FRANK RICH - It Was the Porn That Made Them Do It

[maddezmom]

~snip~
This joyous memory came rushing back after the grim revelation of yet another kink in the torture regime at Abu Ghraib. As if sexual humiliation and violent abuse weren't punishment enough, the guards also made prisoners violate Islamic practice by force-feeding them booze.

How do we square the tales of American cruelty with the promise of democracy we thought we were bringing to Iraq? One obvious way might be to acknowledge with some humility that our often proud history has always had a fault line, running from slavery to Wounded Knee to My Lai. (Read accounts of Andersonville, the Confederate-run Civil War prison at which some 13,000 died, for literal echoes of some of Abu Ghraib's inhumanity.) But there's an easier way out in 2004: blame Janet Jackson for what's gone wrong in Iraq, or if not her, then Jenna Jameson.

It sounds laughable, but it's not a joke. Some of our self-appointed moral leaders are defending the morally indefensible by annexing Abu Ghraib as another front in America's election-year culture war. Charles Colson, the Watergate felon turned celebrity preacher, told a group of pastors convened by the Family Research Council that the prison guards had been corrupted by "a steady diet of MTV and pornography." The Concerned Women for America site posted a screed by Robert Knight, of the Culture and Family Institute, calling the Abu Ghraib scandal the " `Perfect Storm' of American cultural depravity," in which porn, especially gay porn, gave soldiers "the idea to engage in sadomasochistic activity and to videotape it in voyeuristic fashion." (His chosen prophylactics to avert future Abu Ghraibs include abolishing sex education, outlawing same-sex marriage and banishing Howard Stern.) The vice president of the Heritage Foundation, Rebecca Hagelin, found a link between the prison scandal and how "our country permits Hollywood to put almost anything in a movie and still call it PG-13."

Some of these same characters also felt that the media shouldn't show the Abu Ghraib pictures too much or at all — as if the pictures were the problem rather than what they reveal. They are of an ideological piece with Jerry Falwell, who, a mere two days after 9/11, tried to shift the blame for al Qaeda's attack to the "pagans" and abortionists and gays and lesbians who have "tried to secularize America."

~snip~
more:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/arts/30RICH.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. As much as it causes my bile to rise...

I have to agree, in principle, with Colson: There are aberrances in cultural shifts that contributed to this sad, sorry and shameful time in our history.

But that is about as far as I can go.

Yes, there is reason to be concerned about certain causative effects of the "video gaming" and "gangsta'ing" of our society that perhaps contributed to this. There has been a noticible trivialization and acceptance of violence, in our society, as a one-size-fits-all mode of situation resolution.

Got a problem with someone? Ain't gettin' your props?

Kick his ass. If that doesn't work, cap his ass. Whip out that GE minigun and take out the neighborhood.

That said, the argument is also a deflection away from something more important and that runs deeper: The fact that the operational ethic in our society has become "The means justify the ends. I got mine. Screw you."

After all, is that not the essential message that all these self-actualizing men and women of the maladministration are sending to us all? That real and objective ethics, not to mention rule of law, are somhow artifacts of a bygone time, thus not worthy of sucking the sweat off of their procreative nodules? That the only effective ethics are the ones that work at any given moment, that produce that moment's desired and personally productive effect?

Give it five minutes: Circumstance, situations and the desired resolution will change, and so will the operational ethics necessary for said personally-positive resolution. At least, that seems to be what they are telling us, once you strip away the frantic rhetoric.

For all the endless nattering and jawboning about "morals", it is often forgotten that said "morals" are generally closely-held and something best kept between a person and his/her personal deity.

Ethics are the rules for interactions between people. Presently, it's kind of easy to come to the conclusion that all rules have been suspended.

Have the Crowleyites and the Objectivists truly gained ethical primacy? Has "Do what thou wilt" truly become "The Whole of The Law"? It's hard to think that it has not.

[flamingpie2500]

2. Rape is NOT a sex crime..........

It's about control, dominance and violence. The people who perpetrated these crimes did not do it for the sexual satisfaction. As for the pictures, they were to be used against the victims families--blackmail if you will.
They are desperate to blame society for the disgraceful, disgusting practices of our military commanders to gain information.

[ColdWarZoomie]

3. Standards have Dropped

I don't like the fact that media standards have dropped so much in the last 30 years. And I would definitely prefer less violence and sex on TV and in the movies.

But using the current low standards as the "cause" of torture is absolutely ridiculous.

As usual, it is not the preachers who say this crap that scare me, but rather the people who lap it up as the truth.

They are the really scary folks out there.