Of Blurred Lines and Dancing Teddy Bears

What is it exactly about Miley Cyrus' teddy bear dance and provocative exercise in "twerking" at the recent MTV Video Music Awards that has rendered the entire nation apoplectic about the calibration of Miley's moral compass? Why are we seeing and reading so much infantilizing Victorian era moralism from our finest pundits?

One such reaction came from Lisa Belkin, writing in the August 26 Huffington Post. Belkin, who blogs for the New York Times, disappointedly criticized what she called Cyrus' "grinding declaration of adulthood" in the form of a letter, one that reads like a haughty and dismissive parental lecture that ignores, as these lectures usually do, the fact that we've all made debatable choices on the road to figuring out just who the hell we are.

Many of the stories about Cyrus in the last few days drip with manufactured outrage and follow the same formula: shots of Cyrus dancing with large teddy bears, sticking her tongue out, cavorting with Robin Thicke (whose mom, Gloria Loring - who once had a Top 10 hit with a song about an affair - wondered publicly about Miley's actions) to his equally provocative hit, "Blurred Lines," interviews with parents and teens shocked and stunned that Miley pushed the Lolita button, commentary from academics that conveniently ignores that Miley's actions aren't new - all capped by reporters earnestly wondering (without evidence, I might add) if her performance will turn the nation's young women into promiscuous antisocial sluts.

But so what if Cyrus wanted to say "'screw you' to wholesomeness'" as Time.com's Lily Rothman speculated in her column about the controversy? So we're pissed because Miley wants to distance herself from Hannah Montana, who was just quirky and provocative enough to suit us? Is this such a bad thing? Cyrus operates here at a decided disadvantage: her act of rebellion took place on a national stage. We can watch her hint at adult feelings and experiences in a sanitized Disney world, but the moment she takes a walk on the wild side, we freak out? Maybe we've forgotten our own acts of rebellion. Or maybe we envy her bravery, having chickened out when the time came to give the world the finger - or the tongue in Miley's case.

And when did MTV turn into Prude Central anyway?

It is the height of disingenuousness for folks in the media to rip, as Belkin did, Cyrus for "using outrage as a marketing tool when you have so much else to sell." Faux outrage is all the rage; it is the mainstream media's current meal ticket, its raison d'être. Calm and considered contextualization is about as rare in media content these days as Ralph Nader appearances at Tea Party conventions - or Gore family reunions.

As for having "so much else to sell," I think it's not out there to say the powers that be would never let Miley, say, record an album of Big Band standards. We want to keep Cyrus - and most young women, for that matter - in the "we can gawk at you while marginalizing you for expressing yourself sexually" box. The millisecond a young woman wants to go down an unapproved sexual road, we trip over ourselves to defend our endangered values - and provide more evidence that we're maybe more repressed than ever. Every member of the mainstream media must also somehow be forced to acknowledge their role in marginalizing feminism to the point that "leaning in," the virtues of "opting out," and the gyrations of barely post-adolescent recording artists are now what the nation contemplates when it tears itself away from Sister Wives to assess gender equality.

All this while we allow debate about whether global warming is actually taking place and children die in Syria.

Or it could just be that folks in the media respond in knee-jerk fashion to displays of sexuality - only by young women; men rarely are critiqued for acting provocatively - because they might cause the 17 conservative soldiers still fighting the "culture wars" to mass at the border and fire off 18 threatening emails, as they did when Janet Jackson did (or didn't) accidentally expose her breast during the Super Bowl halftime show some years back. Those 18 emails are then transformed into a "national controversy," and off we go again to the Argument for the Sake of Ratings Land.

So when later today you watch, or Google, or stream Miley's VMA appearance for the tenth time, do me a favor - two actually: first, when you're done, immediately find and read an article about the potential for our intervention in Syria; and second, fondly rather than judgmentally celebrate your own acts of teenage rebellion.

Animated Bears Love To Do Number Two

A current television ad for Toviaz shows a young woman in a bridal shop trying on wedding dresses. Her mom sits nearby. The bride-to-be doesn't know it of course, but she's adhered to my Say Yes to the Dress rule: bring as few people as possible with you when you set out to choose a gown if you want to make a decision that is truly yours.

