Lamenting the pornification of the zeitgeist

Not that the zeitgeist’s disdain for our apparently old-fashioned sensibilities wasn’t already obvious. We regularly see open, public vulgarity from presidential candidates of all stripes and see campaign emails, presumably vetted by consultants, full of vulgarities, too. (As a minor example, just as I write this, a message comes across the transom from “J.D. Vance” with the subject line of “It pi**es me off.” What, pray tell, is wrong with “ticks me off?”)

Of course, popular culture has been on a steady, half-century descent into ever-further trashiness. Never, though, did it seem possible that even a relatively “sweet” and non-raunchy popular (streaming) series would feature a rabbi hooking up with a dating-life/sex podcaster and then taking her on an intentionally sex-heavy weekend at a faith-based camp for teenagers. Is that — clergy of any faith openly flaunting cohabitation with non-married others in the company of teenagers — really a thing, really just run-of-the-mill, in our bicoastal enclaves?

From podcasts back to politics, never did some of us think we would see a presidential candidate lift a self-imposed interview moratorium by doing a podcast known not just for dating talk but extremely raunchy sex talk, which is what Vice President Kamala Harris did when appearing on the Call Her Daddy show.

Then again, the mind boggles that a Democratic nominee for a state legislative seat could be exposed for engaging in explicit sex on camera for pay and yet still come within 2% of winning her race and still be able to envision a successful political future. Yet, that happened less than a year ago.

Despite all that, Democrats and their allies have gone even further by now trying to make pornography not just a career killer but instead an absolute asset. [For the rest of this column, some of which is, well, hard to believe, follow this link.]