On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide

[Chimpanzee]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/arts/14rich.html?oref=login&oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position

November 14, 2004
FRANK RICH
On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide

AREWELL to Swift boats and "Shove it!," to Osama's tape and Saddam's missing weapons, to "security moms" and outsourced dads. They've all been sent to history's dustbin faster than Ralph Nader memorabilia was dumped on eBay. In their stead stands a single ambiguous phrase coined by an anonymous exit pollster: "Moral values." By near universal agreement the morning after, these two words tell the entire story of the election: it's the culture, stupid.

"It really is Michael Moore versus Mel Gibson," said Newt Gingrich. To Jon Stewart, Nov. 2 was the red states' revenge on "Will & Grace." William Safire, speaking on "Meet the Press," called the Janet Jackson fracas "the social-political event of the past year." Karl Rove was of the same mind: "I think it's people who are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies ..."

And let's not even get started on the two most dreaded words in American comedy, regardless of your party affiliation: Whoopi Goldberg.

There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. 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. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

[FreakinDJ]

1. Moral Values is a phrase easy to understand

What they don't understand is:

When their own children turn out so badly. Easy to blame it on the music and TV shows. Not likely they realize since both Mom and Dad have to work 40, 50 plus hours per week to make ends meet because the American way of life is being slowly siphoned off by greedy corporations Mom and Dad are not around to raise them.

So when Rush says..."It's all the liberal's fault" it helps to relieve Mom and Dad's guilty feelings.

When crime ridden streets starts entering their homes and their lives they don't fathom that maybe some thing is wrong with the system that breeds such contempt and desperation that people resort to crime.

But when Rush says..."It's all because the liberals appointed those weak on crime justices"

They tune into the hate and blame hour and are relieved of reality. To bad the same causes Rush and others champion are the real reasons those conditions exist in America

[Moderator]

2. Locking as duplicate.

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