Perhaps a quarter of the men look like they have just come from
grilling brats at a tailgate party. About a fourth of the women,
and even girls as young as 12 or 13, look like they are at the
beach, or at a pajama party, or offering services on a Tijuana
street corner.
But they are at the airport — just about any American airport
— and collectively they are just one more sign of the coarsening,
or maybe it’s the cheapening, of modern culture.
Another example: At a family tourist spot just the other week,
one couldn’t help overhearing the loud conversation of several 13-
or 14-year-old girls. “I don’t care who he’s married to: I’d have
an affair with Bill Clinton any day.”
“Oh, yuck. Not him. But I’d have one with Obama.”
“Yeah, I’m with her: Obama but not Clinton. And, like,
definitely, not with, like John Edwards. He thinks he’s
cute, but he’s just too, like, you know.”
The first one: “Yeah, not Edwards. But I still think Clinton
would be fun.”
BACK AT THE AIRPORT: There’s a guy with shorts that barely cover
his hips, and his big gut is hanging over his non-belted
belt-loops, and his T-shirt looks very much the worse for wear. And
over there is a 55-year-old woman with ratty shorts not much bigger
than a bikini, and a tank top, and a long gray-blond ponytail, and
a massive spider tattooed all across her upper back. Oh, and wait,
can you believe that 15-year-old in the spandex and
glitter? Or what about the 11-year-old boy with his tight preppy
shirt and his baggy pants hanging off his hips, with two inches of
boxer shorts showing above them?
Or you’re at the movie theatre, and the perfectly decent-looking
couple is commenting out loud at all the action 15 minutes after
the movie has started. Or you’re on the highway, already going 73
in a 70 zone and with cars both in front and to the side of you,
but the guy behind you is riding just two inches off your tailgate.
And it’s nighttime, and his bright lights are on — blindingly
so.
Or you are at the mall, trying to find the movie theatre, and
the concourses are teeming with people of all ages and races and
cultures, all throwing money around like its confetti, and absurdly
young girls and boys are in T-shirts that say things like “I’m too
hot for you to handle,” and “I’m a bi**h and proud, so get used to
it” (except that the “b” word is actually spelled out). Yet if you
poll the adults in their families — adults in households with four
cell phones and two cars and three TVs and three computers and
vacation plans for Disneyworld next week — they will tell you that
times are really tough and they just think it’s so much harder to
make ends meet than it was a generation or two ago.
But they admire the Sopranos, because they know how to
look after their family and not let the American rat race get them
down.
AND IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that prime-time TV is a sewer of illicit
sex and foul language and other filth. Internet porn, Xtreme video
games, so-called “music”…even “kiddie” arcades are full of so
many disturbing images and pursuits that it’s hard to know if there
is anywhere that is “safe” for good, healthy, family fun.
One need not be a “prude” to think there’s something seriously
amiss in a culture like this, a culture that knows not the
difference between a hero and a celebrity, between bravery and
bravado, between virtue and wealth. One need not know how late in
the year a man should wear white, in order to know how to be
courteous or at least how to avoid being just plain rude. Or why
it’s important to avoid being rude in the first place.
Meanwhile, we in the news business give you 24-hour TV coverage
of Paris Hilton’s jail term and Lindsey Lohan’s latest binge. And
then we complain that the blogs are dangerous because they don’t
provide a proper “gatekeeping” function to screen out real news
from garbage. Yeah, right.
The cultural rot isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon, either. Go just
about anywhere in the world, and the story is the same or worse.
Just about anywhere that reasonable wealth meets modernity, the
lowest common denominators leave higher aspirations in the
dust.
In her infamous and infantile commencement address from
Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton urged Americans to practice
“more ecstatic and penetrating modes of living.” But we could all
probably use a little less ecstasy and a lot more decency
instead.
SO, WHERE IS ALL THIS GOING? What’s my point? Or, more
appropriately, what’s the solution?
I dunno.
If I could assign everybody in the country a viewing of
Sergeant York, and of Hotel Rwanda, and of
The Lives of Others,” I would. Then I’d give everybody a
reading list of books, fact and fiction, in which flawed but heroic
figures stood up for truth and beauty and “the right thing” for the
sake of the truth and beauty and right things themselves. Then
maybe I’d make everybody read the Beatitudes again, and probably
the Ten Commandments.
And finally I’d have every person on Earth read George
Washington’s “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company
and Conversation,” all 110 of them closing with the last and best:
“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial
fire called conscience.”
None of that is likely to do any good for the slob with the beer
gut hanging over his short shorts. But maybe the rest of us can
find a way to promote a consciousness of conscience. Or at least
teach our 12-year-olds that bi***hood isn’t a status symbol, but a
condition devoutly to be avoided.
And so, for that matter, are Bill Clinton and Barack
Obama to be devoutly avoided, but that might be a different subject
altogether…
