The Church Lady Pitches A Fit Over Trump's Libido
West World is the latest offering from HBO as the cable channel looks for its first bonafide hit since Game Of Thrones. It’s a take-off on the 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name about a park where people can live their fantasies amongst androids. The fantasies range from benign play acting to sexual and violent indulgences. The things that are done to the androids are forgotten. The bots wake up the next day— hello Groundhog Day— with no memory of events.
Eventually— who could see this coming?— the androids develop memories and feelings. Like most HBO dramas it has big stars— Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Thandie Newton. Explicit violence and graphic sex are also laid on in industrial levels. This signature of HBO production values has now reached self parody (https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1m4hx6/its_not_porn_its_hbo/). The profanity, too, has becoming an issue for the network since its Deadwood series (https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1m4hx6/its_not_porn_its_hbo/).
If HBO is chastened you won’t notice in West World. The F word is liberally applied by almost everyone except Hopkins, who knows that one curse is powerful, 100 curses are a bore. But, because HBO is one of the talismans of the progressive sensibility, all the fucking-this and fucking-each-other is considered high art.
Likewise the graphic sex and relentless nudity (Newton’s private bits got a full airing this past Sunday) are evidence of an artistic temperament. Grownups can handle all this, because hey, that’s real life. Or what passes for real life inside HBO’s urban hipster bubble.
As author Heather Macdonald writes in City Journal ( http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/09/heather-macdonald-left-freaks-out-over-trumps-tape-but-loves-culturally-lewd-behavior.html) this promiscuity and cursing have been the left’s approved chic since Woodstock. Free love and and all that. The left’s tolerance of highly sexualized dance routines from Beyoncé— to say nothing of pedophile director Roman Polanski— shows its broad-mindedness.
Not everyone can apply, however. Only “feminist” men can properly assimilate the HBO’s highly sexualized messages or the river of provocative fashion washing over society. Or accept the gender-bending promoted by those who wish to destroy the binary notion of man/ woman. (SNL’s News Update segment is a handy crib sheet for those keeping score on just how recidivist they are.)
In his cultural “leadership” role, the president of the United States and his wife— who regularly lecture Americans about decency and values— have honoured Beyoncé and various rap artists at the White House for cultural contributions like this (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/watch-beyonces-surprise-new-video-formation-20160206) or this homage to cop killing by Ice T (http://www.songlyrics.com/ice-t/cop-killer-lyrics/) Long gone are the days of lapping up the sermons of Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright.
The president uses his lofty perch of cultural compassion to flay those out of the loop in Flyover America about the rules of engagement in contemporary society. On issues from illegal immigration to the non-existent campus rape crisis to gun ownership, they are told that if they could just assimilate HBO’s nudity, violence and profanity they might be allowed to keep a tiny place of America’s cultural tapestry, next to the Amish or people who still have home-phone service.
All of which makes the left’s fainting spells over Donald Trump’s sex life almost quaint. The liberal left, which laughed off Bill Clinton’s hound-dog sexual predation as a minor character flaw, is now in a Church Lady snit over Trump’s suggestive remarks about Arianne Zucker’s legs and purple dress and his in-your-face libido. The kind of playboy approach endorsed for decades by that old Democratic Party stalwart Hugh Hefner.
Anyone who’d heard Trump on Howard Stern for the past 30 years had a clue that the NYC businessman was something less than a finished emotional product. But progressives like Robert DeNiro and Brad Pitt are shocked— shocked!— to hear him privately musing about the sexual perks of power (which neither man has ever exploited himself).
It is to laugh at the tortured logic of the groovy people playing Cultural Twister when Hillary Clinton goes on The Ellen Show. The liberated feminist woman— who gets her approved sexual thrills via HBO— turns into the minister’s wife when a down-market dude expresses a sexual response to her.
They’re aghast that men use their positions to attract women (guess they’ve never been to a hotel lobby when “all the single ladies” stalk an NBA team). This entitlement, notes Heather Macdonald, can be summed up as women “should be equal to men in all things, and then still demand a chivalric deference to female’s delicate sensibilities”.
It’s likely that the uproar on MSNBC and CNN about Trump’s sexual mores has ended his hopes at the presidency. Playing the two-sided card was a kill shot. How you feel about that depends on what you think of Hillary Clinton’s encryption strategy till 2020.
But if Trump is not going to be elected president, this election has proven that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be in the White House either. Her administration will be a prolonged drama as a GOP Congress hounds her every step over the flood of revelations from WikiLeaks and Freedom of Information. Maybe, HBO can even make a show about that. Lord knows they need another hit.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is host of The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on anticanetwork.com. His career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity with successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of seven books. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013).