By now, I would believe that most Americans have seen the recent MTV video performance of Miley Cyrus, aka, Disney's Hannah Montana. During the song-dance performance, Cyrus, dressed in a costume similar to a one-piece swim suit, grabs her crotch, places a large foam finger-hand to a male singer's crotch, rubs the finger across her crotch and bends forward allowing her buttocks to back into the male singer's crotch while sticking her tongue out. The cameras periodically scan the celebrity laced audience noting 'shocked' expressions. The moment was an obviously contrived-orchestrated burlesque.
Of course, the immediate fallout-response from many quarters is appall and condemnation. Although, I find Ms. Cyrus' performance vulgar and offensive in a moral society, we Americans have evolved into 'amoral' society. We need to own our over-the-top sexual behavior displays and stop pointing condescending fingers towards other countries as if we are card-carrying members of the apostles holier-than-thou- club! True, the treatment of Muslim women, as reported, is horrific and unacceptable but the manner in which Americans sexually portray women as 'objects-of-male-satisfaction and delight' is equaling disturbing for this writer.
As for Miley Cyrus, she has marginal voice talent and thus feels a need to distance herself from the 'pure' Disney image offered through the character, Hannah Montana. However, most of today's young singers are not very good. You can easily conclude that the louder the back ground sound music/noise the greater is the attempt to 'cover-up' less than quality' vocal chords. When you cannot sing, you must sell the image; the easiest image to peddle in the 'one nation under God ' country is the image dripping with sexual innuendos. This approach is also used in the movie industry. We no longer trust the senses of the paying audience to 'get-it;' we must show some skin when depicting lovers, we must use vulgar dialogue and we must have chase scene with explosions; nothing can be inferred, hells-bells we have terrific movie-industry visual affects...show us some blood!
Our culture has inundated youth with destructive video games for decades. My question is why do we wonder about the motivation prompting three teen boys to shoot and kill a jogger because they were 'bored.' It follows that when a society insists on driving 10-miles per hour over the lawful speed limit, the society will change the limit. If a society presses against the moral norms, the moral compass changes and a new norm is born. Welcome to America...we are no longer Pilgrim/Puritans and we are a fast-fading Judea-Christian nation; so let's not be so damn judgmental of others and pompous with our self-inflated 'good-guys' perceptions, after all, we may have trouble properly 'seeing' others due the 'speck in our eye.'
Most of our changing behavior, which is initially perceived as 'bad' is the result of poor parenting or a lust for fame and fortune. However, in our country, we will eventually find some way to 'blame' public school educators.
Excuse me while I take leave of this typing machine and retire to my den. I think I will listen to some Carly Simon songs; gee, I have not heard the recording of Tony Bennett's, "Once Upon a Time" in a long time.
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