Like most guys, I avoid the women's clothing section, so I felt a little awkward, but I soon saw they had understated the problem. Panties with "Who needs credit cards?" on the front. The Jim Benton collection with these phrases: "Let's focus on me." "Cruel but cute so I'm worth it." "Hating you makes me warm inside." "Hate is a special kind of love we give to people who suck."
Are these really the messages we want young girls wearing on their underwear?
My blood began to boil as I visualized the marketing steps this garbage went through, and how many people who should have vetoed this clothing line chickened out to protect their paychecks. I had no idea you could buy see-through thong panties at the discount stores, but you can.
Why?
We went to the greeting card section where my daughter handed me a birthday card. It had this shining example of creativity on the front: "Jack wasn't nimble, Jack wasn't quick, He sat on your cake, and burned his ..."
At the toy aisle we checked out the posters. Maxim Girls and The Girls of Hawaiian Tropic with perpetual come-hither looks next to Tinkerbell and cartoon Cars. One poster said, "So many boys, so little time." Another poster was an Andy Warhol version of Playboy logos.
Why?
We went to the movie section. Many had bold red labels boasting "Uncensored."
In the kids section, I picked up a black DVD titled "Metalocalypse" with this label: "Warning. Uncensored. Special features contain mature themes and vulgar and sexually explicit language not for viewing by children under 17. Viewer and parental discretion are strongly advised."
Why?
We went to the books and noticed an entire section devoted to Harlequin/Silhouette Desire paperbacks. I picked up "What She Really Wants for Christmas" and opened it in the middle. I cannot write here what I read, but it was pure hard-core porn. I looked at the floor-to-eye-level display of Christmas-themed books with titles such as, "Christmas in His Royal Bed," "An Affair before Christmas" and so on. No indication they were X-rated adult books. I called a female associate over and handed her the book. She read one line and slammed it shut.
"I'll get a manager."
The manager came and I handed him the book. He glanced at the text and turned red.
"See any warning label?" I asked.
"No."
"Is that appropriate for just anyone to pick up?"
"No."
In 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize winning author and Russian dissident who courageously exposed the atrocities of the Soviet Gulag system, was addressing a graduating class at Harvard University. He shared these observations about the problems he saw with Western culture: "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."
Solzhenitsyn understood the corrosive nature of evil. He had seen firsthand a society that cast off God, only to reap a whirlwind of injustice, pain and suffering. That day at Harvard he pleaded for the West to repent, only to be dismissed as a fanatic by The New York Times and get uninvited to the White House by the Carter administration.
Solzhenitsyn's books should be required reading, but they require (and teach) a basic understanding of world history, philosophy and theology. In other words, they require too much thinking for textbook-to-test teachers and attention-deficit students. It is too bad because understanding the truth of history would cure our indifference to creeping socialism.
The ACLU and other godless organizations send letters (and in some cases lawyers) to every school board in the nation to make sure children are "protected" from any exposure to unconstitutional religious ideas, yet no one sees the need to protect children from the hypersexed swill marketed directly at them in every discount store in the country.
Why?
Russell Steen is a husband and father who lives and works in Pratt. His e-mail: panaruss@aol.com.