Reply #58: "The Great Indecency Hoax"

[fabius]

There's a great Frank Rich article in the NYT from Nov. 28, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/arts/28rich.html

in which makes a couple of points:

"Desperate Housewives... is even a bigger hit in Oklahoma city than it is in Los Angeles, bigger in Kansas City than it is in New York."

He notes that if 22 percent were voting on "moral values" in 2004, the number is DOWN from 2000 (35 percent) and 1996 (40 percent). It took the UK magazine The Economist to point this out, since apparently the US media have swallowed the moral values story line. So, Bill Clinton rode to re-election on a tidal wave of moral values much bigger than Shrub's.

On the Monday Night Football scandal, "...it was a manufactured scandal, as over-the-top as a dinner theater production of the Crucible".

I've just barely started the Frank book, but this manipulation of outrage certainly seems to fit the agenda of those who want to keep the focus on Janet Jackson's nipple while they pick our collective pockets.

Another Thomas Frank book worth reading is "One Market Under God", in which the media transformed billionaires like Bill Gates and Wall Street flimflam men into populist heroes and champions of the little people(in the '90's). Frank has a way with words but it's hard going because I get so damn p*ssed about things.

I've been through the "red-state" parts of Oregon, (or the Red Counties) and there seem to are just as many porn video rental places per capita as in the city. Maybe a lot of this "moral values" hypocrisy is that these people just wish this stuff didn't appeal to them, or they want to be better people, or something.