My Ongoing Struggle with Misanthropy

Sigmund Freud would have had a field day over how sex and perversion have spilled out onto the front pages of US media: not only am I referring to Time Magazine’s foray into incest with a cover picture of a skinny-jean clad baby-mama breast feeding her three-year-old toddler, but also to the sexual antics of the US Secret Service during President Obama’s recent visit to Cartagena, Colombia. On the lighter side, sex momentarily edged out gladiatorial violence as the film based on Steve Harvey’s book “Think Like A Man” took the number one spot at the box office, knocking off “The Hunger Games.” The momentary lapse of insanity was only temporary, because before the week was out, the viewing public had once again turned its attention away from sexuality back to its other favorite perversion: massive and indiscriminate violence. A film like “The Avengers” makes me wonder how many times can we witness the destruction of New York City?  Is this not “breads and circuses” to keep our minds off the $2 billion loss by JPMorgan Chase, Walmart’s rampant corruption in Mexico, and continued bloodshed in Mexico and the Middle East.

While the Cartagena Hook Up with the Secret Service on the prowl for strippers and lap dances was an embarrassment to the Obama administration, it would really be a tall order to say that the incident was a shocker. The infamous “Tail Hook” scandal of 1991 made it painfully clear to anyone who had a pulse that the US military either fosters or tolerates a culture of sexual harassment and assault that routinely degrades women. For those who were born after the Cold War, I am referring to the four days in September of 1991 when a fraternity of US Navy and Marine Corps aviation officers took Vegas in a storm of debauchery and perversion and allegedly assaulted over 80 women, many of these incidents occurred with the full-knowledge of flag officers who did nothing to stop them. I have doubts real doubts about the so-called ability of our armed forces to protect our country if they can’t protect their womenfolk, even baboons are more capable of that. But more about primates later.

Radio also did its part to add to the obsessive-compulsive mix of sex and violence in US culture. As I drove into work this morning there was a lot of sex-talk show I tune into every day. Granted, it was the show that regularly featured comedians with jokes about bodily functions, NASCAR, unsanitary hotel rooms, insane relatives, binge drinking, and sex in awkward places. In short, it is my kind of morning show. Most of the time it’s just background noise for me as I polish off my morning coffee, but today there was actually something of substance. The woman commentator was reading off the national and international headlines of freak-show oddities and she came across the work of two inventors that were designing a robot to take the place of prostitutes, which would put the women from Cartagena out of work.

To be continued…

Cross-posted at B2L2: http://b2l2.com/2012/05/16/the-secret-ser…tteries-part-i/

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