Drugs, Sex, and Rock & Roll

The simple reality is that not all our heroes are all we wish they were, and we’re coming to grips with that.  We haven’t yet developed a clear and consistent standard to retroactively apply – what Kevin Spacey did was a million miles away from what Al Franken did…but they both paid the same price, didn’t they?  Because Spacey was an active predator whose behavior wasn’t even acceptable under the morals of the time and place it happened, whereas Franken is guilty of incredibly tangential and minor involvement in a bit of ribald humor typical of its time and place, and has expressed regret and even self-loathing at the idea that he participated in anything that genuinely hurt anyone.  It was “all in fun,” and in that time and place there wasn’t anything abnormal or really even mildly offensive about it, as evidenced by the clear and unmitigated enthusiasm and fun being had by the woman Franken’s accused of sexually assaulting visible in the tape of the incident.

I think these errors of scope and scale, the refined discernment that truly must become a part of this process of recursively examining our past in the every-increasing light of new knowledge and wisdom, will sort themselves out in time.

I just hope we can remember how to enjoy an old pop song with a good hook – and this one’s on the same heap as “You’re Sixteen” and “Only Sixteen” and all of the other work, in many cases full of beauty and talent, that stands as an uncomfortable and inconvenient reminder of the reality that as recently as thirty years ago it was still socially acceptable enough for a thirty year man to write a song about having the hots for a minor to have it become a hit.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a critical look, just like there’s nothing wrong with taking a critical look at Twain’s use of the n-word in his writing.

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Unintended Consequences

There is something wrong with pretending that stuff never happened or even that it doesn’t still constitute aesthetically pleasing art of its type.  Not only all of the sort of liberal and sex-positive things I’ve already outlined, but there’s one more much more ominous facet to all of this sweeping under rugs of dirty little secrets:

It gives cover to predators.

It drives people who engage in “non-vanilla” but still entirely legal behavior further into the shadows, where it becomes harder for communities to self-police and social stigma makes it much more difficult to prosecute active sexual predators.  Victims of abuse are already afraid to come forward because they’re like to be kink shamed and maybe even arrested by police, especially in same-sex situations because bigotry.

Making everyone who’s a little kinky feel like Ted Bundy doesn’t solve any problem and makes it much easier for the real Ted Bundys of the world to do their damage, and that’s the end result of all this pearl-clutching.  Making it impossible to talk about sex doesn’t protect anyone, or at least not from much or for long.

So definitely, hold people responsible.  Let’s not have Gary Glitter raking in millions in royalties from US sports broadcasts after being convicted multiple times of active and predatory pedophilia.  Let’s not just keep on with the “boys will be boys” crap.

But let’s also make sure we’re keeping a fair and reasoned perspective.  No matter how many enlightened individuals there are, there simply is no reason to fault a person in 1955 for accepting as normal that his wife wasn’t allowed to get credit without his permission, because it was normal back then.  Many of those present at the time fought and even died to help secure the rights and privileges we’re now trying to retroactively condemn them for not supporting.

Credit Where It’s Due

It is in fact the very considerations of that guy in 1955, Mr. Joe Slightly-More-Progressive-Than-Average, asking himself whether that normality was really fair that advanced the conversation far enough that you can look back at him in condescension now.  The same’s true of the stuff I’m talking about above; those of us who were “on the ground” so to speak were the ones who by and large explored and defined and brought to life these new ways of understanding, new boundaries, new rules of respectful communication.

We fought, hard, not just in public rhetoric but in our own heads to resolve that cognitive dissonance between our norms and our values, and to adjust our behavior and make it acceptable.  Sure, not all of us were on board, and not everyone who’s 21 is free from bigotry and sexual aggression now, either, but we – particularly “us” as in people now called “generation X” as well as the hippie segment of the Boomers who preceded us – had to actually *discover* this stuff through trial and error, and genuinely wrestle with the dawning realization that some of our behavior wasn’t acceptable even if she DID say yes, and we needed to make some changes.

So I don’t want to get into some dumb inter-generational argument, but try to keep all this in mind when you’re standing there, immersed since birth in the values that we made norms, and thinking about getting sanctimonious because we didn’t adhere perfectly to those values before they were even fully developed.  Trust me, your kids are gonna do the same to you, and in retrospect they’ll have just as much cause.

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