God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy Page 5
I love movies. I especially enjoy the power of film to tell a story and to evoke emotion with a brilliant blend of acting, dialogue, and cinematography, backed by an equally brilliant soundtrack. But I must admit, there have been times when movies I loved for the story or the production quality or the sheer magnificence of the actors’ performances were spoiled by incessant and gratuitous profanity that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the films. In some cases, it provided a total distraction from what could have been a powerful message. Understand, I’m no prude who wilts at the sound of a four-letter word; I’ve heard every term in the book and maybe a few that didn’t even make the book. But I don’t particularly enjoy having my ears used as a garbage can to substitute for some screenwriter’s lack of creativity. I’ve often left a theater saying, “Why is there so much unnecessary profanity in that movie? No one actually talks like that!”
Then I started working each week in New York. Guess what? People do talk like that! Even in business settings and in mixed company of men and women, I realized that some people’s vocabulary was clearly limited to a small inventory of nouns and verbs with large doses of the “f-bomb” interspersed throughout. It must have seemed like maturity to those who found a way to make every third word a profane utterance, but it’s always struck me that the ultimate definition of profanity is the forcible expression of a feeble mind.
In 2014, the release of the Oscar-nominated The Wolf of Wall Street sparked a lively discussion about the amount of over-the-top profanity and sexual activity that’s required to portray the hedonistic lifestyles of those real-life wolves, whose self-absorbed, predatory financial activities broke the economy and ruined the lives of millions of hardworking Americans. It was reported by Time magazine that in the Martin Scorsese epic, which clocked in at an excruciating three hours, the “f-word” was used a staggering 506 times, which averages out to the vile reference being said 2.81 times a minute! There’s not enough soap in all of New York City to wash out a mouth so polluted.
For those of us who grew up in the South, there was a basic code of conduct that a man didn’t “cuss” in front of a woman. (In the South, it was “cussing,” not “cursing.”) Cussing in the presence of a lady was considered trashy. Of course, if the “lady” wasn’t much of a lady and did her own share of cussing, all bets were off. But it was really not a compliment to a female for guys to freely let their verbal manure fly within her earshot. There was, for some guys, a kind of attraction to girls whose language would fit in just fine in the men’s locker room, but that was not the kind of girl you took home to “meet Mama.” Over the years, those conventions of speech and behavior have gradually become less common, but sadly so. There was a certain dignity about a lady conducting herself publicly in a way that let you know she felt deserving of respectful treatment. And the word “gentlemen” used to be a title men aspired to, not just a sign on the bathroom door at upscale restaurants.
Such regard for women wasn’t confined to a particular socioeconomic circle, either. The difference was not rich vs. poor. A person might be poor, but that didn’t excuse him or her from good manners. Some very affluent people engaged in coarse speech, and some who were desperately poor would never have been heard grinding out language better suited for a barnyard than a ballroom. Propriety and class aren’t economic conditions, but moral conditions as evidenced by a person’s conduct.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that our culture has descended to the lowest levels of linguistic slime, given the fact that we’re bombarded constantly with the antics of celebrities trying to outdo each other with their exhibitionism. (I’ve seen dusty pickup truck windshields that were less see-through than the mesh “dress” Rihanna recently “wore” on the red carpet at a fashion show. One fashion critic said that if she weren’t so famous, that dress might have been seen as a trashy bid for attention. Well, good thing famous people never do that!)
Along with the rise in narcissism and exhibitionism, the anonymity provided online has certainly prompted the proliferation of the disgustingly crude. People who would never say such things about another person to his or her face feel unrestrained in their ability to spew snarky sneers in blogs or tweets—especially when they use cyber-pseudonyms that allow them to hide behind an electronic mask of cowardice.
I’ve had people say unkind and rude things right to my face, but that’s fairly rare. Most people wait until they can get home, fire up their keyboards, open the spigot, and let the verbal sewage flow. In that medium, I’ve been accused of just about every crime imaginable. I plead innocent: For the record, I didn’t kidnap the Lindbergh baby, I didn’t sink the Titanic, and I wasn’t standing on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963. But I’ve probably been associated with all those things and more on someone’s silly little blog.
Facts aren’t necessary in order to post, and there is no editor between the originator and the end user. When I speak to students and they ask me about journalism, I sometimes say that there’s no such thing anymore. Journalism, in the ideal sense, is a noble profession in which objective people gather facts that are verified by multiple sources, questioned and checked by an editor, and then presented dispassionately to the reader to allow the end user to form an opinion about them. In today’s so-called “information” society, there are often no sources (“experts say…”) and no editor—or else the information is an agenda-driven one—disseminated with a very deliberate spin.
During the Grammy Awards of 2013, the opening musical act was Jay-Z and his megastar wife Beyoncé, pushing the limits of network television with a “song” called “Drunk in Love.” Beyoncé must have been confused when she agreed to humiliate herself by performing in a way that prompted this comment from author Charlotte Hays (whose book When Did White Trash Become the New Normal? says it all): “Honestly, I didn’t want to watch Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s foreplay.”
