Nov. 19, 2007
I wonder how many people read First Things and watch Two and a Half Men, an abysmal TV show that includes Charlie Sheen.
I read First Things and enjoy its take on religion and the public square. Until last night, I had never seen a full episode of TV show, which is about a recently divorced dad living with his chubby son and his ne'er-do-well brother (Sheen), who is also a womanizer and alcoholic.
But for some reason I sat through one-and-a-half episodes of Two and a Half Men, and it really made me wonder where all of the grown-ups have gone. I am incredibly out of touch, as this show is already in reruns. But the 12-year-old was delivering lines about the alcoholic uncle's girlfriend such as, "I'll bet she's dynamite in the sack" and "Lydia's a stone cold be-atch" to his father's dismay. The housekeeper's priceless line was "I'm glad I stopped coming to work high." I mean, come on.
And then I read in First Things a review of a book called Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families -- about how the escalation in divorce and out-of-wedlock births has affected the working class disproportionately, which I'm sure is true.
The statistics in the article and the TV show's inappropriate relationships between grown-ups and children just underscored for me how far from normal or healthy our culture has fallen.
In the book, author Kay S. Hymowitz says, "For the first time in history -- not just American history but the history of known human society -- people began to toy with the idea that children and marriage were really two discrete life phenomena."
A selfish idea indeed. We have already seen where it leads.
It seems to me that human beings, as creatures, become our worst selves when we refuse to relate to our Creator, who gave us life, the world and a few rules to follow in our own best interest. And in the cult of individuality that is America, it is a badge of honor for people to thumb their noses at any authority but their own. I really don't hold out a lot of hope that that state of affairs will change.
The only hope in Hymowitz' book is that she notes a small trend back to marriage-mindedness and state-at-home motherhood. But that is found only in the middle and upper classes. What about the rest of the children?
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4 comments:
Nice post. You'd be interested in reading Diana West's The Death of the Grownup. The blurring (if not downright erasure) of defining lines between childhood and adulthood is the theme -- this television show, which I've never seen, sounds like a case study straight from the book. Her thesis is that there's a direct between this kind of blurring of distinctions and multicultural "who are we to say that's wrong?"-ism which inclines the apologetic West to capitulate to Islamic jihadism. To me that seems like a bit of a stretch, but then again, it's plausible . . .
Anyway, the tv show sounds deplorable. Most of tv sounds deplorable, actually. It's like Judy Blume took over the world while we weren't looking.
PS -- in First Things, sometime in the near future, you'll read a review of The Death of the Grownup, which will say pretty much what I just said, only longer.
Must renew my subscription to FT. In all the madness of moving, I have let it slide.
Mrs. R
I like Charlie Sheen. People say we look and act alike. The show is funny and entertaining. However, yes there is a however Charlie carries the show. Situation comedies have become so dated and predictable. Catch all eps Two and a half men Download here..
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