America's wakeup call

[coolrun]

America's wakeup call

Bill O'Reilly
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com


Sunday, February 8th, 2004

Paris Hilton and I hung out together at the Super Bowl. Well, that may be overstating things. Twice I happened to find myself next to her at parties, but the woman had no idea who your humble correspondent was. Instead, her vacant look clearly signaled to the world the essence of her philosophical outlook: "Here I am."

The Super Bowl and Hilton were perfect companions, as both are glitzy, hyper and well-financed. And the event itself accurately portrays what is good and bad about America. The actual game was magnificent. Athletes performed heroically on both teams. America was built by hard work, competition and self-reliance. All of that was reflected on the field.

But the excesses of the Super Bowl got just as much attention as its champions. Janet Jackson's sleazy halftime performance symbolizes the debasement that has befallen American culture. But far from being outraged, I'm glad Jackson and the Timberlake kid did what they did. Now there is nowhere for the purveyors of crude to hide.

Let's walk through this. As a regular guy, I have no problem with Janet Jackson's chest. Quite the contrary, if the diva were to offer me a private look, I'd charter a plane. However, Jackson's halftime exposition was inappropriate and disrespectful. If she is capable of one lucid moment, she had to know that millions of families were watching the performance and that her sexual writhing and breast-baring would offend many of them.

But like Madonna and Britney Spears, Janet simply did not care. She makes a ton of money acting lasciviously, and blank you if you don't like it.

I got a great kick out of MTV and the NFL honchos being shocked, just shocked, that something crude happened. MTV produced the program, and for years that outfit has reveled in debauchery. It should be named DTV. I mean, come on, what did the moguls expect would happen when Kid Rock, Nelly and the rest took the stage? In the world of rock and hip hop anything goes, the more provocative the better.

Perhaps now Americans will face the facts. Our popular culture has collapsed. For every Beyoncé who shows a bit of class, there are dozens of performers who can't write lyrics about whores, Glocks and drugs fast enough. The sex and violence available on the Net, CDs and DVDs is numbing. Children are exposed to a constant media barrage of degenerate behavior, and if they want a break, commercial TV offers them a variety of reality programs where they can watch people eat bugs and demean women.

Of course, the rich and powerful in this country couldn't care less. Howard Dean, for example, doesn't know what all the fuss is about vis-à-vis Janet Jackson.

You won't be hearing much about the debasement of our culture in the upcoming presidential race because, more than likely, the candidates will be contributing to it with slanderous personal attacks on one another.

Here's why it matters: Kids who admire crude performers are likely to incorporate some of those attitudes into their own lives. Already you see millions of young Americans covered with tattoos, unable to speak proper English, unwilling to read a book or a newspaper.

How do you think these people are going to compete in our hypercompetitive economic marketplace? The answer is that millions of them will be unable to compete and will be doomed to a low-wage existence.

So maybe this Super Bowl halftime controversy will finally wake some people up. American culture has collapsed, and big corporations are responsible. However, they, Janet Jackson and the MTV executives are laughing all the way to the bank. A bank millions of young Americans may never need if they continue to buy into this garbage.

[jhawk1000]

It pains me greatly to admit that I agree with some of the stuff O'Reilly has said in this article. I think I might have to go wash my hands for typing that I agree with anything he said.

Mel-who wonders how Fox can call itself unbiased in reporting!

[Sleeping Bear]

O'Reilly has some good points to make. IMHO parents need to get off their butts and start raising their kids.

Mel...You're just used to the biased reporting we've all been fed for years!:) Speaking as someone who was involved in the 'media' for years, I can say that I witnessed a most well defined leaning to the left. While I don't cowtow to any network or news person, I can also say that I'll watch/listen to the ones that just report the facts. As far as O'Reilly is concerned, keep in mind that he is foremost an entertainer, as most all anchors as. The ratings rule the roost, regardless of what network it is.

coolrun...Thanks for the story.

[VA_Shooter]

Yes, Mel, you might not like what Bill has to say--I don't think I've watched Fox News for years--but he makes some interesting points. I'm 48 years old and have two teen aged kids. I get grief from them all of the time because their mother and I won't let them buy certain CDs, we won't let them watch certain television programs, we won't let them go to certain movies and we won't let them associate with certain kids. Bunches of grief on that one...bunches.