The song contains words and imagery so graphic that they would never make it through the editing process of this book. (Not that I would want them to!) But the onstage gyrations, bare flesh, and (most of) the lyrics did make it onto CBS, again during the smoldering remnants of what used to be the “family hour.”
My reaction: “Why?” Beyoncé is incredibly talented—gifted, in fact. She has an exceptional set of pipes and can actually sing. She is a terrific dancer—without the explicit moves best left for the privacy of her bedroom. Jay-Z is a very shrewd businessman, but I wonder: Does it occur to him that he is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object? Like other once-wholesome young stars such as Justin Bieber and the aforementioned Miley Cyrus (who responds to critics by giving them “the finger” of foam), Beyoncé has traveled far, far, far from her days as a part of the girl-group Destiny’s Child. Yet she was a huge, breakout star before going X-rated. She proved she doesn’t need to lower herself to this type of crude exploitation to be a megastar. She must know that millions of young girls look up to her as a role model to emulate. And she even has a daughter herself now. So why has she done this?
Jay-Z and Beyoncé are BFFs with President Obama and the First Lady. I’ve generally admired the parenting instincts of the First Couple, so it’s hard for me to believe they’ve actually listened to those lyrics. Jay-Z and Beyoncé have been to the White House numerous times, but how can it be that the Obamas let Sasha and Malia listen to that trash? Apparently they do, since President Obama made this comment in a 2012 interview with Glamour magazine:
We actually share tastes in hip-hop and rap music but we don’t listen to it together, because some of the language in there would embarrass me—at least while I’m listening to it with her.
Oh. I see. The important thing is for him not to be embarrassed. (Guess he has enough to be embarrassed about, every night on the news! But I digress.)
It’s no small wonder why the culture has become so crude when fathers and mothers allow and even encourage their children to devou
r vulgar, misogynistic, and violent material when it’s performed by “cool” people like Jay-Z and Beyoncé. With the First Lady so concerned about making sure her daughters’ bellies don’t ingest unhealthy food, how can she let their brains ingest obnoxious and toxic mental poison in the form of song lyrics? If lived out, those lyrics would be far more devastating to someone’s health than a cupcake.
Where are the feminists in all of this? Why do most remain silent in the face of such hateful and exploitive treatment of women? Do they really think it’s okay to treat women with contempt and reckless disregard for them as persons? How can they not be screaming that women are reduced to mere objects whose primary function is to serve as sex slaves to violent, narcissistic men? Is it okay to objectify women and treat them as toys, with body parts to be played with and tossed aside? Apparently so, if the one doing the exploiting is liberal; that is to say, “right on the issues.” If there is any greater display of hypocrisy than that of liberals who pretend to be all about “empowering women” while remaining silent as women are treated with less respect than some people give to a rental car, or some other piece of disposable property, I can’t imagine what it would be.
Most people exhibiting crude behavior or language aren’t doing anything illegal, but they’re contributing to a culture that is abrasive, rude, obnoxious, and just plain mean. When we treat others with reckless disregard for their personhood and act as if human feelings don’t exist—or don’t matter—we create an atmosphere in which it becomes much easier to damage them physically. Once we dehumanize someone, we feel much less sensitive about what we say or do. This was one of the tragic lessons of the Holocaust. It would have been difficult if not impossible to abruptly march ten million Jews, disabled people, elderly people, and mentally ill people to their deaths, but the first order of business was to create a climate in which certain people could be singled out as inferior beings. As such an abominable notion becomes ingrained into the culture, it’s not that far a journey to believing that some people are not fully human, that they’re disposable and expendable and don’t deserve the same rights and protections as “us.”
The same false premise was used to provide the permission for and the defense of slavery. And the same root evil that created slavery, genocide, “honor killings,” and the Holocaust is growing in our society today, with some people deemed “less than” others, whether it’s because they are unborn children, people of other ethnicities, or increasingly, people of faith.
My mother would have slapped me silly if she ever thought I was mistreating someone. It was one of the absolutes that she hammered into me. (Okay, maybe “slapped” and “hammered” are poor word choices in this context, but I think you know what I mean.) She’d say, “You don’t make fun of people!” And even though my mother was raised and lived in a segregated South for most of her life, she insisted that I treat all people with respect. If she had ever caught me saying something disrespectful of a black person or speaking to a black adult with other than “Yes, Sir/No, Sir; Yes, Ma’am/No Ma’am,” I would have been on the wrong end of one of those little green twigs off the bushes in our backyard. “Switches” were a common way for my legs and my butt to experience the full authority of my parents’ sense of propriety. I’m sure that many modern parents and child experts will be aghast that I experienced corporal punishment at home (and at school, for that matter). But the temporary pain those switches inflicted did me no discernible harm, and, to this day, I wouldn’t dare speak disrespectfully to someone for fear my mother would find a way to leave Heaven, come back to Earth, and give me Hell!
