Dan,
Very interesting about TCM’s audience. When we look at old movies, we are immersed in history. Members of later generations usually do not understand the mores’ of the past and judge by contemporary standards..
Of interest to me this early morning is how differently CNN and MSNBC handled the accusations of Professor Christine Ford against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Unlike MSNBC, CNN’s coverage had spokespersons from the left and right comment on the matter and the female host also raised the question of, even if true, how relevant should it be, since it occurred some thirty years ago and when the judge was a teenager.
I caught hell from my niece a couple of evenings ago when, in response to her damning Kavenaugh for getting a date drunk and then groping her. (which she told me of the matter at the time), I joked that in those days that was called “dating”. I added that it was common at fraternity parties for the girls to have a few drinks which then justified their “making out” or even parting with their virtue. Of course this continues today with binge drinking at colleges.
I was critical of the insertion of Anita Hill’s charges at the last moment at the Thomas’ hearings. Ford is a bit different because she raised the issue, although iin confidence, a couple of months ago. But to my way of thinking, what someone does in high school is pretty much an irrelevancy some thirty years later. Many of us have done things in our teenage years or soon thereafter about which we feel shame and, in some cases, that shame later on tends to make us more circumspect and just.
Another thing that gripes me is that women have no sense of how strong the sexual urge is in men, especially young men. It is part of our genetic makeup, the result of evolutionary necessities to broaden the gene pool. Along with proper reform should come better understanding of the root problem. I can understand why white males vote for Donald Trump. They feel they have been through three decades of male bashing, starting with sit-com comedies that made fathers seem like dunces and more recently expecting men to act like women.
I guess I am just blowing off steam here. My position is not a popular one. But my positions in opposition to the zeitgeist of the day seldom have been.
Robert
