Postmodern Prudes
In the age of relativism, popular morality hasn’t so much disappeared as become schizophrenic.
By Victor Davis Hanson
April 18, 2013
National Review Online
More than 500 people were murdered in
Chicago last year. Yet Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to
berate the fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing “Chicago
values” — apparently, because its founder does not approve of gay
marriage.
Two
states have legalized marijuana, with more to come. Yet social taboos
against tobacco smoking make it nearly impossible to light up a
cigarette in public places. Marijuana, like alcohol, causes far greater
short-term impairment than does nicotine. But legal cigarette smoking is
now seen as a corporate-sponsored, uncool, and dirty habit that leads
to long-term health costs for society at large — in a way homegrown,
hip, and mostly illegal pot smoking apparently does not.
Graphic
language, nudity, and sex are now commonplace in movies and on cable
television. At the same time, there is now almost no tolerance for
casual and slangy banter in the media or the workplace. A boss who calls
an employee “honey” might face accusations of fostering a hostile work
environment, yet a television producer whose program shows an
18-year-old having sex does not. Many colleges offer courses on lurid
themes from masturbation to prostitution, even as campus
sexual-harassment suits over hurtful language are at an all-time high.
A
federal judge in New York recently ruled that the so-called
morning-after birth-control pill must be made available to all “women”
regardless of age or parental consent, and without a prescription. The
judge determined that it was unfair for those under 16 to be denied
access to such emergency contraceptives. But if vast numbers of girls
younger than 16 need after-sex options to prevent unwanted pregnancies,
why isn’t there a flood of statutory-rape charges being lodged against
older teenagers for having consensual relations with younger girls?
Our
schizophrenic morality also affects the military. When America was a
far more traditional society, few seemed to care that General Dwight
Eisenhower carried on an unusual relationship at the front in Normandy
with his young female chauffeur, Kay Summersby. As the Third Army chased
the Germans across France, General George S. Patton was not discreet
about his female liaisons. Contrast that live-and-let-live attitude of a
supposedly uptight society with our own hip culture’s tabloid interest
in General David Petraeus’s career-ending affair with Paula Broadwell,
or in the private e-mails of General John Allen.
What
explains these contradictions in our wide-open but prudish society?
Decades after the rise of feminism, popular culture still seems confused
by it. If women should be able to approach sexuality like men, does it
follow that commentary about sex should follow the same gender-neutral
rules? Yet wearing provocative or inappropriate clothing is often
considered less offensive than remarking upon it. Calling a near-nude
Madonna onstage a “hussy” or “tart” would be considered crude in a way
that her mock crucifixion and simulated sex acts are not.
Criminal
sexual activity is sometimes not as professionally injurious as
politically incorrect thoughts about sex and gender. Former New York
governor Eliot Spitzer — found to have hired prostitutes on a number of
occasions during his time in office — was given a CNN news show despite
the scandal. But when former Miss California Carrie Prejean was asked in
the Miss USA pageant whether she endorsed gay marriage, she said no —
and thereby earned nearly as much popular condemnation for her candid
defense of traditional marriage as Spitzer had for his purchased
affairs.
Critics
were outraged that talk-show host Rush Limbaugh grossly insulted
birth-control activist Sandra Fluke. Amid the attention, Fluke was
canonized for her position that federal health-care plans should pay for
the contraceptive costs of all women. Yet in comparison to Fluke’s
well-publicized victimhood, there has been a veritable news blackout for
the trial of the macabre Dr. Kermit Gosnell, charged with killing and
mutilating in gruesome fashion seven babies during a long career of
conducting sometimes illegal late-term abortions. Had Gosnell’s aborted
victims been canines instead of humans — compare the minimal coverage of
the Gosnell trial with the widespread media condemnation of dog-killing
quarterback Michael Vick — perhaps the doctor’s mayhem likewise would
have been front-page news outside of Philadelphia.
Modern
society also resorts to empty, symbolic moral action when it cannot
deal with real problems. So-called assault weapons account for less than
1 percent of gun deaths in America. But the country whips itself into a
frenzy to ban them, apparently to prove that at least it can do
something, instead of wading into polarized racial and class
controversies by going after illegal urban handguns, the real source of
the nation’s high gun-related body count.
Not
since the late-19th-century juxtaposition of the Wild West with the
Victorian East has popular morality been so unbridled and yet so
uptight. In short, we have become a nation of promiscuous prudes.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His The Savior Generals will appear in the spring from Bloomsbury Books. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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