Many parents these days think that kids are "more mature" these days...they aren't any more mature now than they've ever been. They're still kids. Kids. And it's sad that today's culture wants to take these kids and turn them into something that they aren't before their time. It's even sadder that many parents are willing to let society do whatever it wants to do. There just isn't anything attractive about a 10 year old girl in perfectly applied, full facial makup. There isn't anything attractive about an 11 year old boy making suggestive sexual remarks to an 11 year old, 5th grade girl and getting away with it because he thinks he has to be "a man" at the age of 11 and "needs a woman." But I see these things happening every day at the elementary school two blocks from my front door--and I'm living in the textbook description of suburbia. By the time my son was in 6th grade, 6th grade!, it was necessary to have a steady girlfriend. If one didn't, then one was obviously gay. Pretty heavy label for a 12 year old.

The stress kids live under today is unbelievable. In the middle school my son attends, five children have committed suicide in the past 18 months. This is a school that is populated by kids from upper middle class homes--"American Dream" homes. Some dream. I'm with Bill. This country is out of control.

[jhawk1000]

As I said, I agree with many of the points O'Reilly raised in this ONE article. It appears that our country is always going to go to hell in a handbasket. When I was young, my parents absolutely knew that Elvis Presley was the devil incarnate. When my kids were growing up, I was convinced that groups like Jefferson Airplane, Black Sabbath, AC-DC were killing society and now I listen to them. I recall while in middle school, once called Jr. High, that we had a fair amount of suicide and attempted suicide. We had kids knifed in High School. The difference was that we were not able to get guns then and somehow or another they can now.
Now that I am older, I think Britney, Janet, Christina and J-Lo are making a mockery of societal values. I have become my father!
I am more afraid of violence being made mainstream than I am seeing a naked breast but yet no cry goes out to stop the violent games, the violent movies, and somehow violent life styles still fascinate. My mother was a victim of violence and it really irritates me to see a movie with the hero shooting at someone with a full clip in an automatic weapon since that is how she died.
I suspect our kids will be seeing America go to hell in a handbasket long after we are gone and one day, they will look in the mirror and understand that every generation goes through tragedy, shocking behavior, anti-social behavior, etc. I do have some doubts about America but it borders more on lies and deception for ratings than it does a naked breast or a french kiss between two female rock stars.

Mel

[Sleeping Bear]

Originally posted by jhawk1000
As I said, I agree with many of the points O'Reilly raised in this ONE article. It appears that our country is always going to go to hell in a handbasket. When I was young, my parents absolutely knew that Elvis Presley was the devil incarnate. When my kids were growing up, I was convinced that groups like Jefferson Airplane, Black Sabbath, AC-DC were killing society and now I listen to them. I recall while in middle school, once called Jr. High, that we had a fair amount of suicide and attempted suicide. We had kids knifed in High School. The difference was that we were not able to get guns then and somehow or another they can now.
Now that I am older, I think Britney, Janet, Christina and J-Lo are making a mockery of societal values. I have become my father!
I am more afraid of violence being made mainstream than I am seeing a naked breast but yet no cry goes out to stop the violent games, the violent movies, and somehow violent life styles still fascinate. My mother was a victim of violence and it really irritates me to see a movie with the hero shooting at someone with a full clip in an automatic weapon since that is how she died.
I suspect our kids will be seeing America go to hell in a handbasket long after we are gone and one day, they will look in the mirror and understand that every generation goes through tragedy, shocking behavior, anti-social behavior, etc. I do have some doubts about America but it borders more on lies and deception for ratings than it does a naked breast or a french kiss between two female rock stars.

Governments and those who report on the government have always, and will always, at one time or another, lie to the people. That is just a fact.

Yes, every generation saw the next one pushing the envelope but not blowing its brains out.

I have no doubts about the US or the majority of the citizens within and stopped letting myself be lied to and deceived when I stopped watching/listening to CNN, CBS, NPR, etc. The media will always try to shock the senses, it keeps 'em coming back for more.

I could not agree more regarding the culture of death and violence we live in. It seems as though there is so much rage, hatred and apathy.

Mel

When I quoted Mel it put my text within his. Mine begins with the line...Governments and those...

Thanks

[coolrun]

Pop culture's new low: Slut chic

Stanley Crouch
New York Daily News

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2003

In the ongoing degradation of American culture by popular entertainment, two of the groups that are most important to purifying our sense of morality and justice - black Americans and American women - have been sold a terrible bill of goods. They have come to believe, far too often, that self-degradation is the purest form of liberty.

This was proven at the recent MTV Video Music Awards show and in the slut-chic fashions and groupie ethos that have overwhelmed young American females.