Anyway, as her daughter happily examines the dress in the mirror - no doubt preparing to shout "I Found The Gown!" - mom realizes she has to visit the ladies room. Mom is torn; she wants to stay and support her daughter, but her overactive bladder is calling. Mom looks worried; she crosses her legs. Finally, she can wait no longer and heads off.

Her daughter turns just in time to see an empty aqua couch. A look of disappointment crosses her face as she realizes where mom has gone. But there's a lot of resignation there too; she's no doubt reliving missed volleyball games and award ceremonies. Mom knows she's been a drag. "I'm fed up with having to put my bladder's needs ahead of my daughter's," she says in a voice over.

Mom returns just in time to see her daughter celebrating her gown choice with the bridal consultant. Finally tired of missing these compelling moments, she makes the decision right then and there - again without consultation from 12 family members - to see her doctor to discuss that "gotta go feeling."

It's one thing to have figures made of copper pipe attempting to make it through the day without wetting pants they don't have. It's another entirely to visit the nation's indignation on a woman who simply needs to pee. What would you have her do? Squirm in pain while she tries to hold it in? Have an accident right there in the middle of the bridal salon, just so you can have the affirmation you crave?

And then there are the Charmin bears. It turns out that animated bears love - revel in, lose themselves in - the act of number two. They love wiping themselves after number two. Leonard, aka Papa Bear, slowly rubs the toilet paper on his face as he sits. "Oh, this is soft - this is so soft," he moans with almost orgasmic rapture. Down in the living room, Molly the Mama Bear gently calls up that "he only needs a few sheets!" Papa bear rolls back the excess, then resumes caressing what's left for him to use. Mama bear also diligently monitors her family's rear ends for butt flakes, while her bespectacled son Bill lectures the public on how Charmin's construction will enable you to, well, get cleaner so that you don't soil your underwear.

"We all go - why not enjoy the go?" Bill asks as he flexes his muscles to remind us of Charmin Ultra Strong's strength.

So it's official: no human activity is immune from media overemphasis. Is nothing sacred? Don't the creators of these ads and their clients have "no talking while I'm on the potty" rules in their homes, like Sarah Chalke's character in Scrubs? And while I do have bathroom visits that are particularly...productive, I'm not sure I'd ever use the word "enjoy" to describe them. Maybe that's just me - maybe there are people all across America who use satisfying number twos as cause for great celebration. Drinks are served; mini-conga lines pop up. Vacation plans will now include "The Great Bathrooms of Europe."

And pretty soon we'll have a reality show called "Say Yes to the Poop."

What's Next - War Wars?

Caught an episode of the new PBS show Market Warriors this week. Four expert bargain hunters scoured a Philadelphia flea market for what they believed were treasures, bargained for the best price with the vendors, and sent the items off to be sold at an L.A. auction. The expert who earned the largest profit was declared the winner. Seems PBS has moved on from simply encouraging us to dig around in our attics to find items to cart to the Antiques Roadshow. I guess their patience with our celebrations when the lamp we bought at a yard sale for $2 turns out to be Tiffany has run out. Let the real pros show you obsessive bargain hunting it's done.

My first taste of Market Warriors, whose logo is four stars over the show title in a military typeface, came a few days after Sheila and I caught Craft Wars on TLC, hosted by Beverly Hills 90210 alum Tori Spelling. The order of the day was the construction of elaborate doghouses. Very enthusiastic contestants painted dog biscuits to use as borders and wove collars that became floor mats. One built a table using rolled up newspapers as the legs. The competition takes place in a studio festooned with craft supplies furnished by the fine folks at Michael's. And as in all reality shows, the contestants ran around frantically, took off-camera shots at each other's designs, and earnest claimed they weren't there to make friends.

OK, I didn't actually hear anyone say that, but it's coming. Book it.

But even though I try to limit invocations of Tori Spelling in my daily life, her new show caused me to wonder what we won't think of as a war. Our use of battlefield metaphors certainly isn't new. Work is a battlefield. Sports take place on numerous battlefields. Hell, if Pat Benatar is right, even love is a battlefield.

