I was captivated to see the col-
umnist Ross Douthat, right-wing
anthropologist for The New York
Times, coming out so forcefully
today against the corrosive in-
fluences of television, just as
everyone is finally resigned a-
bout selfies. In a nutshell, he
finds that if the sluice gates
of exuberantly disorderly ignor-
ance which brought us the pres-
ent American government had not
been Rupert Murdoch's networks,
they almost certainly could not
have preceded the President's
own life, or he wouldn't have
heard of them. This places the
line in the sand of the fall
of man in his roguish progress
at about the time of Ozzie and
Harriett, that suspiciously in-
ocuous suburban sitcom for the
showcasing of unnervingly cal-
low white male millionaires,
on the fault line between the
big band era and rock & roll.
The Douthat Thesis is bound to
distort futures in Ricky Nelson
DVDs, but this instability pales
next to the real subversiveness
in the underlying content. One
has only to step into the latest
pop up boutique in blankest Mon-
tana, to pick up one's own en-
semble in the only two garments
any gentleman has ever truly re-
quired for a weekend in Paris.
We may say, people mustn't just
wear what they want; but that's
only because speech is free, and
wanting never is. Conservatives
are supposed to know this stuff,
aren't they?
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