Once we mocked societies without individuality:


Today, we embrace it. The neutralization of the individual is underway.

I am reminded of this because of Roger Ebert’s review of the new David Fincher movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which Ebert touches on the absurdity of the premise where the main character is born old and dies young. The distraction of such a jarring premise made Ebert give the film a mediocre review. Here is what he said:

As I watched the film, I became consumed by a conviction that this was simply wrong.

Let me paraphrase the oldest story I know: In the beginning, there was nothing, and then God said, “Let there be light.” Everything comes after the beginning, and we all seem to share this awareness of the direction of time’s arrow. There is a famous line by e.e. cummings that might seem to apply to Benjamin Button: and down he forgot as up he grew. But no, it involves the process of forgetting our youth as we grow older.

Yet, there seems to more to the premise than perhaps Ebert has digested. American society, in many instances, has digressed.

Don’t believe me? Just watch these clips of popular seventies sitcom icons Archie Bunker and George Jefferson. What was acceptable for viewing thirty years ago has suddenly become “too insensitive” for today’s audiences. Today, TVLand either avoids these episodes all-together, or censors the offending jargon. Listen to the live studio audience’s reaction to the antics of the main characters — then judge against your own gut instinct as to what “we” are able to endure.

“England is a Fag Country”:


“Lionel’s Wedding”:


Have we outgrown our sensitivities toward racial slurs just as we outgrew our inability to say the word “pregnant” on TV? Or our inability to watch a TV couple sleep in the same bed? Or have we simply outlawed racial slurs by wishing they would go away? And what is the result? Have we toughened up against them, rendering them obsolete? Or have we magnified their offensiveness, yielding them unprecedented power over us?

While the collective “we” are apparently mature enough to watch rape and murder — and listen to an endless barrage of four-letter words that have slowly crept into our television lexicon — we suddenly have lost our stomachs for what Lenny Bruce referred to as “the what is”, preferring instead “the what should be.”

The election of Barack Obama has solidified this trend toward economic Socialism (forced equality of the minority) at the expense of personal freedom and individuality (neutralization of the majority). The current Socialist premise embraced in America today is that minorities are “equal” to the majority of Americans. Equal how? In other words, differences of race, religion, and sexual preference (age has yet to secure a place underneath this sheltering umbrella) are not to be identified, simply ignored (i.e. racial profiling)

Yet, a major question of this core Liberal/Socialist strategy continues to gnaw at me: How are we expected to embrace diversity while at the same time we are forbidden by the politically correct etiquette police from even acknowledging its existence in the first place?

Should I act to embrace the presence of my new African American neighbor? At once I am fulfilling the Socialist agenda of embracing diversity — while, at the same time, I am a racist for acknowledging their physical differences.

Banning of terms — such as George Jefferson’s beloved “whitey,” “honkey,” or “nigger” — does nothing to promote minority acceptance in today’s society. It only promotes an increasingly sensitive society forever doomed to walk on eggshells in each others’ presence out of fear we might say something offensive.

The meek shall truly inherit the Earth.