OMFG! Gossip Girl sluts!

"The campaign is slugged "OMFG," for "Oh My F--king God." Don't you just love this culture?"

Sure do, Rod. Especially when you repeat it and thereby promulgate the very same cultural decline which you purport to denounce. (Think about it.) I never thought I would have seen it in your blog. But then again, the more often you type the word "sluts" in the headines, the higher the ratings go, no? Or maybe it just seems that way. (Or, maybe you just like typing the word "sluts"?) Either way, it doesn't behoove you. You are (or should be) above that.

Some children are more vulnerable that others to influences from such exposure. Maybe it has to do with inborn temperament or comes from a lack of a nurturing and structured family and community life. Whichever the cause, it is a wise parent who limits exposure to popular culture until children are old enough to be able to engage in conversation about it and contrast it with the real people in their lives. And that will happen - they are under our control for so a short time. So get ready to converse, not lecture, in a way that engages both critical thinking and the heart.

We have the free market that conservatives claim is an essence of liberty, and the freedom of "expression" that liberals assert is an essence of liberty. This type of programming is an offspring of the uncomfortable marriage of the two so it up to parents to protect their children. The "village" is happy to toss them to the wolves, in this case.

Rod, the objections to "slut" had to do with 1) your calling a soon-to-be bride that, based on her deeply questionable taste in a bridal gown, and 2) your expressed willingness to use the word on your own daughter if she someday made a similar fashion gaffe. Get a grip.

"...hollowed-out hags and third-rate pimps..."

Y'know I've thought for a long time that one of the engines of this whole phenomenon is middle-aged people trying to get young people to act out the middle-aged people's fantasies of what their youth should have been like, maybe what they think it would have been like if The Damn Christians Had Not F'd Them Up. I would have said "baby boomers" instead of "middle-aged people" but the syndrome seems to include a lot of people who are too young to be boomers.

Is this related somehow, in a general Lord of the Flies way? News from a prosperous Dallas suburb

No, I'd say it is related more in a Rod-posting-the-most-outrageous-story-of-the-day-and-implying-this-is-normative-behavior sort of way.

My parents didn't let me watch mTV and if we were watching a movie that had a nude scene, I was asked to leave the room (that only happened once, IIRC, because we never rented those types of movies.) Of course as a teenager I would watch some mTV and flip the channel when my parents came by, but their message got through.

If anything you are probably not being enough of a hard ass. I've questioned my own beliefs many times, because I recognize that as a 20 something guy, I shouldn't sound like a 70-year old. (Unfortunately Boomers are in their 60s now, ruining any reference to old people and social conservatism) But an objective evalauation of the culture shows there is a lot of absolute filth, with boorish and unintelligent content filling out the edges.

On the other hand, I also believe that to a large degree, the art reflects the culture. We live in a mass market democracy and anyone who is outside of the mainstream will reject much of the market. But aside from the Harry Potter banning wackos, I see little evidence of anyone going too far.

I've noticed a familiar pattern in threads here when it comes to topics like this:

1. Rod posts something that is in fact indicative of our popular culture (he could have pulled much more wild and egregious examples from the headlines on any given day of the week).

2. Rod uses said example as an object lesson in legitimately questioning where our pop culture has been and is headed - and how we should be protecting our children from its rapacity.

3. Certain commenters will then weigh in with predictable responses: Rod is simply posting sensational content as a means of trolling for additional traffic, or Rod is somehow drawing these examples out of context, or making a bigger deal out of them than he should be, or Rod is such a prude. Anything, that is, except to acknowledge that Rod has a valid point.

4. If Rod takes the extra step of embedding a video or the like, so that readers can judge for themselves, he's then accused of wallowing in the same said decadence (and secretly enjoying it).

This is all very amusing, to be sure, but since it's a pattern on the part of some commenters, and since the reactions are becoming predictable on the most banal level, I would just say: knock it off. If you don't like the cesspool our pop culture is becoming, don't blame Rod's blog. Could you come up with responses that are slightly more original than those I've already summarized?

And don't engage in Orwellian sophistry and twist yourself into verbal knots trying to deny what we can all plainly see with our own eyes, and hear with our own ears: That our culture is losing it, and is quickly dissolving into the "eclipse of all values" miasma predicted more than a century ago.

