Perhaps there’s hope…
In a piece by Frank Rich in the New York Times, Rich states that, “it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war.”
Quotes and summaries of key points:
Those whose “moral values” are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O’Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV
Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is the leading source of news for the “Moral Majority.” Other Murdoch holdings include:
- Recent books like Jenna Jameson’s “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” and the Vivid Girls’ “How to Have a XXX Sex Life,” both promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and Bill O’Reilly. There are “real fun parts and exciting parts,” said Ms. Cosby to Ms. Jameson on Fox News’s “Big Story Weekend,” broadcast on Saturday at 9 p.m., assuring its maximum exposure to unsupervised kids.
- “Married by America,” which was fined $1.2 million (more than twice the punishment inflicted on Viacom for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”) because one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which “partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers’ bodies,” and two female strippers “playfully spank” a man on all fours in his underwear.
- Paris Hilton’s “The Simple Life”
- The wife-swapping show “Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy”
Illinois Senator-elect Barack Obama, was assured victory once his pious Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race rather than defend his taste for “avant-garde” sex clubs
As a congressman, Tom Coburn, the newly elected Republican senator from Oklahoma, attacked NBC for encouraging “irresponsible sexual behavior” and taking “network TV to an all-time low with full frontal nudity, violence and profanity being shown in our homes” in response to NBC’s showing of “Schindler’s List”
If the Republican party’s next round of leaders are all cool with blue culture, why should Democrats run after the red?
- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger are supporters of gay rights and opponents of the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment
- McCain calls himself pro-life, and he’s never made abortion a cause
- None of the three support the Bush administration position on stem-cell research.
