The Church Lady Has Arrived

by John Ettorre

I think Mr. Steele speaks for most of us parents. I know he speaks for me.

For many of us, we begin life as good, right-thinking cultural liberals, nodding in earnest agreement about such absolutes as freedom of expression and the idea that censorship is always and forever a no-no. For writers and others who make a living through their creativity, these notions are enshrined almost as holy writ. They seem so self-evident as to barely require comment, much less debate.

And then you have kids.

Suddenly, all the easy answers become difficult, the black-and-whites morph into a thousand shades of gray. You begin to look around and interpret the world in new ways, which mostly boil down to a single yardstick: how does this affect my child? How does this racy TV show, this violent video game or raunchy website impact their brain, form their character, shape the adult they will soon become? Or you might ask yourself how the entire culture in all its unbridled artistic freedom affects your kids. That can be truly depressing.

Not long ago, there were some clearer demarcations between child-friendly zones and their opposite. There were family hours for TV; now boob-tube raunch crops up at any time of day. Pre-teen fashions, meanwhile, have become routinely scandalous. Everywhere in the culture, you can see a general coarsening that seemed scarcely possible just 10 or 15 years ago.

On certain days, all this cultural bombardment is enough to make you want to react like a humorless Soviet commissar, skulking about the neighborhood for various signs of outrage. You may even feel yourself becoming something of a latter-day Savonarola. He was the medieval-age Italian nobleman who raged on behalf of the suppression of vice, inciting his followers to torch examples of wanton idolatry in giant bonfires.

Let me give you a particularly vivid example, when all this came together for me with piercing clarity. I strode into my favorite bookstore one recent Saturday morning just moments after it opened and nodded to the friendly clerk. Then, my gaze caught something else. There, in a featured position near the counter, with large posters around the stacks of books so you couldn’t miss it, was an eye-catching promotion for an impending author visit. The book’s title: How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.

At first I shook my head, stunned by the appalling bad taste of it all. Then, I wondered if my favorite bookstore would remain my favorite for much longer. As I began browsing around the store, though, I experienced what can only be called stages of rising anger. It culminated, five minutes later, in me marching up to the checkout counter like a sputtering male church lady, intent on aggressively registering my complaint.

"How can you have this in a family bookstore?" I asked, wondering what my 14-year-old’s reaction would be to seeing this. You can guess what came next. The clerk got that look on her face that silently indicated, not my department, mister – you’ll need to talk to someone at a higher pay grade. But then she rallied, mustering a telling response. She explained that before the store decided to go through with such a racy display, the staff huddled to consider it, deciding in the end that Cleveland was indeed sophisticated enough to handle it. Perhaps as she intended, that answer took some of the wind from my sails, and I walked away in disgust.

Of course, your kids will react in much the same way to any concerns you may register on their behalf over all this aural and visual pollution. When I wince at the admittedly mild sexual banter in our cherished Seinfeld re-runs (even there!), my teenage sons react with ritualized disgust at my naiveté. Of course, I too would have rolled my eyes at such a thing at their age.

But here’s the good news (he said, trying his best to end on a positive note). In my saner moments, when I really think about it all, I know that perhaps I shouldn’t be so concerned. Twenty-first century kids, mine included, are pretty tough and pretty smart. They’re sophisticated in ways my contemporaries weren’t, but there’s no going back to that relative innocence. And like every generation of kids before them, their parents worry about the effects of various environmental factors impinging upon them. Like all of their predecessors, they’ll probably survive, even thrive in spite of them.

Heck, when I regain my equilibrium, maybe I’ll even have that long-awaited birds-and-bees talk with my sons before they reach the age of majority. Or maybe we can just watch TV together, and I can periodically hit the mute button to expound on a few related themes.

John Ettorre is a Cleveland-based writer and editor who has also worked in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Over a 20-year career, his writing has appeared in more than 70 publications, including the New York Times. His online weblog, Working With Words, can be found at www.workingwithwords.blogspot.com. To reach John, send e-mail to: jettorre@voyager.net or leave a message at (440) 708-2994.