But is there anything left? Imagine the possibilities:

Chess Wars (ESPN): Teams of three loudly debate where to move their pieces (which light up), then slam the piece on the board (which lights up) and shout "Boo-Ya!" when they complete their move. Gary Glitter and "The Final Countdown" play in the background. Commentary is provided by UFC fighters, General Wesley Clark, and, since he needs the exposure, Donald Trump. Players high-five and yell "in your face!" when they capture an opponent's piece. Checkmate is celebrated by tossing opponents into a giant pool of Jell-O.

Reading Wars (PBS): Students in a sixth grade class compete to read the most books during the school year. Students are shown reading everywhere - in class, at home, in the car, on their bikes. Comprehension? We don't need no stinkin' comprehension. Competitors engage in some pretty gnarly behavior - books are hidden, secretly redacted (with on-camera tips from officials in the federal government), put on the roofs of cars, and tossed in nearby ravines. The winner gets a state of the art Kindle preloaded with the collected works of Stephen King - that'll keep 'em busy for a while.

Meditation Wars (Oxygen): Three Buddhist monks attempt to meditate for an entire day. But first, their robes are judged too simple and replaced with consultation from Stacy London and Clinton Kelly from TLC's What Not to Wear. In the challenge round, the monks race to achieve total tranquility in the shortest amount of time and come up with the most heartfelt mantra. The winner gets a chance to perform on American Idol, while the losers receive the collected works of Bill O'Reilly and Gilbert Gottfried on DVD.

Staring Up at the Cloud Wars (Sprout): We begin with three kids lying on a hill staring up at the sky. Elmo from Sesame Street will then burst on to the scene to pepper the kids with questions: How many clouds can you see? What do they look like? Where can Elmo learn more about clouds? After a speed round, in which contestants see and interpret as many clouds as they can in a minute, they'll be asked  to come up with the most imaginative cloud interpretations, with extra points awarded for references to great military battles and points deducted when Gandhi and Dr. King are invoked. The show will include interviews with Air Force cloud-seeding pilots who will discuss how to get your clouds to look just like General David Petraeus.

Maybe we see so much "war" because we've become so desensitized to it, as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow argues so eloquently in her superb book Drift. The draft is long gone, a professional army does the dirty work of our elected leaders, and the government has done a masterful job persuading the news media that embedding is the best they can do coverage-wise, even it produces the world's longest on-air game of "play with the siren." Where peace used to be our default, the state we hoped and wished for - and fought for - war is our constant these days. Besides - peace is for hippies.

So I guess we shouldn't look for a show called for "War Wars" in between episodes of Honey Boo-Boo and "My Lover Has The Most Facial Hair." It wouldn't last a month on the air; it's too real - and not real enough.

All the Noise! Noise! Noise!

So it seems the genteel clean starched underwear crowd at the All England Lawn and Tennis Club is miffed because some of the world's world class women's tennis players - Maria Sharapova, for example - excessively grunt and scream to punctuate their play.

The gall! But it actually comes from the complainers, not the players. The noise, which approaches 100 decibels at times, is a distraction, claim purists, so much so that officials have taken to nudging players to tone it down a bit. "We believe it is helpful to reduce the amount of grunting," said Club Chief Executive Ian Ritchie.

Would we even be having this discussion if the overly excitable players were male? Male athletes celebrate and gesticulate and pontificate about practically every move they make on the field or court or ice. It's one thing to mark a goal or touchdown with a well executed acknowledgement of the crowd or the theatrical skyward thrust of the fists. I've seen a nifty 15-yard on the knees goal celebration slide or two during recent soccer action on ESPN.

The accomplishment bar has been lowered considerably. If you don't trip over the baseline heading to the pitcher's mound, or collide with a teammate coming over the boards during a shift change in hockey, they throw you a parade. Why shouldn't female athletes be able to celebrate similarly?

Did someone mount an off-Broadway Victorian Era revival I wasn't aware of? Someone get Billie Jean King on the phone.

Are Termites Monsters?

Termites suck - or chew, more precisely. Forty-five types of subterranean, drywood, and dampwood termites do millions of dollars in damages annually to U.S. homes.

