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What's Wrong with Twinkling Buttocks?
City Journal ^ | Summer 2003 | Theodore Dalrymple

Posted on 07/22/2003 3:08:33 PM PDT by Hobsonphile

A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham's law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.

In no country has the process of vulgarization gone further than in Britain: in this , at least, we lead the world. A nation famed not so long ago for the restraint of its manners is now notorious for the coarseness of its appetites and its unbridled and antisocial attempts to satisfy them. The mass drunkenness seen on weekends in the center of every British town and city, rendering them unendurable to even minimally civilized people, goes hand in hand with the appallingly crude, violent, and shallow relations between the sexes. Britain's mass bastardy is not a sign of an increase in the authenticity of our human relations but a natural consequence of the unbridled hedonism that leads in short order to chaos and misery, especially among the poor. Take restraint away, and violent discord follows.

(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: arts; censorshipissues; dalrymple; literature; obscenity; popularculture
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More cultural discussion from an author I've always enjoyed.
1 posted on 07/22/2003 3:08:34 PM PDT by Hobsonphile
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To: Our man in washington
Arts ping!
2 posted on 07/22/2003 3:09:02 PM PDT by Hobsonphile (We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. -George W. Bush)
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To: LibertyGirl77; sakka; Conservative4Ever; T Lady; Fester Chugabrew; sonserae; Hobsonphile; Deb; ...
Arts ping!
3 posted on 07/22/2003 3:17:10 PM PDT by Our man in washington
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To: Hobsonphile
I want you to know that the term "twinkling buttocks" only appears twice in the article.

I feel cheated.

4 posted on 07/22/2003 3:26:30 PM PDT by Lazamataz (PROUDLY POSTING WITHOUT READING THE ARTICLE SINCE 1999!)
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To: Hobsonphile
Great article. Thanks for the post/link. Dalrymple can be very good.

FMCDH

5 posted on 07/22/2003 3:29:40 PM PDT by nothingnew (the pendulum swings and the libs are in the pit)
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To: Hobsonphile
Absolutely brilliant piece. And it can now be told: D.H. Lawrence is an abysmal blot on English literature.
6 posted on 07/22/2003 3:33:10 PM PDT by wideawake (God bless our brave soldiers and their Commander in Chief)
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To: wideawake
Indeed he is. Boring, boring, boring. How these arrogant snobs ever got into power is beyond me.
7 posted on 07/22/2003 3:49:21 PM PDT by squarebarb
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To: Hobsonphile
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.
8 posted on 07/22/2003 3:51:40 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Hobsonphile
SPOTREP
9 posted on 07/22/2003 3:58:29 PM PDT by LiteKeeper
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To: Hobsonphile
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.
10 posted on 07/22/2003 4:13:59 PM PDT by madprof98
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To: Hobsonphile
Wow! An English author who can actually write in complete sentences!
11 posted on 07/22/2003 4:28:53 PM PDT by raybbr
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To: madprof98
yeah, what he said.
12 posted on 07/22/2003 4:42:03 PM PDT by babble-on
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To: Hobsonphile
the Brits......................Yawn
13 posted on 07/22/2003 4:44:35 PM PDT by WhiteGuy (Deficit $455,000,000,000 + MY VOTE IS FOR SALE)
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To: Hobsonphile
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.

14 posted on 07/22/2003 4:55:46 PM PDT by livius
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To: Hobsonphile
So what's wrong with "twinkling buttocks?"
15 posted on 07/22/2003 4:58:40 PM PDT by sauropod ("Come over here and make me. I dare you. You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake.")
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To: Lazamataz
I feel cheated.

Me too.... I expected pictures.

16 posted on 07/22/2003 4:58:56 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
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To: Hobsonphile
After all, your headline put a thong in my heart ;-)
17 posted on 07/22/2003 5:00:45 PM PDT by sauropod ("Come over here and make me. I dare you. You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake.")
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To: Hobsonphile
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.

18 posted on 07/22/2003 5:17:29 PM PDT by r9etb
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To: Hobsonphile
Ping for the Manhattan Institute, one of the finest groups around.
19 posted on 07/22/2003 7:13:47 PM PDT by austinTparty
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To: Billthedrill
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.

20 posted on 07/22/2003 8:02:25 PM PDT by SuziQ
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