Every Molehill a Mountain

My secretary showed me a link yesterday on some evangelicals protesting Sadie Hawkins day at school (have to remember to dock her pay for surfing the web instead of working!). This silly day has taken on import to some, given the gender twisting trend in our country. Then this commentary on cultural clashes and protests showed up on the radar screen this a.m. Thanks to BrianWise.com

When Janet Jackson flopped out of her top, the popular question asked by many of my fellow conservatives - to anyone who refused to believe that a 40-year-old woman's exposed tit meant the end of civilization - was, What would you say to your child if he asked about the Awful Incident? This seemed to suggest that because a few parents would stumble over the question, it was out of reach for parents everywhere. It was the first time in a very long time I'd seen the Republican party talk down to the same people it claimed to implicitly trust.

As it happened, my son (about to turn 10 at the time) asked me about Janet Jackson two days after it happened, on the way to school. He wanted to know 1) if I'd seen the Awful Incident, and 2) what I thought about it. "I saw it after the fact. She has a new album coming out soon, and she thought that if she did something like that, more people would be interested in her again, and she'd sell more CDs. I think it's pitiful when people think they have to take their clothes off to get attention." He agreed, and that was the end. No chaos, no endless hours of debate, no great moral struggle. In those 15 seconds I conveyed to my son the greater ethical point without feeling the desire to write the FCC and demand it drum CBS out of broadcasting.

This is on my mind because ABC is in hot water over a skit it aired as Monday Night Football was going on the air last Monday. The scene: some blonde actress from the show Desperate Housewives is in the Philadelphia Eagles locker room, combing her wet hair, wearing only a large white towel. She looks up and smiles; there stands Terrell Owens, Eagles wide receiver (and professional football's premier jackass). There follows some "amusing" conversation, at which point the actress opens her towel and drops it to the floor; here the viewer is treated to approximately one second of her bare back. Owens mutters something about how his team is now going to have to win the game without him, and the woman jumps into his arms. Cut to two other actresses from the same show (one of whom I recognized as Teri Hatcher) sitting on a couch at home, viewing the locker room exchange on their television. More "witty" banter between those two; on with the show. No nudity was seen, other than the second of back skin

Yes, there is a moral divide in America, and oftentimes it is only dogged conservatives standing between innocent bystanders and pockets of chaos. Here and there, I am one of the dogged. But the conservative movement has lost the ability to roll its eyes, recognize when something is merely silly, and leave well enough alone. Because of this, it takes great delight in turning every single molehill into a mountain, just before deciding it's acceptable to figuratively die on every one of them. By turning every annoyance into a slippery slope, conservatives run the risk of becoming the movement that cried Wolf!, meaning that people may not take it as seriously as before when it comes time to fight the battles that really matter.