4
“Uniform Diversity”—An Oxymoron
“VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE!”
At least that’s what we’ve been told. Diversity training is now standard at large corporations, to ensure that everyone joins our pursuit of the Holy Grail of diversity! Except that the goal doesn’t appear to be diversity at all. When we say we want diversity, what we really seem to want is uniformity. God help the poor soul who utters an opinion that isn’t politically correct or that doesn’t jibe with what Hollywood thinks. There’s plenty of room for opinions—as long as they conform to those held by members of the left who control the media and entertainment industries. We’ve seen the heavy hand of Hollywood and the noose of New York used repeatedly whenever someone surfaces from flyover country with a view that’s perfectly normal in rural America but scorned on both coasts as if it were the belief in a flat Earth or unicorns.
In May 2014, brothers David and Jason Benham were recruited by HGTV to star in a reality TV series called Flip It Forward. These two young and handsome brothers had made millions flipping houses, and the show was to feature them teaching others how to buy, fix, and sell for profit. But Right Wing Watch, a hate group which exists to make sure no one utters an opinion that’s out of line with the left, threatened to force a boycott of the show because the two siblings are devout Christians who had expressed pro-life and pro-traditional marriage views in their personal lives. Though nothing about the show would have touched on their spiritual beliefs or sexual politics, the fix was in. HGTV folded like a cheap tent in a tornado and pulled the plug on the show. David and Jason had attended pro-life rallies and had been outspoken about their belief in marriage, but since Flip It Forward had not even aired yet, no one could say they were using the show as a platform to talk about their faith or their politics. In fact, their comments were made two years before Flip It Forward was even announced. But in today’s climate of “believe like me or we’ll put you out of business,” HGTV joined other cowardly corporations and capitulated to the pressure of the bullies. To their everlasting credit, the Benham brothers, despite possibly losing millions of dollars in potential TV and endorsement income, took it all in stride and commented, “If our faith costs us a TV show, then so be it.”
Wow! It was refreshing to see two young men put the value of their convictions above the value of money. They offered no apology—no public promise to attend sensitivity training. They didn’t agree to meet with Planned Parenthood or GLAAD and have a “dialogue” about why their views were so offensive and wrong. They just said, “Too bad if we can’t be on TV, but God is more important to us than a bigger paycheck.”
The controversy over the Benham brothers escalated a few weeks later when their banking partner, SunTrust, bowing to pressure from the anti-Christian activists, announced that they would sever ties with them. Well, that didn’t go over very well with the customers of SunTrust who either were Christian or who at least had read the First Amendment and thought that destroying people’s livelihoods because of their religious beliefs seemed more like the practices of North Korea, not North America. Within hours, SunTrust danced the Emily Litella Shuffle (“Never mind!”), pinned the blame on a third party vendor (who insisted it was SunTrust’s idea), and announced they were reversing the decision. Gee, that was quick! This time, the lion woke up and roared.
But is this what “diversity” looks like? Have we moved toward fewer voices and viewpoints rather than more? How is that making our culture more diverse? Let’s face it, diversity is “code” for uniformity. The goal of the PC police and the zealots on the extreme left is to eliminate any voice that is diverse and to insist on compliance and acceptance of the words, definitions, actions, and attitudes that they have crafted around their own lifestyles and beliefs.
We are truly living as if we were characters in the novel 1984. In the classic 1949 George Orwell book, words mean the opposite of what they say. “Newspeak” may as well be the official language of the United States. I’ll not be at all surprised to go to an ATM someday and on the screen where it asks me to select a language, see that my options no longer include English but do include Newspeak! We are audaciously living the novel, and, sadly, just like the good doublethinking Party members described in the book, we see it but we don’t. We accept the destruction of clarity and variety in our language and the utter contempt toward common sense. By con
forming to these changes, we are unindicted co-conspirators.
For example, consider the word “racist.” If one ignores President Obama’s race and criticizes his policies or tells jokes about him, treating him exactly the way every other President has been treated, one is called a racist. Wouldn’t it be racism if we treated him differently because of his race?
If one insists that women, by virtue of their gender, comprise a victim class needing and deserving special assistance from the government in all walks of life in order to be “equal” and for life to be “fair,” then how is this feminism, which insists that women are identical to men and should be treated as such? Shouldn’t women be incensed that instead of being regarded as equals, they are assumed to be helpless victims waiting for rescue by a government run mostly by men?
For instance, if you question the wisdom of sending women into combat, you are a sexist who refuses to acknowledge that women are as physically strong and psychologically tough as men. But the same “women-empowerment” activists also want all printed matter to come with a warning label if it includes “trigger words” that might even subconsciously remind delicate females of sensitive subjects such as sexual assault, forcing them to seek the nearest Victorian-era fainting couch.
Calling a communist a communist is “hate speech.” Calling a conservative a Nazi is “free speech.” A Christian who espouses traditional biblical doctrine is a “bigot,” but the people who tell Christians to shut up and go away are the “open-minded” voices of tolerance.