You know, i haven’t been following the alito hearings because it’s was always a fait accompli, and dwelling on it just makes my gut twist. Is he qualified? Sure. The problem is that no matter how you wrap it, the bulk of judicial decision-making comes down to interpretation coloured by opinion. And I doubt, from what I’ve read so far, that his opinion has very much in common with mine. Unfortunately, his counts for a helluva lot more.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., declared, “If one is pro-choice in this day and age, in this structure, one can’t vote for Judge Alito. It is simply that simple.”

’nuff said.

Read a very interesting article today on “the pornification of america”, about how omnipresent sexual material has become in our society.

…the porn aesthetic has become so pervasive that it now serves as a kind of sensory wallpaper, something that many people don’t even notice anymore. The free-speech-versus-censorship debates that invariably surround actual pornography do not burn as hot when the underlying principles of porn are filtered more subtly into the mainstream.

whatever one might think of the pervasive sexual overtones and what it does to the the social standing of women, I think it is getting to the point where the backlash is building. I know that sounds a bit naive, but as mentioned above, it’s gotten to the point where sex is becoming background noise. Because of this, I theorise there’s going to be a backlash because sex is losing its effectiveness to sell – and the effectiveness which has, to this point been so thoroughly exploited, is dependent on a) the ability to shock and b) the element of taboo. Both of those angles have been stretched to their breaking point. By saturating the market with sexual messages, advertisers and marketeers are shooting themselves in the foot, when it fails to titilate as it once did. There’s only so far one can take the notion of define one’s actions in direct opposition to something (i.e. if the conservative right is decrying the loss of “family values”, you can only go 180 degrees opposite to that before you run out of room). It’s like those adverts that get your attention through silence – when you become so used to tuning out the loud, brash, in-your-face manipulation, the subtle approach works by appearing in stark contrast. as a ploy, that might work for a while… but not forever.

the article also makes the argument that:

…the ”conservative right, in its eagerness to keep sexuality forbidden, is really just stoking the fire of an appetite for porn, for naughtiness, for the whole lust for sexual transgression.” She maintains that if conservative forces were to ”give up their repressive game where sex is concerned,” the mainstream manifestations of porn will lose their appeal to a lot of people.

The example of the UK would seem to support this. Here there is a healthy dose of realism – t & a are definitely for adult consumption, but theres no shying away from it either. turn on any channel five late movie and what you’re watching is something you could easily rent off the back shelf of the video store. Because there’s no pretense of puritanism to rebel against, there’s much less “risque” material floating around. For the most part, things are not sold using sexually explicit imagery or innuendo. Politicians say very little, in fact, about sex and the media, and feel no need to hang their hat on prudishness.

America needs to drop its facade of innocence – it’s not fooling anyone anyway. The pendulum will have to swing back the other way eventually, and though i doubt we’ll ever go back to the days of long petticoats and white gloves, the people who make their living using sex to sell cars/music/blenders will be forced to be < *gasp*> original.

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