Word: adult
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...Psychologists say that we spend most of our adult life refighting the unresolved battles of our childhood. So it is with this election. And ergo the fund-raiser concerts. Unlike 1992 and 1996, when baby boomer Clinton faced off against WWII veterans Bush Sr. and Dole, this election pits two kids of the '60s generation against each other. And their political differences are just a reflection of the cultural civil war of that...
...Federal Trade Commission tells us, pop-culture moguls are peddling "adult" entertainment to kids. To borrow a cogent phrase from today's youth: Well, duh. People who are shocked (shocked!) must also be members of the Flat Earth Society. They haven't heard of a little movement called capitalism...
...attitude is one of crudeness, cynicism and sass. Since these attitudes are endemic to pop culture, kids are likely to learn from them. And unaccustomed (and uncomfortable) as I am agreeing with politicians, especially when they are in righteous find-a-scapegoat campaign mode, I'm annoyed that this "adult" culture is aimed at the young - both because kids need a few years to be kids, without being burdened by having to understand the punch line of every dirty joke, and also because this culture debases the true definition of the phrase "adult entertainment...
...will find Eminem's lyrics in college poetry texts, and museum exhibitions on The Art of Doom. But for now, and from this crabby perspective, it looks like junk. Junk passing as bold popular art. Violent entertainment, from WWF to Howard Stern to the sleazier rap music, is not adult. It is, essentially, infantile - the expression of a caterwauling baby whose main pleasures are breaking things and playing with his caca. And the child of the '50s that still lives inside me wonders whether I would have been as eager to devour the scraps of this culture...
...Once upon a time, in the late '60s and early '70s, there was something that deserved the term adult entertainment. It delved responsibly into mature themes for a wide, grown-up audience. "Midnight Cowboy," which won the Oscar as best picture of 1969, was rated X; if you weren't at least 18, you couldn't see it. Same with such excellent films as "Medium Cool" and "The Devils." I don't remember mass complaints that kids couldn't see these movies. The idea then was that some things - intelligent films and, for that matter, the profits that came from...