Posted on 05/08/2002 5:56:50 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The naked women stopped me cold.
It wasn't simply that their grins were lascivious or their tongues touching. Not even the fact that they seemed to have an inordinate amount of interest in one another's surgically augmented breasts.
No, what stopped me is the fact that I was in an airport at the time. An airport newsstand in Baltimore, to be exact. Had a few minutes to kill and was scanning the magazine rack when I came upon these women, part of several shelves stocked with similar literature. No screen shielded you from it. You simply turned the corner and . . . whoa!
What really got me was that this particular magazine was positioned about waist high. At eye level, in other words, for a small child.
So I called the Hudson Group, the New Jersey-based company that operates the newsstand in question and, according to its Web site, roughly 200 other airport stores nationwide. I spoke to a representative who asked to remain anonymous but who assured me the company has a policy requiring sexually explicit materials to be obscured from view by a Plexiglas screen. As for whether the Baltimore store violated that policy, well . . . she would have to look into it.
You'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.
Truth to tell, it won't matter much to me if they have some men's magazines locked in a titanium steel vault next time I visit that newsstand. What's important to me is not what, if anything, they do as a result of my call. Rather, it's that there was a time not so long ago when I wouldn't have had to make the call in the first place. Indeed, a time when no newsstand would have required a corporate policy to tell it to keep dirty old men's magazines in a place accessible only to dirty old men. The most junior sales clerk in the place would have known to do this. Would have felt that she owed it to the rest of us, the children most of all.
There's a name for that sense of individual obligation to the larger society. It's called the social covenant. And ours has seen better days.
Which is bad news for us. Worse for our children. I've always considered the guidance and protection of a society's youngest members an act of enlightened self-interest. In seeing that they were properly socialized, in sheltering their innocence from the rough ways of the world, you helped ensure the health -- indeed the survival -- of the society itself.
It was a dynamic and a responsibility that was intuitively understood -- and honored -- once upon a time. The men in the barbershop cleaned up their bawdy talk when some man brought his little boy around. The teacher never allowed the students to catch her with a cigarette. The shopkeeper kept the girlie magazines out of reach.
There was a recognition that the public space belonged to all of us. You could do as you wished in private or in controlled places. But you did not appropriate the public space for your own use. You moderated your behavior there. To do otherwise was regarded as an act of disrespect -- for society and for yourself.
The world has changed a lot since then. To step outside your front door is to see and to hear how much. Red-letter vulgarisms on T-shirts, four, seven and 12-letter obscenities booming from car speakers, explicit themes during what television used to call the family hour, porno in the airport newsstand. We seem less compelled to honor the social covenant, make the communal investment, act as if we owe anybody anything.
The other day, I saw a sign. It was written in the dirt of an unwashed truck stuck in traffic ahead of me.
"(Expletive) you," it said.
Indeed.
And yes, that sentiment is as constitutionally protected as the one you're reading now. Nor would I have it any other way.
The question I raise, though, is not about rights, but right. Not about whether you can, but whether you should. It's a question grounded in an understanding of covenant, and a belief that we have obligations to one another. It's an old question.
And you get the sense no one's asking anymore.
Leonard Pitts can be reached at 888-251-4407 or via e-mail at leonardpitts@mindspring.com
Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel
ADVERTISEMENTS
Somehow, however, I don't think the advocates of posting the 10 Commandments in government court buildings really buy into this argument.
Let's take that airport he was traversing. By law, it's public space. Therefore, to whom does one complain when conditions there are unacceptable? Some functionary somewhere in state or county government. Some functionary who has no stake in making the complainer a happy customer. One could boycott the newsstand, of course, but this would be ineffective unless one publicized one's reasons for doing so... and that courts lawsuits and other unfriendly responses from groups that like what the newsstand is doing, that want to see more of it, and that could argue with good grounding in the law that no one's private preferences ought to rule public space!
Political fights over the allocation of "public" resources are only possible because the resources are public -- no one has title to them, and no one is responsible for how they're used or misused. The larger those pools of "public" resources grow, the more parties will fight over them, and the more vicious the fights will be.
There's no way to eliminate all "public space." But America has taken a wrong turn in allowing it to mushroom as it has. We urgently need a restoration of private property in innumerable venues, so that the owners of that property can be made to endure some consequences -- economic, mostly -- for offenses against taste and decency. And given the horrible mess we have at our airports, that might be the best of all places to start.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Whether intended or not, the boys are sent a message and nature makes them act accordingly. You, as the parent have the right but as the man asks, is this right? No, no and no.
It's called freedom. Deal with it.
You missed the whole point of the article... It is called decency. Why don't you get some?
Bump!
Sadly it took only six posts to find just the sort of thing the author of this article wishes we could avoid.
Many households allow their kids to drink, smoke dope, have sex and God knows what else, and yes the parents are there. One set of parents gave my 17 year old money to buy Maui Wowie for them when we went on a family vacation to Hawaii!!!!
Our culture represents us to the world. Pop-culture and cult of the celebrity highlight low behavior and encouage everyone to partake in the debauchery.
Those who grew up in the sixties, are now in positions of power. They're in politics, they run publishing, are heads of corporations, unions, they're the educators, etc. The parents of a couple of generations have tried to be hip and friends to their kids. Women have been "freed" to find themselves and pursue careers and the kids have been left to learn from the TV and each other. Our youth have money and time (allowances and no jobs) and promoters are finding ways to make a profit and sell the idea that anything is O.K. Too bad there's no one home to help them grow up with morals and respect. I understand your frustration and alarm.
You don't read much, do you? One of the most widely circulated news columns on 9/12/01, by the same man, Leonard Pitts:
We’ll go forward from this moment
But then again, according to your twisted reasoning, if terrorism upsets us, we shouldn't live here?
Bump II...and to me, jlogajan, poster #3, this is what the Ten Commandants teach, respect for others in your home or public places among other things...laws that try to keep human behavior in line to some degree.
I believe our founding fathers told us if we didn't keep our decency we wouldn't keep our republic.
The decorous behavior of persons in public, in the past, was largely governed by said 10 Commandments. In the past, posting them wasn't necessary because they were inculcated from a very young age in nearly everyone.
I hear a lot of people say that, but I have to wonder if it is entirely accurate, given the nature of the 1st Commandment.
Did 'polite society' really expect non-Christians to hide their faith?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.