The Heart Sinks As The Erection Rises

Former Miss Nevada and embodiment of young American womanhood, Katie Rees in red. For uncensored pictures click here.

Iraq, this is what you have been liberated for. So that your young men shall become grinning jackasses and your young women shall become their performing tit-lickers. I can't deny that it's preferable to burqadom, but nonetheless, has the clash of civilizations really come to this? Is the ultimate choice really between mind-destroying tradition and soul-destroying modernity? Have the immortal words of Rammstein, "We're all living in Amerika: coca-cola, wonderbra" really become so pin-point accurate? I'm a torn soul I admit. On the one hand such depravity is undoubtedly a turn-on, on the other: what does this portend for us all? If such a hallowed institution as Miss U.S.A. has become morally bankrupt, what's next? Dancing with the Stars? Say it isn't so!

The epitaph of Western Civilization is perhaps this: the heart sinks as the erection rises. The same preachers who condemn our loss of values are sodomizing gay prostitutes on the weekend. The mind may be conservative but the dick swings liberal. Should we just give up and enjoy the decline as so many Romans did? What does it say about me personally that I find the feud between the almost stereotypically monstrous capitalist Donald Trump and the almost stereotypically monstrous dyke Rosie O'Donnell to be incredibly amusing? That I've been known to read Us Magazine on the toilet? That my first reaction upon hearing of this Miss Nevada controversy was to look for the pictures? I feel less alone because I know most people who read this are going to click on that link for the uncensored pictures, if they read this at all.

Part of me takes the position of Howard Stern, who embraces the farce for what it is. Then again, his veneer of outsiderdom doesn't change the fact that he is a part of the process he mocks. His accomplishment, and it is an accomplishment, is that his program puts into practice what we all know: that celebrities serve the same function as amusing retards. They're a funny diversion on your way to work. If the ugly outsider can make his way inside by showing the pop cultural universe for the freakshow it is, who's to criticize? Yet no matter how much we mock, by doing so we become a part of the process: hatred and love are equally obsessions. The counterculture was never anything other than a breeding ground for new ideas, to make sure the mainstream culture never goes stale. That Che Guevara's face should end up on a $20 shirt is beyond ironic: it's inevitable. There is no escape.

All I can do, on an individual level, is mock what must be mocked while keeping my head above the dirty waters. Blender Magazine used to repeatedly show an infamous picture of Fergie the Black-Eyed Pea peeing on herself at a concert (the stain is visible and obvious). Then, inevitably, they produced a big feature on Fergie in which the peeing incident went unmentioned. The mocker no longer even pretends to be anything other than a booster to the mocked. I've noticed that in music critical circles, genres of abject stupidity like crunk and people with names like Young Jeezy get four-star reviews. Even supposed bastions of snobbery like Pitchfork Media have come to embrace stupid rap, even as they sneer in disdain at stupid rock. Somehow it's okay to make fun of the retro-rock bullshit of Nickelback, but the Ying Yang Twins are the forefront of musical evolution. Stupidity is in, as long as it takes the right form.

I realize this has become a full-fledged rant, and gone wildly off-topic. Yet everything I've mentioned is part of the same stream of cultural discourse postmodernists so love. Yet "deconstruction" is tacit acceptance of the status quo. I find many aspects of postmodernism interesting, but it fundamentally strikes me as an act of surrender. It's a way for intellectuals to find a niche in the culture of stupidity. They'll legitimize the tiniest bit of pop culture fecal matter by writing a fifty-page paper on it. They don't realize what it's like to be young and surrounded by this garbage. I've been to clubs, and I stopped going because they're degrading. Not to women - though they probably are, I just don't care - but to myself. Of course I enjoy seeing two hot girls making out, but I don't enjoy being a superfluous spectator. I refuse to take my place as "that guy" in the photo. Though I will look at the pictures. I'm only human.