Great post, Houghton. The only reaction you might have missed is the one where someone blames "Christianists" and their fixation on sexual matters for both the Gossip Girls swamp and the attacks at the school.

The sociology of the boys' locker room at Sunnyvale High just goes to show that we are turning public life into a prison, with those who ought to be the inmates as the ones in charge. This reminds me as much of an episode of *Oz* or a scene from *A Clockwork Orange* as *Lord of the Flies.*

It also reminds me of my own Junior High. Those who think that this is just an isolated incident are fooling themselves and need to wake up.

The locker room event reminds me of descriptions of upper-class English boy's boarding schools.

I hope the school and the parents of the offenders face an expensive lawsuit.

That update, about those boys was just really bizarre. In my naturally limited experience, there has remained strong enough anti-homosexuality sentiment among students that something like that would never go on. If boys started acting sick like that towards each other they would be completely ostracized in short order. It's hard for me to imagine. And is it a different type of issue than if it were the boys doing something like this to girls instead? Is it different than if it were older boys targeting and victimizing younger boys with no sexual elements involved?

Anon above, I can understand where you're coming from. My parents also scrimped and saved and made financial sacrifices to send their many children to Catholic schools.

But one of the best days of my life was the day they threw in the towel and started homeschooling. In the schools we still had bullies, partying, weak or ineffective teachers, secular materials, liberal smile-button Catholic-lite theology (can't offend the wealthy non-Catholics using the school to protect their little darlings from the poor, now, can we?) and whole legions of other problems. At home we had books and music and time to think and write in an atmosphere where both were possible.

I realize that homeschooling may simply not be an option for you. But for those who can or are considering it, I can't say enough good things about it, from the perspective of a former homeschooled student, former teaching assistant with a homeschooling program, and current homeschooling mom.

The creators of most popular culture are evangelists for evil and perversion. Rod, you're right on about limiting your kids' exposure to this, I do the same with mine.
The most effective tool against garbage, is quality. My kids have been raised on classical music and good quality jazz, and they can't stand most pop music or pop culture.

I think people who engage in slutty behavior should be shamed

No one would argue that shaming obese kids would be an appropriate or effective way of making them lose weight, in fact most would recognize that it would probably have the opposite effect.

Promiscuity, especially among teens, is a huge problem in our culture, but I think the lumps you take regarding your obsession with shame and sex are well deserved.

That update, about those boys was just really bizarre. In my naturally limited experience, there has remained strong enough anti-homosexuality sentiment among students that something like that would never go on.

e -- it's not about 'homosexuality' or same-sex attraction--it's about degrading other people, much like what happened at a certain prison in Iraq.

I actually tried to watch Gossip Girls when it came out, because I have heard the hilarious Veronica Mars Voice Over had escaped the cancellation of that show and was now narrating another show. I couldn't watch it and turned it off about fifteen minutes, although I forget why. I seem to recall it was because everyone was cruel to everyone else, and this was presented as normal.

It's worth pointing out that, of those clips, there is one instance of people having sex. A lot of kissing, two people laying apparently post-coital (And the same two people, presumably from the same scene, sitting up in bed and talking to the camera), one person apparently dancing in a nightgown, but exactly one couple to the point that it would get even a PG-13 rating.

But, anyway, I'm really really baffled that Rod thinks children being cruel to each other is new. Sounds like someone needs to watch Buffy. Or read...um...Lord of the Flies, which apparently he has forgotten was written 50 years ago.

The only difference is, thank goodness, our culture has finally gotten to the point that parents will sue school for allowing such behavior.

Um, Mark in Houston, I think you may have misunderstood--my kids have always been homeschooled, so I've never attended PTA meetings. As for the parenthetical sentence you object to, it's pretty much what my mom was told when she asked one of our school officials why we only studied the Catholic faith once or twice a week in that particular school (the official was more diplomatic, I believe, informing my mother that the school had certain important benefactors who were not Catholic and it was important that they and their children weren't made uncomfortable by too much Catholic emphasis, etc.). I seriously doubt that you could get any Catholic school bureaucrat to be half that honest today, but in areas with relatively small Catholic populations that dynamic remains in force in many schools, which are about as "Catholic" as the local nondenominational Christian school is.

