Society in Denial

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 10/21/04)

One of the saddest things I've read lately was the September 25 New York Times obituary of Francoise Sagan, who made tons of money from her precocious, wildly successful 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse and other books. The obituary's concluding paragraph was this:

"In a 1993 interview before her second drug trial, Sagan recalled: 'I had incredible luck because just when I grew up, the pill came along. When I was 18, I used to die with fear of being pregnant, but then it arrived, and love was free and without consequence for nearly 30 years. Then AIDS came. Those 30 years coincided with my adulthood, the age for having fun."

And what fun she must have had! Twice married, twice divorced, twice convicted of narcotics offenses, Sagan — who on one occasion suffered a fractured skull in the smashup of her expensive sports car — also said: "I believe I have a right to destroy myself as long as it does not harm anyone. If I feel like swallowing a glass of caustic soda, that's my own problem."

Sagan's self-destructive behavior undoubtedly had other sources besides her notions about having fun. But can anyone seriously doubt that her view of sexual permissiveness was part of it? For a long time it's been clear that secular culture was in denial about sex. Sagan — God rest her soul! — was one conspicuous case.

Even as evidence of trouble grows and the bad results pour in, the secular culture goes on giggling and celebrating the liberating effects of sexual attitudes and behaviors whose destructive consequences are plain to see. This is ideology turned dangerous to everybody's health.

A recent study by the Rand Corp. found that American children aged 12-17 are twice as likely to start having sex if they watch a lot of TV with high sexual content than if they don't. Apparently this holds true whether the kids see TV that involves depictions of sex or only talk about sex, according to findings published in the journal Pediatrics.

Big surprise. American children watch television three hours a day on average, and, as the Associated Press gently puts it, "sex is pervasive on TV, present in about two-thirds of all shows other than news and sports." (The AP apparently doesn't watch much TV football, including the commercials.)

Now, bombard kids with salacious sex day in and day out, week after week, and count on it — sexual acting out is what you'll get. This is the Abu Ghraib prison generation, isn't it?

How does the secular culture react to all this? With pledges to clean up TV perhaps? A spokesman for Viacom, whose holdings include CBS and MTV, offers this gem: "I don't think television makes anybody do anything." That makes as much sense — which is to say, no sense at all — as saying guns don't kill people, people do.

There is a simple explanation for this rationalizing. The clever people at Viacom have figured out that there's serious money to be made by peddling sex to kids. So what if the kids get corrupted — doesn't the Constitution guarantee Viacom's right to corrupt them? That also is denial at work.

But don't expect the secular pundits to say anything about it. How can they, after all, without repudiating a basic principle that's been fundamental to secular thinking for decades? That the sexual revolution has produced none but beneficial results is one of the great myths of the 20th century. Here is poor Francoise Sagan's "having fun" on a terrifyingly macroscopic scale.

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