Two recent commentaries on the direction of American culture had an odd intersection this weekend. The first of these was a skit on the NBC show, Saturday Night Live. The second is a letter to the editor of the Commercial by local pastor, Don Taylor.
Pushing these two events closer together was the recent passing of Judge Joel J. Tyler, who ruled the 1972 film, Deep Throat, to be obscene. It may seem a paradox that these three opinions would coincide, but in an oddly congruent way, each points to something important about us.
The first of these, the SNL skit, was entitled “You Can Do Anything.” This bit was a parody talk show billed as “the only show that celebrates the incredibly high self-esteem of the YouTube generation… it doesn’t matter if you have skills, training or years of experience… you can do it.” Upon failing to juggle ten indian pins, the first “guest” pronounced himself “a juggler” because “I have no shame or self-awareness.”
A succession of equally unable guests ran through similar disasters, each more self-involved, over-confident and self-promoting than the last. As one guest states, “my self-esteem is through the roof because no one has ever been honest with me about how mediocre I am.”
In the second example of cultural commentary, Rev. Don Taylor, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, responds to a column written by Steve Chapman. Chapman’s column focused its sights on GOP presidential candidate, Rick Santorum. In particular, Chapman discussed whether the existence of gay marriage was an indicator of the health of our society. He contends gay marriage poses no threat and that there is little evidence to suggest that either faith or family are under attack.
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As one might expect, Taylor refutes this position, “American culture is indeed sick and is in a freefall fueled, in part, by the liberal thinkers who continue to rail against the faith community and the values which govern their lives.”
As to the third element, the passing of Joel Tyler, it is not his death, but rather his extended commentary on the aforementioned pornographic film that bears recalling. In his March 1973 decision, Tyler wrote an excoriating indictment of the film. He employed many colorful turns of phrase damning the film as a “feast of carrion and squalor,” “a nadir of decadence” and “a Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire.”
These three admonishments on the moral, cultural and social decay of our age may seem ever so au courant, but enraged writers and self-appointed censor morum, have cast out devils since humans first collected together.
In a quote popularly (but dubiously) attributed to Socrates, we see a timeless lament on the excesses of “today’s” youth, “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority… Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households… They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Perhaps G. K. Chesterton says it best, “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
With specific regard to the current political drama, Chesterton could not be more dead, square on target. In 1924 he wrote, “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” It’s hard to argue with perspective that keen.