Has pop culture gone farther into the gutter under Bush?

[gulliver]

It seems to me like TV, music, and movies are a lot cruder, more violent, and far more sex-obsessed than they were under Clinton. I thought the Republicans were promising their base some kind of magic return to traditionalism and propriety. It seems like they have had the White House for four years and the entire government for two years.

So why no progress on smut and lowest-common-denominator trash? Why is it suddenly a lot worse, in fact?

(I'm not being a prude. I'm just pointing out that if people thought Republicans would take us back to the fifties they have a lot to be disappointed about.)

[Lost4words]

1. I think it has. VP says Go Fuck Yourself on Senate floor!

I have never in my half century of life heard any remark as vulgar as this in what is supposed to be hallowed halls. The Christan right is neither. Where is the outrage, If Kerry or Edwards had said G F Y the pukes would still be whining about it. Its an embarrassment.

[Demit]

2. the fundies don't want to fight gutter culture. They need it, to oppose it

[sadiesworld]

3. How true.

Also, gutter sells and money is the highest rethug altar.

[i_c_a_White_Ghost]

4. Plus rethugs engage in gutter activities

[Nimrod]

5. For once I don't think it's the Reps' doing

Pop culture has been going downhill for years. It's just the same old regurgitated crap over and over again. Movies have the big FX sequences shot first and the script written around them. You don't ask what a music group is like, you ask what music group a music group is like, then charge 24 bucks for a CD with one overplayed song on it. TV is (frankly) garbage with canned laughter so you know when something is supposed to be funny.

Pop culture is about money and advertising dollars. That's it. Period. End of sentence.

[hexola]

6. Ironic perhaps...but unlikey there is a relationship...

When in history have we not been becoming "a lot cruder, more violent, and far more sex-obsessed" ?

I think it's just a matter of perception.

We have always been crude, violent, and sex-obsesed.

[secular_warrior]

7. the irony about the GOP

is that the moralists who hate the "trash" and the corporatist who create it are in the same party.

ps. I'm libertarian on moral and social issues.