The Great Indecency Hoax, Frank Rich -NYT

OH, the poor, suffering little children.

If we are to believe the outcry of the past two weeks, America's youth have been defiled en masse - again. This time the dirty deed was done by the actress Nicollette Sheridan, who dropped her towel in the cheesy promotional spot for the runaway hit "Desperate Housewives" that kicked off "Monday Night Football" on ABC. "I wonder if Walt Disney would be proud," said Michael Powell, the Federal Communications Commission chairman who increasingly fashions himself a commissar of all things cultural, from nipple rings to "Son of Flubber."

It's beginning to look a lot like "Groundhog Day." Ever since 22 percent of the country's voters said on Nov. 2 that they cared most about "moral values," opportunistic ayatollahs on the right have been working overtime to inflate this nonmandate into a landslide by ginning up cultural controversies that might induce censorship by a compliant F.C.C. and, failing that, self-censorship by TV networks. Seizing on a single overhyped poll result, they exaggerate their clout, hoping to grab power over the culture.

The mainstream press, itself in love with the "moral values" story line and traumatized by the visual exaggerations of the red-blue map, is too cowed to challenge the likes of the American Family Association. So are politicians of both parties. It took a British publication, The Economist, to point out that the percentage of American voters citing moral and ethical values as their prime concern is actually down from 2000 (35 percent) and 1996 (40 percent).
........
Rush Limbaugh, taking a break from the legal deliberations of his drug rap and third divorce, set the hysterical tone. "I was stunned!" he told his listeners. "I literally could not believe what I had seen. ... At various places on the Net you can see the video of this, and she's buck naked, folks. I mean when they dropped the towel she's naked. You see enough of her back and rear end to know that she was naked. There's no frontal nudity in the thing, but I mean you don't need that. ...I mean, there are some guys with their kids that sit down to watch 'Monday Night Football.' "

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/28/arts/28rich.html

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I remember seeing some 'naughty' nudie Playboy pictures when I was a kid, I just thought it was funny, and that was with frontal nudity.

Now the guys, they like it!

What's Rush so upset about? I didn't see the video, so I had to check out some pictures of her on the web, and I don't see what Rush is complaining about. I don't find anything offensive about her body.

The bulge and all.

With every mini-tantrum over the "culture wars" the Radical Right: Religious Evangelical division, gets to act out their little ritual psychodramas and ventilate their bigotry, ignorance and intolerance, while shelling out the shekels for the GOP. Meanwhile, the Corporate Cynics division uses the broohaha as cover while they pick some more pockets; and the Neocon Nazis draft another "Patriot Act" or moral equivalent to further erode the basic freedoms upon which this country was founded. It's a slick act, all marvelously rehearsed and perfectly timed, entertaining in a train wreck sort of way.

Hasn't it seemed odd that the man who never leaves home is spending all this time in other countries, all of a sudden? Could he be hiding? The handlers claim he's out "making friends". I don't thnk so. Begging, perhaps, although bullying is more his style. I just don't think he'll get very far out there, where nasty truths seem to come out in public about BushCo, and he could get slapped with an international war crimes suit abroad. (Hey, a girl can hope!)