As for black Americans, the minstrel update of the moment is 50 Cent, whose material celebrates pimping and whose claim to "authenticity" is based largely in street knowledge that culminated in his having been shot nine times (which may say more about the poor marksmanship of his foes than the substance of his experience).

On the female side, we see young women who have been misled by the freelance whore's persona of Madonna taking up their own version of the minstrel show.

Rather than celebrating hateful ethnic stereotypes, as black gangster rappers do, far too many female pop stars seem to be taking their direction from porn stars and porn films, both of which cater to male fantasies.

So we have the grandest of ironies, which is that black Americans and American women - two groups that were essential in bringing this nation much closer to the ideals of its social contract - have left the campaign against ethnic and sexual images and become satisfied with the narrow dimensions of thug and slut stereotypes.

While we have heard much discussion of the problems that attend black people buying into the street knowledge conception of "authenticity," the slut-chic problem is not at all new. But it seems to have become even more blatant than ever. Given the number of exposed bellybuttons, we could call this the Navel Generation of American women.

When Madonna began rising to prominence nearly 20 years ago, one man wrote of having arrived in a town in the late afternoon. On the ride to his hotel, he assumed he had entered the most highly populated red-light district he had ever seen.

The truth was that junior and high school girls in Madonna garb had just gotten out of class and were walking home!

All this has arrived in a very circuitous way. As a nation, we have long fought against privilege based on class, color, sex or religion, and we have achieved very high marks along the way. But by the Nixon era, many had become disillusioned by American society - a distrust of the government that had been building since the McCarthy days.

Rising out of a twisted reading of the rhetoric of ethnic celebration and women's liberation, the black thug evolved into a hero because he went against what were dismissed as white middle-class values. And the prostitute was projected as the liberated woman because she was willing to strut her stuff against all conventions and follow her glands wherever they led her.

The challenge that lies before us is not to go back to the worst repressions and racism of the 1950s, but to discover a vital way to help our young reject minstrelsy, whether it arrives from the world of racism or the world of pornography.


===========

Stanley Crouch is a columnist, novelist, essayist, critic and television commentator. He has served since 1987 as an artistic consultant at Lincoln Center and is a co-founder of the department known as Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 1993, he received both the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a MacArthur Foundation grant. He is now working on a biography of Charlie Parker.

[S_Leeper]

Originally posted by jhawk1000
... I suspect our kids will be seeing America go to hell in a handbasket long after we are gone and one day, they will look in the mirror and understand that every generation goes through tragedy, shocking behavior, anti-social behavior, etc. I do have some doubts about America but it borders more on lies and deception for ratings than it does a naked breast or a french kiss between two female rock stars.

Mel

I think we/America might be going to hell before we die (assuming we are allowed to live for another 30-40 years--fairly soon they will have to really ration healthcare)
A couple of hudred years ago the social opiate was to follow the dogma of the church... no thinking required.
Today the social opiates are violence & sex delivered with the electronic needles of the tv, electronic games & the internet. Isolating/minimizing contact with other humans, while being rewarded for killing more & more with each game...

How can it be stopped?
Well we could go back to the original opiates currently supplied by the religious right. Not me.
Try to censor inappropriate content. Yeah right.
I don't know. But I do try to follow the advise so often given that if you can't solve the problem, at least make sure you are not part of the problem.

[ianmcc]

When I read the title of this thread I thought it was about Conan O Brien's broadcast this week from Toronto!:D

In a country where a talk show is BIG news, if you odn't mind the cold, come on up, it's very sleepy and tolerate here

----------

Just sit back and enjoy the first U.S.-based late night talk show to cross the border.

Forget it, eh? Some people had been lining up since 6 a.m. and the tickets were free. Even the few fans not wearing Leafs jerseys went bananas. You know those rubes who drive around every spring, horns honking, trucks draped in blue and white, when Leafs win an opening round playoff game? At the taping.

In case there was ever any doubt, it's official: nothing ever happens in Canada. Before the show even started, the crowd was cheering the guy who puts the water bottle on O'Brien's desk. Look for him to open next week on Mike Bullard.

And what a desk. Maple Leafs lovingly hand carved into every panel (O'Brien's usual prop, an Eisenhower mug, sat on a corner next to a Toronto mug). Behind that, a huge mural of the CN Tower, the SkyDome and Late Night's crescent moon. The opening credits flashed images of the subway, an NHL game and kids throwing snowballs.

