In flagrante in public ... inexcusable

Jewish World Review ^ | 3-16-04 | Leonard Pitts, Jr.

[SJackson]

Let me set the scene.

You're sitting in traffic with your 4-year-old. Suddenly you notice she's watching with rapt interest something in the next car. You glance over and realize that the other vehicle is equipped with one of those DVD screens that are available on certain late-model cars.

The option is usually marketed as a way of keeping kids quiet on long road trips. But what the folks over there are watching is more loin king than "Lion King." Because there onscreen, before your daughter's steadily widening eyes, is a pair of exceedingly fit people using their private parts in ways the child never imagined they could be used. It is, in other words, a porn flick. In traffic. In public.

This is not just something that could happen, but something that already did. And the mother in question, 26-year-old Andrea Carlton of Gurnee, Ill., was outraged. "You're not allowed to have sex in your car," she said, "so why are you allowed to watch it?"

We have the Associated Press to thank for bringing this incident to our attention. According to its recent story, more and more drivers are using their onboard DVDs to screen pornography. I won't call it a trend, because that probably overstates the case. But even if we're only talking about a few isolated incidents, it still seems to speak to a rather troubling aspect of life in America just past the turn of the century.

Call it the loss of the public square.

I'll elaborate, but first let me head off any misunderstanding. My concern here is not that some people choose to entertain themselves with pornography. Frankly, so long as no children or beasts are involved, I don't care what grown people watch in the privacy of their own homes.

Public spaces, however, are a different matter. It used to be that you were sent into the world beyond your front door with an understanding that the public square belonged, well ... "to the public." To all of us. You were taught that it betrayed a lack of class and intelligence to act as if it belonged to you alone.

Where I come from, we had a term for that understanding. We called it home training.

[WV Mountain Mama]

This guy really nailed it.

[Agnes Heep]

Frankly, so long as no children or beasts are involved, I don't care what grown people watch in the privacy of their own homes.

This sounds so reasonable, but in truth, this is where the excesses have their origin. It's the skinny end of the wedge. We got the same thing with homosexuality. It started with reasonable people granting people the indulgence of their rights, and ended with those same reasonable people being clubbed over the head with their original concession.

[BenLurkin]

Bump again!

You're on your game this morning Ms. Heep.

[mountaineer]

The option is usually marketed as a way of keeping kids quiet on long road trips.

Instance #3,428 of "however did those of us who grew up in the 1960s ever live without this?"

[Modernman]

This sounds so reasonable, but in truth, this is where the excesses have their origin

The slippery slope argument has never held much sway with me. The fact that certain people abuse their rights does not mean that those rights should be taken away from the rest of us.

[Agnes Heep]

You're on your game this morning Ms. Heep.

Thanks. I've got a major Cisco certification test this afternoon, and I'm trying to relax.

[BenLurkin]

Don't know about you - but we found out just how far Dad could reach while stilll in the drivers seat.

[Agnes Heep]

The fact that certain people abuse their rights does not mean that those rights should be taken away from the rest of us.

Ah, but I never said they should. The slippery slope argument is valid no matter in what context you apply it. It also works in reverse. For example, I'm very optimistic that the partial birth abortion ban will lead to further restrictions on abortion in general--a good thing, from my perspective.

[mountaineer]

My family moved cross-country twice in the 1960s - NJ to CA, CA to PA - and somehow four children and two parents survived being cooped up together in a Ford station wagon without movies. The kids entertained themselves actually looking at the passing scenery, singing and playing bingo-type games. I suppose someone, somewhere now will say that not having DVD in your familymobile is a form of child abuse!

[biblewonk]

All porn should be illegal all the time.

[Wombat101]

Perhaps if more kids knew how to READ and were encouraged to do so they wouldn't have to put a miniature boob tube (no pun intended) into a car.

[Modernman]

All porn should be illegal all the time.

Before you can outlaw it, you have to define it. Even the supreme court was unable to give a clear definition.

[You Dirty Rats]

Reasonable people granted gun owners the indulgence of their rights, and now those same reasonable people are victims of gun violence.

And here I thought rights were inalienable. What a fool I was!

[jude24]

On the other hand, I just had to travel for school, and it was really nice, while I was stuck on a LOOONG layover, to watch a DVD in the airport.

[biblewonk]

Before you can outlaw it, you have to define it. Even the supreme court was unable to give a clear definition.

Ofcourse not, they don't want to hurt the economy.

[Wombat101]

I see your point...But I'd rather have my kids read than watch 62 straight episodes of Spongebob Squarepants. I don;t know if MY sanity could withstand the assault...lol

[jude24]

There are more DVD's than Spongebob Squarepants.

The Lord of the Rings make short time of a long layover.

[mountaineer]

Before you can outlaw it, you have to define it. Even the supreme court was unable to give a clear definition.

Last night, while channelsurfing, I caught about two minutes of an old "Designing Women" episode, in which one character, Charlene, noted that the guys at the X-rated theatres and "adult book" shops seem to have no problem whatsoever defining porn. It's not like they accidentally screen "Old Yeller" or put a Julia Child cookbook on the book rack. They know what is, and isn't, porn. It seems only nine people in America don't know how to define pornography.

[MineralMan]

"All porn should be illegal all the time."

---

Define porn, please. Would you consider this to be porn:

This guy is the desert, far from civilization, with his two daughters. They don't know if they'll live or die, so the daughters decide to have sex with their father.

Would a story like that be porn?