behavior you don't like?

Surely you do not mean to suggest that truth is not relevent and has no place in today's world? Truth, especially the highest Truth, has everything to do with life, even specific contexts of it, and not only to those of us who are "prim-sounding," "crabby," "age-spotted," "priggish," "small-minded," "sniveling," "naive," and whatever other insult you can throw at us. It is in innocence and higher truth that one can be free, and eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge does not free us, it does not make things clearer, it does not make us like gods, empowered to choose and determine what is right and what is wrong; it only enslaves us to error.

You do not believe that such truth applies to sexuality? You believe that sexuality should be a truth-free zone? OK, let's look at it in the "specific context" of racism. Innocent little children naturally understand and believe that we are all equal and entitled to respect. It is only when they lose their innocence that racism creeps in. Racism, like sexual immorality or amorality, is learned. That is to say, ignorance is learned. We pride ourselves on our greater knowledge and greater insight from taking a more "realistic" view of the world, when in actuality, we are blind fools.

And as for "sexual behavior you don't like?" -- No, I like it. I like it a lot. That's one of the problems. It is very attractive; it is very seductive; it is very enjoyable. Although I was innocent in my youth, I was quite guilty later on. And let me tell you, innocence is better. It was/is better for me, and it is/would be better for the world.
Bender | 08.02.06 - 11:17 am | #

Bender,
I'm not sure if any sensible response to your latest is required or possible - despite the questions you pose -, so I won't try.

Nightfly,
Too many generalizations!

Though I agree ideals are worth pursuing - even in this sometimes wretched-looking world.

But, if I'm reading you right, you'd probably agree with the notion that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue?
jody tresidder | 08.02.06 - 1:02 pm | #

I'm not sure if any sensible response to your latest is required or possible

That's OK, a lot of people seem to find me nonsensible.
Bender | 08.02.06 - 2:00 pm | #

Too many generalizations!

True. All generalizations are useless, including this one. =P

In defense, all I can say is we're talking ideals, and that by neccesity means talking broadly. Any specific example pro or con could immediately be countered; the issue isn't whether a few aren't harmed by falling short, but whether those few would have gained even more by meeting the standard. One could probably argue that those who are gifted enough to operate well under impaired conditions are precisely those who could come closest to actually fulfilling the ideals. A good driver may win a race in a bad car, but he's exactly the kind of driver who could really show everyone what a great car is capable of. (There I go again.)

But, if I'm reading you right, you'd probably agree with the notion that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue?

Sort of. We still rightly condemn hypocrisy and distinguish it from simple error. The hypocrite doesn't just go wrong, he doesn't bother to correct what he knows is wrong. In that way, though I agree that it is a tribute, hypocrisy is nothing close to meeting the actual obligations owed to virtue - namely, the obligation to pursue virtue. But it still beats teaching everyone that error is truth.
Nightfly | Homepage | 08.02.06 - 6:50 pm | #

My parenthetical entry here...

On hypocrisy:
Pointing out someone's hypocrisy always seems fruitless in a serious debate.

If the 5-packs-a-day father tells his son that smoking is bad, after, say, the son tries one cig, the father is a hypocrite.
But so what?
The message that smoking's bad for your health is still true... whether the father billows more smoke than Gary, Indiana or is clean as a whistle.

More secular sorts, in my experience, love to point out all of George Bush's hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of the religious right wing, etc.
To a christian, conversely, hypocrisy is the unremarkable manifestation of man's fallen state; we affirm one set of rules but play by a lesser set. Call it hypocrisy. Call it life.
Leif | 08.02.06 - 8:11 pm | #

*** I have to admit, at the time I thought the one girl like that was cool. Now all girls are wild, crazy, free-spirited and speak their minds with all kinds of four-letter words, and a lack of any original adjectives, it is almost a cliche.***

So... Speaking one's mind is a "bad thing"? It's not lady-like? So what on earth would a "lady" or a "gentleman" be doing in the comments of a blog? A blog written by a female, by the way.

Hey, at least you're honest.

Edited By Siteowner
Natalia | Homepage | 08.03.06 - 5:58 pm | #

Natalia,

A string of four-letter words shouldn't be mistaken for "speaking one's mind."

"F this" and "F that" may sound gutsy and candid, but it's nearly always a mask over the person's true thoughts.
Leif | 08.03.06 - 9:00 pm | #

I never said that four-letter words are gutsy or candid. But I do think that pining for this idealized "ladyhood" nonsense is at best, naive, at worst, delusional.

Oh, and thanks for editing my comment, Dawn. Speaking of "gutsy"...
Natalia | Homepage | 08.04.06 - 1:44 am | #