They thought
it was funny, but it wasn't funny at all.
A week ago, on New York's Opie and Anthony radio show, a Virginia couple
allegedly engaged in sexual relations in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was
part of a regular feature, you see, in which couples win prizes for having
sexual relations in indiscreet places.
So how did we get to a point where a couple of radio hacks consider such
a stunt funny? You have to go back a ways.
When I was growing up in Pittsburgh some 30 years ago, there was a distinct
line between civil and offensive behavior. Cussing was vile, children
were taught to treat others with dignity and respect, and television and
radio reflected a society that honored basic values and virtuous behavior.
It is true that there were plenty of awful things going on then, as now.
There was racism, company presidents who cheated, families that were broken
up by divorce and cheating spouses, and so on.
But the difference between then and now is this: We worked hard to be
civil, polite, honest and decent then. When we failed, as humans always
will, we didn't go on Jerry Springer to celebrate. No, most of us were
embarrassed and tried to conceal our failures from public view.
Now I'm not a media historian, so I don't know exactly when television
and radio began its slide. Some say cable television played a role. Prior
to cable we had three choices (ABC, CBS and NBC). And most families had
only one television set. Families watched television together, thus programming
was family oriented.
But then cable made numerous choices available, and the competition for
our attention became fierce. Low-quality programming also boomed. Many
families no longer had one television in the house, but four or five or
more. Teens tuned into MTV, while mothers tuned into Lifetime and fathers
tuned into sports.
But there was a challenge for programmers. With many new channels, a lot
of new programs were needed. But high-quality programming is expensive.
Creating full-fledged productions that tell stories of courage is much
more difficult than broadcasting a hack comedian who tells sex jokes.
So programmers chose the cheap, vulgar laugh.
In fact, someone once told me that 40 years ago, 200 people signed their
IRS returns as professional comedians, but only a dozen were great. In
the 1980's, thanks to cable, thousands signed their tax returns as professional
comedians, but only a dozen were great.
Anyhow, radio followed this trend towards vulgarity, thanks to "pioneers"
like Howard Stern. When Stern got his start 20 years ago, his skits were
outrageous and alarming. He did then what he does now: interview strippers,
mock people with disabilities, ask celebrity guests about the most intimate
details of their private lives.
While his show is ultimately bad because it promotes deviant behavior,
cruelty, selfishness and most every other non-virtue, I concede that many
well-educated people find his show to be a wicked pleasure. This is because
Stern is also a satirist in a culture that has run amuck.
Stern says the wicked things that many people want to say but are afraid
to in our politically correct culture. He exposes the vanity and idiocy
of our celebrities who absorb great abuse on his show because of their
pathetic hunger to be in the public eye. He violates the dignity of Playboy
Playmates who are too vapid to understand they are being exploited by
him, by Playboy and by us. He satirizes many very ugly things in our culture
at the same time, unfortunately, he promotes those very things.
His pioneering work in media vulgarity made him a wealthy man, to be sure,
and where there is money there will be copycats who are even worse. Thus
you have a couple of New York radio goofballs desperately trying to be
outrageous and alarming in a world in which very little alarms us any
more.
But before you decry the act of a man and woman allegedly engaging in
sex in one of America's most venerable places of worship while a DJ provides
a play-by-play, consider this: that couple, those radio hacks and probably
a lot of radio listeners all thought the bit was funny.
These morons are all a reflection of what we've let our culture become.
Such a culture deserves to be satirized by Howard Stern.