We found them in our house when we first moved in. It took months, and several different methods, to eradicate them. We're still reminded of their presence; once or twice a year, a representative from the company that finally solved the problem swings by and inspects our beams and joists to make sure the termites haven't mounted a comeback.

For the record, we also have quite a history with ants. I once witnessed them marching in - and out - by the hundreds in what looked like opposing ant conga lines. All that was missing, for you fans of old cartoons out there, were the giant elements of a picnic balanced on their nearly microscopic heads - watermelon, hot dogs, the basket itself. It took so many tries to get rid of them that we're on a first name basis with the exterminator who succeeded in dispatching them. A shout out to Dale!!

We'd like to reassure anyone who had planned to visit us that both the termites and the ants are gone.

So yes, unwanted insects are a nuisance, a money suck, a massive pain in the ass.

But are they monsters?

That's what the fine folks from Terminix would like us to think. Check out this clip from a recent Terminix ad:

After spraying and strategizing for months, you do start to wonder if this is actually what they look like. In another Terminix ad, an armada of giant flying bugs with giant mouths buzz a quiet community, and after crashing through and obliterating houses, turn into termites who in more subdued fashion slip through cracks in the outer walls of another row of homes.

But this is not a war, or a Transformers movie, it's a nuisance, a giant - excuse me, massive - pain in the ass. You will find peace and bug-free days, but not if you internalize every media message that, as my lovely and talented wife, Sheila, says, turns every inconvenience into a tragedy. Let's save our angst, our anger, our compassion for the real tragedies - like more children living in poverty.

The Mother Of All Mothers

When my mom would express her frustration at the disinclination of my brother and I to clean up after ourselves - and we invariably groused at her in response  - she would speculate that we'd be more receptive if she was more like Carol Brady - always positive, always dressed up, sometimes singing, but never outwardly frustrated with her expanded brood.

The Brady Bunch's creators have over the years weathered a lot of criticism - much of it from folks in my line of work - for how relentlessly chipper the characters were and how easily they solved an unrealistically simple and narrow range of problems, often in song. Still, Carol Brady didn't "helicopter," didn't live in her kids' back pockets, didn't practice "attachment parenting," which according to some experts is the new "common sense" child-rearing technique.

Moms like mine who emulated - if only to make a point - television counterparts like Carol Brady are invisible today. Instead, we've recently harvested a bumper crop of media overreaction to moms who make curious, unconventional, questionable, and downright damaging child-rearing decisions. Moreover, these are the only moms who get attention. Moms who adopt a more nurturing, "love you unconditionally and work my way out a job" approach, who let their kids make more of their own decisions as they mature, who don't treat every issue as though it was an ascent on Mt. Everest and every accomplishment or failure by their children as life-defining, -ending, or  -affirming, are not sufficiently compelling. Who do we see instead?

Way To Go, Zack Morris!

By the time they fill our classrooms, students have endured more than a decade in an educational system where learning has been reduced by testing advocates, eloquently labeled “Standardistas” by writer Susan Ohanian, to the mastery of purportedly essential skills. They have, for the most part, successfully muddled through an experience injected with intensity practically from the second they entered kindergarten. Ohanian suggests the media are a key purveyor of this intensity. Coverage of education, she argues, comprises “mostly refried press releases from the Fordham Foundation, the Heartland Institute, the Education Trust, and other public-school-bashing enterprises.” Reading or viewing a news story in which a reporter has gone “beyond the corporate chants and charts” about our crumbling public schools and the need for more stringent measures of teacher accountability is a rare occurrence.

Reporters are always on the lookout for “a pro national-testing piece” usually built on a comparison of how students in the U.S. perform compared to students in other countries, or a “feel good” story about a diligent, caring teacher who urges and cajoles students – who often come from poor neighborhoods – into generating improved test scores. But by and large, journalists are content to give voice in their coverage to members of what the late educational activist Gerald Bracey called the “schools are awful bloc,” made up of like-minded business leaders, think tanks, and educational reformers. These twin tendencies, contends Beatrice Motamedi, a former reporter who now teaches high school in San Francisco, stem from an editor's desire to attract readers: "finding one heroic, inspiring teacher who is beating the odds...makes for much better copy than the long, slow slog of teaching, grading, reteaching, coaching, and assessment that is the real work of teaching."