ROY EDROSO

Tube Boobs

Has TV made you a better or worse person? Have you ever found yourself thinking, "I would not be the man I am today if I hadn't watched that Gomer Pyle marathon in 1998?"

Probably not, but some people have a childlike faith in the life-changing power of the boob tube. I speak, in this case, not of Joan Ganz Cooney, but of former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and National Review columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez.

Bork waxes wrothful at Opinion Journal over the recent Supreme Court ruling on the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act. In his capacity as chief justice of the Right-Wing Shadow Supremes, Bork has previously used Opinion Journal to lay down, or into, the law regarding decisions both actual (Microsoft) and anticipated (gay marriage). But his latest fulminations go beyond mere legal cavils, into the exalted realm of TV criticism.

The real Supremes decided that make-believe kiddie porn is not real kiddie porn, and that the Act overstepped in treating it as such. Bork zips past the constitutional issue ("There is nothing about the First Amendment that requires these results") into a lament for the dear, dead days of Ozzie and Harriet, when no one cursed, on screen or off:

Cable television is saturated with words never before used in public, and the broadcast networks are racing to catch up. The New York Times reports that in 'A Season on the Brink,' the character playing basketball coach Bobby Knight 'drops the F-word 15 times in the first 15 minutes,' and that the characters in 'South Park' used a 'well-known word for excrement 162 times in 30 minutes.' The industry response to criticism on this score is that such words give the programs authenticity because this is the way people talk. In reality, however, the arrow probably points in the other direction. People increasingly talk this way because they hear the words on television...[emphasis added]

One is moved to ask: Where did the real Bobby Knight learn the F word? The White Shadow?

But fear not, Judge; TV can also be used to improve citizens morally. At National Review Online, Lopez writes in defense of The Bachelor, a "reality" based series in which a young hunk, Alex, previews 25 eligible hunkettes before deciding (according to terms drawn up by the ABC legal department) on one to take his legally non-binding ring.

Lopez especially likes the semifinal round of this morganatic fantasy, in which "Alex took the last two girls home to meet his family. There was something so real about it, that it was actually a tad refreshing." She offers as evidence of this refreshing realness the visible discomfort of Alex's parents with the whole, seamy business.

"Marriage doesn't often get an endorsement like it on primetime television," says Lopez, "with young people who claim to want 'true love' and marriage. And they're doing more handholding and talking, too, than jumping in and out of bed to find it...If you were among the 18.2 million Bachelor viewers...I'm not sure you didn't walk away with a decent feeling about marriage."

Having sex, then, is a bad way to find true love, but volunteering for matches arranged by network programming directors is a good way. If, as Lopez concludes, this "might just reflect where many young people are at when it comes to matrimony," then God help matrimony.

Grand Illusion

One would think the advantages of Western civilization are self-evident, at least to readers of Opinion Journal. (Full disclosure: I am part of Western civilization.) But the conservative web site, which mere months ago addressed a perceived shortage of pro-America punditry with its "Wonder Land" column, now finds the need to roll out a regular department devoted to the defense of the West.

"Western Front," the title of which intentionally (but, apparently, not satirically) echoes the title of Remarque's famous anti-war novel, bravely asserts that "whatever its failures, the West is worth defending." Sensing perhaps that this in itself is specious justification for a recurring column, author Brendan Miniter argues that our minds haven't been right about Western civ since the First World War: "It was that war that accelerated Western civilization down into a dangerous pit from which it may now be emerging."

Hold up, you might be saying, what about the Second World War? "World War II didn't restore the West's moral confidence," claims Miniter. "In a way, it seemed only to push it further down into the rift--if the West was capable of such barbarism, then it was morally equivalent to barbarous civilizations."

This is an odd characterization of the postwar West, if the Marshall Plan, and decades of growing American prosperity and power, are considered. But what are these to the corrosive power of intellectuals? "Soon imperialism and 'cultural imperialism' became dirty words," chronicles Miniter. "Somewhere along the way Britain gave up trying to make the world England. Colonial empires disintegrated. In Vietnam a dispirited America gave up the fight against the communists. Western culture was lying down."

In the Miniter vision, this decadence was only checked by the advent of "Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II." Apparently they didn't do a good enough job, though, because now the world cries out for Richard Miniter.

The signal oddity of this column is its wounded, defensive tone. Though "National opinion polls show overwhelming support for the war on terror," and, "In America, apologists for tyranny are laughed off the public stage," and, "Average Americans cheer those who are unabashed in their belief that America is in the right"--despite all these leading indicators that we have indeed got our minds right, or Right, Western civ is portrayed as an embattled, fragile thing that must be constantly validated, like Tinkerbell, lest it perish.

This sense of doubt and doom is shared by the warbloggers, who constantly and at great length remind us of the calumny, not just of our enemies, but also of our insufficiently enthusiastic friends. "Europe's problems with Israel and America can be boiled down to these two attributes: guilt and arrogance. The Europeans, as we all know, are now the backseat drivers of history," snarls Jonah Goldberg, who is instantly and obligingly cited at InstaPundit; by the time this column is published, Goldberg's words will no doubt have resonated throughout the blogosphere. (You may track the troop movements of these online beliggerati at Warblogger Watch).

Clearly these folks feel a duty to spread the word that Europe is one big fifth column (or sixth, as, according to Andrew Sullivan, the fifth column is right here in America), and that only a tiny band of blogbrothers stands between Western civ and perdition.

How odd. The war and President Bush enjoy massive approval ratings. Israel's stateside support also prevails. Yet Miniter and the warbloggers behave as if we're about to be consumed from within and without.

Could it be that they simply lack faith?