“Give me an ever-loving break!” Is that too clichéd? How about, “You’ve got to be kidding?” Worse? “Can you believe these guys?” Better? Mind boggling hypocrisy? That will have to do. I’m talking about the way the press handled the John Edwards deal.
The blockbuster news of John Edwards’ affair on August 8, 2008 created a virtual tsunami in the national press…a “feeding frenzy” they typically call it. Edwards, a former United States Senator from South Carolina and a presidential hopeful early in the ’08 race, broke the story of his extramarital dalliance to reporters after the tabloids sniffed it out and hounded him until he could no longer hide it. The media thoroughly exploited the moral failure, asking campaign workers how they felt in a thousand ways and by analyzing, speculating, examining it until nothing but the dregs were left.
Some questions were predictable: When did this happen? Who was the woman? Why did he lie about it? Did it happen more than once? Did he have a love child? Reporters wanted basic facts about the affair. Other questions, however, were more revealing: How could he continue to run for President of the United States while living a double standard? How could he so deeply disappoint his loyal staff? How could he send his staff out to confront the general public to defend him when he knew they would be speaking falsehoods? How could he make speeches about integrity and family values while he was committing adultery? And the more damaging question of all: How could he do this while his wife was battling cancer? Sounding shocked and disgusted, anchors and media personnel peppered staff members with questions as though they had never heard of such a disgusting and revolting sin before.
Pure as the proverbial wind-driven snow, these people acted as though they fell out of their ivory prayer towers on hearing this news. Did we interrupt them in the midst of their twenty-one day fast, their meditations on the ten commandments and their cloistered saintliness? Did their pious lifestyles suffer some dreadful offense when they learned of the confession? Yeah, you bet. I don’t think so. These are the compadres of the writers, producers and actors of the most debased and degrading programs in the history of the electronic media. To many of them, adultery is on par with squishing a mosquito or telling a white lie. What’s worse is that they speak for a sizable portion of the American society in the twenty first century.
One need look no further than the headline of a LifeSiteNews.com story. Study Finds TV Treats Marital Sex as Burdensome, Adultery as Positive. The article beneath the banner reported on a new story by the Parents Television Council. PTC entitled their study “Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast Television.” Their findings showed that broadcast networks portray sex in marriage as either non-existent or troublesome. At the same time they frequently depict extra-marital or adulterous sexual relationships as positive and acceptable. The report found that instances of verbal reference to non-marital sex were more frequent than sex in the context of marriage by nearly 3 to 1 ratio, and scenes of sex between non-married partners, whether real or implied, outnumbered similar scenes between married couples by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1.
“These study results suggest that many in Hollywood are actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently showing it in a negative manner. Even more troubling than the marginalization of marriage and glorification of non-marital sex on television is TV’s recent obsession with outré sexual expression. Children and teens are now exposed to a host of sexual behaviors that less than a generation ago would have been considered off-limits for broadcast television,” said PTC President Tim Winter.
According to the PTC study, some of the once-taboo-for-TV sexual behaviors that are now found on prime time television include threesomes, partner swapping, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, and sex with prostitutes, in addition to depictions of strippers, references to masturbation, pornography, sex toys, and kinky or fetishistic behaviors.
“Behaviors that were once seen as fringe, immoral, or socially destructive have been given the stamp of approval by the television industry. And recent studies show that children are influenced by those messages. Throughout much of the history of broadcast television, the networks adhered to a voluntary code of conduct which stipulated that respect should be maintained for the sanctity of marriage and the value of the home. Our report finds that not only are the boundaries no longer respected - they have been obliterated,” Winter continued. (See the full study results here: http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/SexonTV/Ma…
John Edwards’ behavior was wrong, sinful and unacceptable. No one who believes in and respects marriage condones his adulterous affair. Anyone who has feelings for the suffering of others cries out in behalf of his wife. At the same time, the media people who seemed to enjoy piling on, have a lot of work to do to make their supposed grievances sound believable. They might start by avowing that they, personally, are totally innocent of similar acts. Second, they might issue an open invitation for anyone to conduct an investigation of any and all employees of news organizations who report on these kinds of things to the general public in order to verify their claims. Third, they should openly admit that their brothers and sisters in the entertainment industry hold views about marriage and faithfulness that are twisted and evil. They should absolutely and unequivocally denounce the depictions of adultery, fornication and any other kind of sexual immorality on television. They should condemn the soap operas on their networks that routinely base their plots on infidelity. They should loudly and publicly criticize their networks for dramas, sitcoms, animated stories, reality TV programs, movies and any other venue in which sex outside of marriage is glorified.
To trash John Edwards and yet excuse the debauched thinking, values and product of present day Hollywood is hypocrisy at its putrid worst.