For most of my life, or at least as long as I can remember, I’ve been a strong advocate for anti-censorship. I’ve never had a problem with “bad words,” with only a few exceptions. They’re all just words and they only have the power that we give them. Lately though I’ve been kind of having second thoughts about that and a whole host of other things. It seems I’m becoming more conservative in my advancing age. I look at the way people dress, what they drive, what they say, and their conduct and wonder if we’re all, as a society, lowering our standards of what’s acceptable.
I don’t mean that to sound judgmental or condescending. It’s just hard to look at fashion, television, pop culture, etc and see anything remarkably classy or what would be considered old school conservatism. And that’s a weird thing for me to even want; conservatism…me? I’m by no means conservative or classy, but I think I hold my own and at least respect myself enough to dress and act properly in public.
It seems to me that we all keep pushing the envelope to see what we can get away with more so than pushing to find an acceptable compromise in the middle. Like, I don’t have a problem hearing the work sh!t on a cable television show. I do have a problem hearing the word b(ew)itch or ass used in regular over the air network broadcasts. I have an even bigger problem with those words being acceptable and then the writers throwing in the maximum amount of usage per show in awkward ways just to make sure they hit the quota. It’s just not necessary. And I know people don’t say “heck” and “darn” in real life, but television doesn’t have to be reality all the time.
I guess I just come from that old school mentality that you should act the part…that television, movies, and music are forms of escape from real life and not supposed to be “real”…that overextending yourself in credit debt just to buy fancy clothes and cars doesn’t make you any richer, it makes you fake. And all of that isn’t an attack on any one personally. If that’s the way you choose to live your life, and those are the things you’re interested in that’s fine. I’m looking at the big picture. I’m looking at American culture as a whole. When did these things become not only acceptable but part of our culture?
We’ve lowered our standards on acceptable foods. We’ve lowered our standards on acceptable public education. We’ve lowered our standards on governmental accountability. We’ve lowered our standards on corporate accountability. We’ve lowered our standards on acceptable speech, clothing, behavior, and pretty much everything it means to be an American. The underwear goes inside the pants. Skinny jeans shouldn’t be sold in any size over 6 for women or 29 for guys. If you really can’t think of any other way to express what you have to say without cussing, you should break out a dictionary every once in a while. Grammar’s not that hard.
When are we going to hit the edge of the envelope? How do we return to those kinds of values, and better yet do you think we need to? I’m sorry this is such a rant today, but it’s been on my mind. It’s actually taken me 3 days to property write this piece. I would appreciate your feedback…especially if you made it all the way through!
Have a great weekend.
