So, here is what has happened in the world over the past few days: basketball players have jumped into the stands to throw punches at fans, football players have had a brawl to the point that state troopers needed to break it up, a deer hunter kills five and wounds three (humans, not deer), there was a greater national outcry over a two minute skit involving an actress and a football player than there was over Abu Grahib, groups of people now consider Saving Private Ryan to be obscene, I’ve actually read a protestor blaming Kinsey for causing the U.S. to change from the world of Leave it to Beaver and it appears that the presidential results are going to stand. And I am forced to ask the following question: when the fuck did I end up in bizarro world?
Seriously, what the hell is going on here? I know that I’ve spent a lot of nights in bars and even more standing in front of speakers but I still have a few functioning brain cells left. Am I the only one who looks at the events of the past few weeks and wonder what is going on out there? You all might as well settle in because I’m going to deconstruct the events of the past few weeks.
I’ll start with the Saving Private Ryan nonsense. First of all, you can pretty much fear any group with the name “Family” in it, whatever agenda they are pushing is not going to be in your best interest and that is even if you have a wife and kids. Here, a group of people was able to get network television to pull a showing of Saving Private Ryan on Veteran’s Day because there was bad language and violence. Because, God forbid that we let people see what war is actually like now that we’re in one. And let’s make sure people don’t view the one picture that I’ve seen in recent years that shows the true courage of soldiers, of men who walk into danger and do their jobs knowing that death is imminent but they continue to move forward because they are convinced that this is for the greater good. The men who hit the beach at Normandy are some of our greatest heroes ever, they sacrificed more than I even want to imagine so that I can write this now. But we can’t show that because there are bad words in it. Idiots. That’s all I can say about it. If you don’t want to watch it, don’t. If you don’t want your kids to watch it, grab the remote. Let the rest of us have our dramatized reality.
I’m not going to even talk about the Terrell Owens flap, talk about sound and fury signifying nothing. When did this country turn so insanely prudish? I’m not calling for porn on CBS on Monday nights (but hey, it would show that everybody does love Raymond) but can we please reach the point that semi-nudity is not the end of the world? The thing that really gets me is something I read last week. People are protesting the movie Kinsey. Now, 95% of the population has no idea who Kinsey is. 99% of the population would never have heard about this indie flick. The 1% who would are guys like me who don’t care but go, “Laura Linney is in the film. That’s probably worth seeing.” But the protestors are out in arms because there is a movie about a sex researcher who in the words of one protestor, “Ended the world of Leave it to Beaver and led the way to the depravity of the modern world.”
I hate to break it to the world but Leave it to Beaver was fiction. Didn’t exist, never did exist, never will exist. Life is not like a sitcom, that was always an idealized view of the world. Research didn’t change reality, culture just stopped turning a blind eye to the world. Do you want to know what it was really like in the time of Leave it to Beaver? Separate drinking fountains. Women’s career choices consisting of housewife, teacher, nurse, or stewardess. And there was crime. Look up Leopold and Loeb. Or Charles Starkweather. There are a thousand things wrong with this country right now but I do not want to go back to the fifties.
It does seem like the world is just breaking down around us. I can’t fathom why a guy would go into a shooting rampage over a tree stand. That’s something out of a bad television drama, it can’t be real. But that is all I read about this morning, a guy freaking out and shooting other unarmed hunters. Have we gotten that depraved? Does life mean that little right now?
Maybe the Pacers-Pistons fight does show everything in a nutshell. A hard foul turns into a push. A fan gets upset and throws a beer. Player goes after the fan. All hell breaks loose. Pretty much everyone is at fault. I’ve been upset at games, I’ve heckled, but I’ve never thrown anything and I sure as hell wouldn’t go out on the court to get after a player. What I watched Friday night wasn’t sport, it wasn’t entertainment and it wasn’t escapism. It was a mirror to the world and it’s frightening.
I wonder if I’ve already contradicted myself in this rant. I talk about the hypocrisy of censoring media but then worry about the nature of society right now. I don’t think that they are opposing points. We can’t turn away from what we are today. We can’t sanitize television and hope everything goes away. We need to see the world for what it is, warts and all. And then we need to find the solution. Because I don’t think that we can all move to Australia.
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