In olden days when “a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking” there was a morals clause written into an actor’s film contract. The purpose was to restrain an actor from engaging in public behavior that might offend the audience and harm ticket sales.
Today, lewd and crude behavior can boost ticket sales and TV ratings and what passes for a morals clause deals with sexual harassment in the workplace.
Which brings me to David Letterman’s recent disclosure that he has had sex with female subordinates who worked on his show. Much of the coverage has mentioned that this was before his marriage to his live-in girlfriend of more than a decade with whom he fathered a child. Some wish to draw a moral distinction between fornication and adultery. It is something like the line Whoopi Goldberg tried to draw on “The View” between rape and what she called “rape rape” while discussing director Roman Polanski’s 1977 sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl. Hey, if Woody Allen (a signer of the petition for going easy on Polanski) can marry his adopted daughter when he was the lover of Mia Farrow, who is to say any line exists between anything?
This is on the op-ed of the local paper here this morning. I run a risk in posting it in that a minority of commenters may use this as an opportunity to go over the top. Please focus on the post at hand and honor the blog’s comment policy. Thank you.
By the currently accepted popular culture criteria, it’s only creepy if, having done the creepy thing, one previously expressed a belief that such behavior is wrong. If so, one has committed the cardinal sin of ‘hypocrisy’ and is eternally damned. By this reasoning, Letterman gets a pass.
Kendall, hope that isn’t “over the top.”
Cal Thomas paints with some pretty broad strokes here.
First, he conflates fornication with hebephilia.
Next, he accuses Julie Chen of sleeping her way to the top.
And then advocates eliminating television because it is destroying our culture.
All seems a bit extreme to me.
television has become a rude and unwelcome guest in our homes. If my children were young, I would get rid of it.
Thomas’ case would be a lot stronger if he were willing to take real action. The entertainment media are only selling what we buy. They are a reflection of our culture. More particularly, they are a reflection of the spending habits of our culture, and those demographic groups most likely to spend. One of those are the young, 20 something crowd, many of whom are comfortable with sexual relativism, especially if they can partake of it.
Letterman, like Polanski, reveals a seedy side to the entertainment business, but we need to ask ourselves if, deep inside, we don’t really enjoy their misdeeds.
I take two things from this:
1. Halderman definitely needs to be prosecuted for the attempted blackmail. He was trying to extort money from Letterman. It’s as simple as that.
2. Letterman fell WAY short of the glory of God and has some serious soul searching to do. That doesn’t mean he’s off the hook nor is he blameless in all this. It’s because of his actions that he’s in the situation he’s in now. He’s already trying to repair his relationship with his wife. As far as his relationship with staff, particularly past female staffers, there could be issues of harrassment (superiority over a subordinate). And for the TV show, lucky for him that he has the public airwaves to wage a PR campaign. Most Hollywood elite and TV personalities are likely to give him a pass anyway.
I guess I am extreme – but unrepentant. I have eliminated television from my home. In my view, it’s poison.
I don’t watch television. I don’t have cable and with the move to digital I can’t get anything, but we didn’t watch it before then. We only use it to watch movies.
I also don’t buy the argument that TV is benign because it only reflects what people want to see and will buy. That argument could be made about anything.
[Edited by Elf]
If we don’t like this type of stuff, then we need to evangelize more. Basically, the Biblical view of sexuality is based on the Created Order (look at 2 Cor 6) but if you think you evolved from animals, why not act like one. Change the heart and the actions will follow, but these folks are only manifesting what is on the inside.
We don’t have to chose either / or. For example: I have small children, therefore we have not had “television” in our home for at least 12 of the past 16 years, and we’ve never had cable. However, we have a DVD player for good movies or educational materials and my wife and I occasionally watch free tv shows off the internet (Fringe, Bones, Lie to me) and we are looking into Netflix. My point: there are too many great options that allow us to control the content in our home without sitting down in front of broadcast TV or Cable. Why let Hollywood or New York spoon feed us Letterman and the likes? There are better choices.
Br. Michael –
If you were referring to my #4, please note I said nothing about “benign”.
10, no you didn’t. In the edited part of my post I pointed out that television is an enabler not simply a provider catering to people’s appetites. Television both reflects and shapes culture.
Love Dave Ross’s short commentary [url=http://www.wcbs880.com/topic/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=4064031] Laughter in the Confessional [/url] on this subject.
Just to show the effect this has had on people, HIS RATINGS HAVE GONE UP! Go figure.
As someone once said, ” It’s only kinky the first time”.
The lines bewteen “the world” and Christians is becoming more clearly defined. I saw a man on the news, who ran a Bible college in Texas, who described those in Washington at present, as Darwinists.
Well put, I thought. But when the leadership of our country is”liberal”, it encourages the Letterman types.
bl
Is any one surprised his ratings have gone up? Is any one surprised at his hanky-panky? Surely not. Who expects otherwise of media celebrities? After all, Governor Sanford is still in office. Who is the greater criminal?
Television has made us a nation of peeping Toms and Thomasinas. Is this anything new? Television has coarsened the public taste so thoroughly that issues of taste (and judgment) are no longer relevant. What is worse, television is addictive., and I mean this quite literally. Try pursuading someone who watches television constantly to turn off the tv for a week. You will find someone who would as soon give up cigarettes or alcohol. Addictions lie in the pleasure center(s), and what does tv feed if not that? Larry
#8 — I’m assuming you meant I Cor 6. Anyways, there is no way that relativism in human culture can be equated with acting like animals — at the very least, that’s grossly unfair to animals. I’m not at all sure that evolutionary biology underwrites relativism — unless you buy into evolutionary psychology, which is a very dubious add-on. It seems to me a body can just as well begin with a working acceptance of evolution and develop a robust natural law ethic along Thomistic lines — which lends itself to an emphasis on created order and is therefore a wonderful entry way to Scripture.