Time to Renew Your Smut License

I used to have a music teacher who wouldn't tell you your grade, he'd just play that note on a tuba and you had to figure it out. Bastard. Not that I really cared, I just wanted to get a D flat so I wouldn't have to take the damned class again.

From what I read in the papers, not much has changed since then. Sounds like the bastards are still in charge. The latest hoopla is over these two college coaches who porked Lady Disgrace right out on the national stage and both balled their way right out of a job. One had a thing for underage college girls, for the other it was strippers, but those are just two ends of the same Madonna/whore complex. Some would hesitate to compare seasoned professional strippers to the Virgin Mary, but they haven't spent much time with underage college girls. They make Madonna look like the other Madonna, it's amazing.

Most commentators are taking these events as further evidence that college athletics are totally out of hand. As if Cro-Magnon jocks with bulging forehead muscles earning degrees in astrophysics for passing the academic equivalent of a roadside sobriety test wasn't enough, now the coaches think they're above the law of common decency themselves. And those commentators do have a point, though I don't really think college athletics were ever really in hand. It's always been a screwy system, but if somebody had told me years ago you could get a scholarship for being good at P.E. class instead of math, I probably would have tried harder at crab-walking through that damned obstacle course.

Anybody who has to deal with the public at all knows that the U.S. populace on average writes at about a third-grade level, and I'm talking about third graders who are more concerned with having perfectly crimped hair and the flashiest charm bracelets than excelling in their studies. People complain that the informality of email has led to the downgrading of written communication to the sub-literate level. What they don't realize is that before email, most Americans had no use for written communication beyond a sticky note on the refrigerator asking who tried to flush a pineapple down the toilet. Email hasn't dumbed down America's writing, it merely exposed how brain-shellacingly shitty it was in the first place.

But that having been said, I still think the real problem these shenanigans are indicative of is the issue of America the Oversexed. I'm not really sure if people are actually having more sex than they used to, but they certainly feel as if they're expected to. Nothing in America has any value any more unless it has sex appeal, it doesn't matter if it's a movie about Watergate or a jar of pickles. Anybody who's having sex with his normal-looking wife is made to feel like he's letting his country down, and God save you if you aren't having sex at all. Might as well put on one of those giant beefeater hats and quit kidding everyone, comrade.

If we really want to cut down on public figures having sexual partners we don't approve of, perhaps we should limit their exposure to a popular culture that demands all men should be having sex with 16-24 year old girls. Men displaying a shaky grasp of social mores would have their popular culture licenses suspended before they mistake an intern for a humidor or write "sorority kegger" in their dayplanners. You wouldn't wave a vodka and tonic under an alcoholic's nose, so why taunt these guys with Tom Green movies and Erotic Survivor?

Just an idea. It could work, and it's sure as hell a lot easier than teaching these young girls some goddamned self-respect. Man.

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