Gene Lyons takes the usual, and completely justified, swipes at Roman Polanski, but then turns back on us all:
That said, Polanski's 1979 interview with novelist Martin Amis ought to earn him a special place in hell, if not a California penitentiary. "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see?" he said. "But ... judges want to (bleep) young girls. Juries want to (bleep) young girls. Everyone wants to (bleep) young girls!"
Actually, no they don't. But a culture that tolerates beauty pageants for heavily made-up little girls, promotes teen bombshells like Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus and a million "Barely Legal" porn films ought to consider where Polanski got the idea. The law may demand that a fleeing felon be brought to justice, but we Americans should probably be a bit less smug about it.
Guy's got a point. A culture that markets Bratz to little girls, and that at nearly every turn tries to turn them into erotic objects, is not a culture whose fingers pointing at Polanski are entirely clean. Oh, how I hate Bratz. Remember this great James Lileks rant against the trollops-for-tots and the new (back then) Baby Bratz? Excerpt:
Bratz are the main reason I do not keep a supply of bricks around the house, because everytime the commercials come on I wish to pitch something kiln-fired through the screen so hard it beans the toy exec who greenlighted these hootchie toys. The Baby Bratz are as bad as you can imagine: "Bottles with Bling." Judas on a stick, why not just refit the Bratz so they have Real Oozing Gonorreal Flow Action?
"They know how to flaunt it, and they're keeping it real in the crib."What exactly is the penalty for failing to keep it real in the crib? Someone busts a cap in yo Pamper? I know I am old and so out of step it's a wonder I don't just appear as an indistinct smear, but was it really necessary to push the Age of Sultry Hussyism down to the infant stage? And who, exactly, are the Babyz flaunting it for? Are we going to see a commercial with Elmo in sunglasses, sitting with his legs sprawled, spanking some pliant Babyz with one hand while gumming down some mashed crack?
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Oh how I hate Bratz too. Biggest shocker of my life was when my 6 year old (at the time) daughter was given a Bratz activity book by her Brownie troop leaders. My jaw was on the floor as I looked through it. I knew they were slutty *looking*, but the content was outrageous. "How to get the hottest boy in class to notice you" and "Design your own hot and sexy wardrobe" (or something like that -- it was a mix and match coloring activity) were among many similarly objectionable topics. There was a smattering of lip service to the notion of "It's not how you look on the outside, but what you are like on the inside that matters". I broke out in despairing laughter at that one...
The thing that struck me as most odd was this: the *topic content* was what you might expect 13 or 14 year olds to be interested in -- boys, clothes, make-up, absurdly intense and co-dependent friendships, etc. I don't think the images and messages in the book would necessarily be *healthy* for that age group, but I accept that many girls that age would be drawn to it. However, the *activity content* was stuff that few 13 or 14 year olds would admit to enjoying -- coloring, matching activities, very simple word searches, simple mazes, etc. The activities were clearly targeted at an early elementary audience. So who is this book for? I had to conclude that it was intended for *little* girls. If it was for 5th - 8th graders, it would simply look and feel different. Sick.
When I went to the Brownie leader and (as politely as I could muster) expressed my surprise that she would approve of this content for 6 year olds, she claimed she hadn't looked at the book. She just knew that "girls like them", so she picked them up. I didn't know which was worse -- that she would look them over and still give them out, or that she hadn't thought to look at all. (Her own daughter was in the troop and a recipient of one of the books!) I informed her that my daughter would not be allowed to accept anymore Bratz merchandise. There were no more Bratz items that year. On my own dime, I replaced the Bratz activity book with a Charlotte's Web activity book for my daughter.
The Brownie leader and at least half the Brownies were white, by the way -- let's not make out that this is a "black thing". I think I'm the only mom of any race who complained. :o(
Sorry.
Bratz is just capitalism and the free market in action.
You wanted it, you've got it.
Lust for money is more important to the idols conservatives have set before us than those other ideals.
Er, cx, if you knew even the slightest thing about Rod Dreher's philosophy, you'd know that "capitalism and the free market" is not an idol to him in any sense.
His whole book is about how conservatives *shouldn't* idolise capitalism.
I'm well aware that neither capitalism nor the "free market" are Rod's idols.
I've seen plenty that indicates that doesn't hold for lots of commenters on this blog.
Interesting commentary thus far, but most of it strasopherically off point. Rod adresses the sexualization of children, an important topic and worthy of extended commentary. Instead we are treated to comments on whether or not atheists go to heaven, and the evils of capitalism. I leave Michael to the theologians, however cx's knee jerk neo-Marxist jibes are both insulting and worse, silly.
Joseph Schumpeter may be correct about capitalism's capacity for creative destruction, however during the heyday of free market in the US and Europe, Victorian morality prevailed, at least among the general public. Elites have always had a taste for vice, no matter the regime, but it should be axiomatic that Max Weber's "protestant wok ethic" isn't compatible with a hedonistic lifestyle, and during the dark Victorian era, public morality was rather strictly enforced both by law and custom.
The real question that Rod poses is what do we do about it? Write letters to the editor? Home school and attend prayer vigils hoping that at least our own will be spared the deluge vice inevitably brings in its wake? Or take the David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, et al and "go with flow" and label the trailing edge of where ever liberalism happens to take us as conservatism?
The foregoing seem to be the only options conceivable to the the tragi-comedy that is "political" conservatism today. What we need is a commitment on the part of whom ever emerges as the leaders of the emergent conservative movement not simply to talk about "winning hearts and minds" but also evolving political theories that will challenge current regime with legislation that will effectively do away with the Bratz mentality and jail or otherwise eradicate the the influence of the men and women undermining public morality.a
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