And Stefanie, speaking as a former homeschooled kid who worked at the public library, I don't see what the problem is. By the time a homeschooled child is old enough to be at the library alone he/she has usually learned the difference between books worth reading and vile trash of no worth whatsoever--at least, most of the homeschooled kids I've known have no trouble making that distinction.

Stefanie, I don't understand your point about bookstores or the public library. We're big users of both. I think you read me too literally when I said I avoided exposing my kids to trash culture. I don't mean staying out of bookstores and libraries! I mean not letting them read or watch garbage.

"Um, Mark in Houston, I think you may have misunderstood--my kids have always been homeschooled, so I've never attended PTA meetings."

Lucky for the PTAers. Also, there's no shortage of Catholic schools that go heavy on the Catholicism (yes, I know, the ones who go heavy on the liberal Jesuitic Catholicism aren't really proper traditional Catholics, etc., etc.) and that the extent to which they do so (or not) is just as often influenced by the preferences and influence of the Catholic parents who send their kids there than the non-Catholics. Also, despite your snide comments about non-Catholics who send their kids to Catholic schools, there is no shortage of non-Catholics who send their kids to Catholic schools because the local Catholic school gives the best education in town for the dollars spent, not just to keep their kids away from the poor. For that matter, there's also no shortage of Catholic parents who send their kids to Catholic schools as much to keep their kids away from the poor as for any other reason. The reasons for these things are, as the psychiatrists say, overdetermined.

I get the honor of meeting with a lot of different Christian leaders around the country. In one meeting in DC a lady said to me, a few years ago after Massachusetts redefined marriage, that it couldn't get any worse than this.

I looked at her incredulously and said without missing a beat, "You haven't even seen the beginning of how bad it can get." I would venture to say that she hasn't even seen how bad it already is.

Erin -
Where in the world did you go to Catholic school? I still remember (15 years later) my 10th grade biology teacher talking about sex and how bc methods don't work. Religion class is a little foggier but I know we had the discussions and the school stuck to Church Teaching. The same thing in grade school. I also know that we didn't have any objectionable books in our school's library.

Anon @ 6:05 pm. Have you tried looking for a scholarship? Some private foundation where I am at in conjuction with the Archdiocese has started a scholarship program to send kids to Catholic grade schools. It might get better in high school because there is financial aid and work study available.

Tina, that particular school was Holy Names Academy in Seattle, WA. My parents were struggling to pay tuition, and *our* "health" teacher taught us all about all the methods of birth control and how to use them, and when some of us (yes, I had Conservative Catholic Cohorts even then, bwahaha) objected rather vociferously to the moral sewer lurking behind her evil how-to approach, she snapped loudly "You want to talk about that stuff, bring it up in religion class. I'm teaching HEALTH."

She was a Catholic.

That was the year my parents decided that the risks associated with homeschooling (which was still of iffy legality in many places) were worth the benefits of not paying vast sums of money they couldn't afford so that we could deal on a daily basis with this kind of rot.

I don't know. If it started out with boys "jokingly humping each other", and then any male involved in the insertion or threatened or attempted anal insertion of any object to another male, there's plenty there for anti-homosexuality sentiment to rise up against this. I really would have thought many boys would have something to say about the ones who are so interested in other boys' bottom holes, even as a way to bully and intimidate when good old fashioned beatings or something would not call heterosexuality into question at all. Maybe I am just really out of touch on this.

This lockerroom story was pretty upsetting to read, but not so much because it showed our culture falling into a pit. Look, the thing that was noteworthy about this was the extent it became organized, virtually a ritual. The reality is events like this - and it is a form of rape - are nothing new or that unusual. I know. I was a victim of it over 30 years ago as a teenager in New Jersey. I have talked to many others who had similar experiences. Most victims of it are kids like me - gay, or perceived to be gay. Consequently, its really irritating to read the comments here suggesting this has something to do with gay marriage and increasing acceptance of gay sexuality. Its classic blame the victims.

Rape is not about sex, it's about power. The questions we ought to be asking ourselves is what in our cultures leads boys to look for pleasure in violently making another person powerless. The sickness isn't a culture that tolerates homosexuality, its a culture that glorifies violence and humiliation.

I just saw the OMFG sign on the freeway
Does this mean Oh my F*** God?
How vulgar and offensive
Dear CW is vulgarity the new way to make teen andience?