Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992 TAG: 9202190359
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BACK TO SODOM AND GOMORRAH
I'M TIRED of sex.Not the experience itself, but all the talk about it.
Television, that once great idea which now serves mostly as an uplink for the sewer, exposes me to a flash flood of sex. What happened to the people of great talent who worked in that medium producing programs to uplift and ennoble?
In recent days I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about the development of the female condom. And the talk about the male condom continues, from serious public discussion to jokes on late-night talk shows.
Then there are the trials. Television has used the rape trials of William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson and the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings featuring the explicit sexual testimony of Anita Hill as a battering ram. The Jeffrey Dahmer trial offers a more sordid twist: sex with corpses and cannibalism.
Do I really need to know (or care about) testimony regarding the size of Mike Tyson's sex organ or how cute some Miss Black America contestant thinks his posterior is?
Our resistance to this kind of talk on television is lowered because, after all, we are watching "news." But then it becomes easier to incorporate such language in entertainment programming. A network sitcom last week showed a man and woman in bed about to have sex. He expressed exasperation that he didn't "bring any protection." The woman replies, "Top drawer in the night stand." He opens the drawer to find an assortment of condoms. He looks at her surprised. She shrugs as if to say, "Well, what did you expect?"
Earvin "Magic" Johnson got another shot at a basketball game in which he was treated as a hero, but it was conveniently overlooked that decidedly unheroic behavior with so many women even he lost count caused him to contract the HIV virus and put him at risk of AIDS.
The Fox Television network has become the at-home equivalent of the peep show. Programs like "Studs," a graphic talk show about dating, strip sex of its form and concentrate only on function. Fox has run condom ads, and the other networks are likely to, just as soon as they lower our resistance another notch or two.
One cable channel promoted a movie by showing a scene in which a young actress tells Michael J. Fox, "You just want to separate me from my panties."
Local television picks up on the theme and covers the trial of a fertility doctor who allegedly inseminated some of his female patients with his own sperm. Or how about the story of a late-night raid on a homosexual establishment in Washington in which men are alleged to have performed sodomy on one another in public. For a moment I think I'm watching the old CBS program "You Are There," in which Walter Cronkite conducted flashbacks into history. This must be Sodom and Gomorrah.
Politics is now infused with sex as bimbos achieve a few minutes of fame after selling their stories to print and television tabloids. Prostitution has diversified.
Part of the joy of sex used to be its unfolding mysteries. Like the preparation of fine foods, sex was something one approached slowly and tenderly, adding new ingredients as the process continued. It was thought best served within a committed marital bond. At least that was the ideal. Though not all practiced it that way, most did because we believed it would promote not only our own best interests but also the general welfare.
Now it seems we approach sex, and nearly everything else, as we do microwave dinners - quick and pretty tasteless. The goal has become more important than the means of reaching it. And we lose something special as a result. Los Angeles Times Syndicate