What's Wrong with Twinkling Buttocks?

City Journal ^ | Summer 2003 | Theodore Dalrymple

[Hobsonphile]

More cultural discussion from an author I've always enjoyed.

[Hobsonphile]

Arts ping!

[Our man in washington]

Arts ping!

[Lazamataz]

I want you to know that the term "twinkling buttocks" only appears twice in the article.

I feel cheated.

[nothingnew]

Great article. Thanks for the post/link. Dalrymple can be very good.

FMCDH

[wideawake]

Absolutely brilliant piece. And it can now be told: D.H. Lawrence is an abysmal blot on English literature.

[squarebarb]

Indeed he is. Boring, boring, boring. How these arrogant snobs ever got into power is beyond me.

[Billthedrill]

A Dalrymple BTT. Frankly, I found Lady Chatterly's Lover to be unreadable, and not because it used naughty words, because it was stupefyingly boring.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[madprof98]

Just one example of his analysis:

For example, the boundless prurience of the British press concerning the private lives of public figures, especially politicians, has an ideological aim: to subvert the very concept and deny the possibility of virtue, and therefore of the necessity for restraint. If every person who tries to defend virtue is revealed to have feet of clay (as which of us does not?) or to have indulged at some time in his life in the vice that is the opposite of the virtue he calls for, then virtue itself is exposed as nothing but hypocrisy: and we may therefore all behave exactly as we choose. The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.

Yes, exactly.

[raybbr]

Wow! An English author who can actually write in complete sentences!

[babble-on]

yeah, what he said.

[WhiteGuy]

the Brits......................Yawn

[livius]

oh, how flirtatious they are, our literati, drawn to taboo as flies to dung...

Yes! If I see the word "transgressive" one more time on the arts page of my local rag, I think I'll go down to their offices and rip someone's head off.

What's left to "transgress," in any case?

Great article, thanks for posting it.

[sauropod]

So what's wrong with "twinkling buttocks?"

[HairOfTheDog]

I feel cheated.

Me too.... I expected pictures.

[sauropod]

After all, your headline put a thong in my heart ;-)

[r9etb]

Dalrymple makes a much larger point, which applies in a lot of areas other than crudity and pornography.

Namely, that laws are meaningful only so long as most people would obey the spirit of the laws even if the letter had never been written.

As my favorite John Adams quote put it:

"We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

It's also true that the demise of "little" things such as an aversion to pornography or adultery has historically been accompanied by the demise of big things, such as honor and trust (see, e.g., Rome and Athens).

Those who say, "you can't legislate morality," are basically correct. It would be nice, however, if the people who said that weren't also the ones working hardest to undermine morality in the first place.

[austinTparty]

Ping for the Manhattan Institute, one of the finest groups around.

[SuziQ]

Frankly, I found Lady Chatterly's Lover to be unreadable, and not because it used naughty words, because it was stupefyingly boring

I've never cared for 'bodice rippers' be they written by women OR men. I heard about this book when I was in high school in the 60's, but never had any overwhelming desire to read it. After reading Dalrymple's article, I'm sure I never will.