"It's great to be here in Canada," O'Brien said. "This is the only country in the whole world where people come up to me and say, 'Man, I thought I was white.' "

Later in the monologue, the crowd booed at the mere mention of George W. Bush. "That's my president you're messing with," O'Brien said. The joke started with Bush and ended with Don Cherry; in between there was a setup about leaving things up to a madman.

It was a long way to go for Canadian audiences but, as O'Brien himself remarked, no one in the U.S. would get it, either.

O'Brien tried to get all the outrageous Canadian stereotypes out of the way early.

Crew members brought out a giant igloo made out of beer cans. A mountie with a hockey stick "who loves Rush" came skating out and circled the stage.

O'Brien's announcer then stood on his perch in one of the Elgin's side boxes and showed off his retractable "SkyHead," modeled after the SkyDome roof. O'Brien had an "official Canadian small talk moment" with bandleader Max Weinberg about Toronto mayors past and present. "Lastman's great if you want to amalgamate the boroughs," Weinberg said. "That just leads to more layoffs in North York and Scarborough." You could actually hear people changing channels from as far away as Buffalo and Cleveland.

A film was shown of O'Brien playing hockey with Tie Domi, Trevor Kidd and two other Leafs. "My style is more of a slapping thing," he told Domi, who punched his lights out at the end.

O'Brien did everything but pour maple syrup all over himself and have it licked off by beavers. Then again, he has three more Canadian shows to do.

Just as things were threatening to turn into a USO Show, out came Mike Myers. Again, Leafs fans went nuts. "It's good to be home," said Myers, who led the "Go, Leafs, Go" chant.

O'Brien looked puzzled.

"It's called being in God's country, Conan, get used to it," Myers said.

During the commercial break, The Max Weinberg 7 played the theme from the old CFTO game show Definition, used by Myers in Austin Powers.

He gave them a "not worthy" salute.

Scarborough's proudest son told O'Brien about how he went to Stephen Lea**** Secondary School with Will & Grace's Eric McCormack (guesting Friday). He kept making references to back-bacon sandwiches and snack stops up in Muskoka.

"Get me a translator," O'Brien cracked.

Myers then demonstrated how a few simple lines could turn the portrait of Wilfrid Laurier on the Canadian five dollar bill into Spock from Star Trek. Myers even evoked the name of Hockey Night In Canada legend Howie Meeker, "for anyone born prior to 1963."

He left to another standing O, followed by high-fives and hand slapping in the front row.

The Masturbating Bear was then brought out to do his thing.

Next up was Ron James, dressed down for the occasion in plaid shirt and sneakers.

"We're not a big military power," James explained to the few Yanks who might still be watching at home. "My American friends ask, 'How come you didn't help us in Iraq?' You need weapons for that, dontcha?"

After the show, O'Brien, Weinberg and the band stayed and signed every piece of paper (again, some five dollar bills) shoved in front of them. Two girls from Hamilton had their homemade poster, showing O'Brien's head on a baby's body, autographed by the host.

"He signed the ass!" they squealed.

Tonight, they do it all over again (12:35 a.m. on The New VR and NBC).

Doughnuts and beer optional, eh?

[chaser of light]

Do we sound to them a bit like our parents used to sound to us?:)

[NZDoug]

for sure, but the worlds cooking to a boiling point a lot faster.
I don't like the looks of it, and glad i was born when I was(1946).
Nobody shot at me when I was in school.
I dont think Id like to be a kid today.
Its harder to tell the forest from the trees when their aint any, etc.

[Serge]

RE:

Pop culture's new low:


I've just read this long thought provoking thread, it reminded me
some months back now, seeing a repeat screening of something called "Up In Smoke".

I hardly watch TV but was channel surfing one night before going to bed, and came in on it somewhere in the middle.

For the next ten minutes before switching it of in numbed disbelief, I was stunned by what was being shown on free to air television.

In that short time, I witnessed, not only exploitation of "sex n drugs n rock and roll", to use the idiom, but the most vile gratuitous violence perpetrated by the so called "heroes" of the piece. A rap group, the two chief protagonists of which, cold bloodedly murder a liquor store holdup victim. They then proceed straight on stage in front of a live screaming audience of teenagers, cheering them on for the acts they had just commited, girls in the audience were rewarding their idols by bearing their chests, it could have been a Roman crowd at the Colesseum.


Where do their parents think they are, I thought, do they care...


Many commentators expressed the belief that 911,
WAS America's wake up call.