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Seth MacFarlane Ruined Utopia

Wisdom from a disillusioned young idealist, writing in The New Republic: There’s a reason why the sexual revolution didn’t work out in America—it was too much for American men to handle. Embarrassed by their adolescent astonishment, they tried to stay in control by treating sexually enlightened women like lepers. And whenever it seems that forward […]

Wisdom from a disillusioned young idealist, writing in The New Republic:

There’s a reason why the sexual revolution didn’t work out in America—it was too much for American men to handle. Embarrassed by their adolescent astonishment, they tried to stay in control by treating sexually enlightened women like lepers. And whenever it seems that forward progress is being made on this front, some Seth MacFarlane arrives, childishly pointing, and chanting “boobies.” Shut up Seth, you’re ruining it for the rest of us.

To which the reader who sent that link to me adds:

I thought that even folks on the Progressive/Left cultural club thought that the Sexual Revolution has had a pretty good run these last several decades. Is it just my hopelessly pessimistic/culturally traditionalist frame that sees the total devastation of the cultural landscape at the hands of the Sexual Revolution as a near total victory for the forces of “progress” or do my progressive friends see that the job is not quite done…and will never totally be done until there is total annihilation of the traditional sexual ethos?

Exactly right. Paradise is just over the next hill, but first, we have to tear down the last few fences between here and there.

I think of Philip Larkin’s great poem “High Windows.” Excerpt:

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fu**ing her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly.

Read the whole thing. The conclusion is breathtaking in its bleak truthfulness.

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