the immaturity of America

How is sexual conservatism immature?

well, comparitively speaking America is a young country. in many ways, it still has not shed its puritanicl roots- hence, the big-to-do over janet jackson and any other form of nudity or swearing. but, bear in mind, the first amendment is one of this country's finest acheivments-- the right to free speech without getting you a** thrown in jail, or murdered for disention

I'm not sure I understand why those things you mentioned are immature. I think most people just feel bombarded on a daily basis with media that they don't care for...

Its hard to avoid, too, since its everywhere... in some people's eyes anyway.

Billboards
radio
tv
magazines at the checkout line
ads at the beginning of movies

It is hard to avoid if you don't like it... I personally don't care, but I hear from a lot of people who do. I think they just want an option every now and then.

Unfortunately, it's not just you, but that certainly doesn't make you correct in your assessment.

Maturity is not defined as indifference to public nudity or silent tolerance for the music of Eminem.

Europeans would care if a woman walked topless into Church or her place of business or the grocery store.

Some would be outraged, some would be titillated, some would be concerned for the sanity of the woman, some would be amused, and some would be puzzled. Very few, if any, would be indifferent.

They might not, in the majority, care if a pop singer bared her breast at the final match of the World Cup, but this could signify decadence as easily as maturity. I'm not sure the majority of Americans cared about the Janet Jackson affair, but certainly all of them did not, so even by your definition of maturity it is an unfair generalization to contend American citizens are immature.

There are societies in the world that are far more conservative than ours when it comes to sex and nudity. Are they immature too?

Being offended by course and misogynist lyrics is certainly not a sign of immaturity, however I think it can be easily argued that an attraction to such lyrics is.

I live in Texas, and after the Janet Jackson so-called scandal, people calling in on a conservative talkshow broadcast in North Texas were outraged and, in many cases, clamoured for stricter government regulations and penalties to keep something similar from happening. Generally, people implied that their children were irrevocably harmed from seeing an exposed breast for a couple of seconds.

When the Nick Berg murder became public on video, some teachers showed the video to their students. It was highly publicized. The two teachers were suspended for the rest of the year with pay—a two week paid vacation, essentially. The same talk show buzzed about this scandal for a while. I turned it on one night, and overwhelmingly, the callers supported the teachers, with the provision that the children had gotten permission slips from their parents to watch it.

I felt like I was going crazy and turned the radio off. I don't get it. Would any parent let their kids watch the Nick Berg video? Somebody tell me if they think it's worse for a kid to watch an exposed breast for two seconds or watch a man having his head sliced off.

Sometimes I think I'm living in Iran instead of Texas, where the people seem think of Bush as the Grand Ayatollah.

While I don't doubt your veracity coluber, I find it impossible to believe that the people you heard on that radio show are a representative cross section of Texas conservatives.

However, there is not necessarily an inconsitency in the positions you've described.

On the day of the Superbowl, there wasn't a parent in America who had any notion that a bare breast would pop out on the TV screen their children (of all ages) were watching. Janet didn't advise the audience that at some point in the show she would be releasing one of her twins and thereby offer them the opportunity to shield their children from the sight if they so chose. The fact of the matter is that Janet Jackson couldn't care less about whether or not there were children watching her spectacle or whether or not the parents of these children wanted them to get a look at her boob. Whether or not any kids were actually scarred by the sight is immaterial.

I seriously doubt that many, if any, of the presumed conservatives whom you heard on the radio endorsed the idea of their children viewing the Nick Berg video. Suggesting that showing the video to children who had their parents' permission would have been OK, is not the same as saying that the video should be shown to children.

Contending that parents and not state institutions or entertainment conglomerates should decide what is and is not proper for their children to view is a consistent conservative position.

I have a suspicion that you believe conservatives may be generally in favor of showing the video to children because it reinforces the need to have our troops in Iraq. Out of curiosity, what do you think the political persuasion of the two teachers is?

There could be a tremendous irony here because I know my conservative friends and associates (as well as myself) have assumed the teachers were liberals who believed it was necessary to show children the horrors of war so that they could appreciate it's true nature and resist it.

I wonder if anyone in this forum knows for certain why the teachers felt the need to show the video.

By the way, under any circumstances, the last line of your posting is perfectly ridiculous.

I didn't listen to the talkshow very long for it was late at night. The show is run by a stated conservative, and he does not rave but is very rational, calm and intelligent. His position was that the only mistake the teachers made was in not getting prior written permision from the parents. I listened to a few callers who agreed with the host. Basically, most people who call in to this show agree with the host; he's preaching to the choir, in other words. The general drift of the callers and the host was that there was nothing wrong with children watching the video. In the past show dealing with the Janet Jackson, the opinions of the host and callers was almost unanimously an outrage against the exposure.

Another topic of this talk show in the past was the video of the mother hitting her small child in her vehicle. Almost everybody was disgusted with the mother's behavior, which I couldn't help but agree with, but almost to a man, they said that they used violence against their own children. I guess the difference was that they used violence with a cool head. One caller cooly said that he hit his four year old if it didn't do what it was told to do.

Well, I'm not sure what this, admittedly, scant anecdotal evidence proves.

But I am curious, when you read or heard of the stories of these two teachers, did you make an assumption as to their political leanings, and if so, in which way did you think they leaned?

As I indicated, I admit to jumping to the conclusion that they were both liberals. I still will bet money they are, but I now see that there is certainly the possibility that they were conservatives.

I would agree with you that people who feel that their children would be scarred by the sight of a naked breast, but unaffected by the display of a man having his head sawed off have a very unusual way of looking at life. So unusual, in fact, that I simply can't believe there are many such people out there.