Closetry Capers and Media Matters

There is always an element of caution that has to be taken when it comes to expressions of human sexuality.  For some anything but matrimonial heterosexuality is so far removed from their norm that they can’t cope.  Other people have a different view. 

From this side of the screen we have a simple formula:  If the participants are of the age of majority and can actively consent, then we have no opinion.  That means no kids (age of majority) or animals (no active consent possible and no, that giraffe is not begging for it, put the ladder away) but the rest of it, is fair game on the spectrum of human sexual behaviour. 

There is one corollary to the formula:  Show some discretion please.  We don’t want to see you playing tonsil hockey with your significant other (or others, if that’s how you roll) in public.  Whatever your particular mode of enjoyment might be, recognize that others might not want to see it played out on the streets of the city.  Get a room. 

It is an uncomplicated moral view and one that is quite simple to live with, as we have for many years.  Notice there are no quotes from various religious documents of shaky provenance, or appeals from pamphleteers purporting to know what the various deities demand from us. 

I’ll let you in on a secret:  God does not give a damn what you get up to on Saturday night after a few drinks.  To quote Rabbi Hillel:  “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn”

Which brings us to Anderson Cooper opening the door on his particular orientation.  Good for him.  The same with various musical acts, television personalities, movie celebrities, or random citizens flinging open the doors, shutters, tent flaps and zippers to their particular proclivities.  Good for you, now can we move on to something interesting?  Like whoever is left in Greece next week, will they please turn off the lights when they leave.

We do know that if one applies the simple moral formula above, then an awful lot of the media coverage we see hourly becomes instantly irrelevant noise.  We don’t care if Jennifer Anniston is doing X or Y, or that Jwoww got a tattoo on a body part.  We can then see the incessant bleating of attention whores for what it is, incessant bleating and as worthy of coverage as the state of the ingrown hair I have on my right armpit.  Healing nicely, for those who need to know everything.

Too much of our media is preoccupied with utter and complete drivel to be of use to us anymore.  Which also explains why the majority of North American society are abandoning conventional media, meaning the newspaper, radio and television, as their source for information. 

With that declining (ok, plummeting) audience, goes the advertising dollar, to this hour’s flavour of pseudomedia, that tries desperately to convince itself that it is actually relevant to anyone except the stockholders and the developers who created it.  From that, we get even less news.

Maybe with a news person of reasonable chops, like Anderson Cooper, we can get over our preoccupation with such mind rotting banality and get back to work trying to figure out how we get here and where we need to go to fix things.