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Friday, March 10, 2006
John Profumo, RIP Nonetheless the public reaction in Britain is likely to maintain the posture suggested here at the Telegraph, where one typical reader reflects: In modern times this would not even be frowned upon. Christine Keeler was a wonderfully attractive lady and no one in their right mind would kick her out of bed for eating crisps. Whereas in the United States Clinton can never be absolved in quite the same manner. The irreducible difficulty involved in forgiving the world's most powerful man for indulging in physically mediocre and low-budget sex with a physically mediocre and low-budget girl is thrown into sharp contrast with the Profumo affair. Why on earth, if Clinton felt the adulterous compulsion, did he not cast his net a bit farther afield? And this is the window upon the particularly base and pathetic nature of the Clintonian personality -- the sexual laziness, the smug entitlement too self-satisfied to really strain for its conquests, the doing-because-he-could. At least Profumo had the earnest abandon to risk the total sacrifice of station and propriety for turbocharged titillation: showgirls! Socialites! Two-way mirrors and three-way spies.... And in perfect British equipoise Profumo kept mum after he brought down the government -- completing the mirror image of the Lewinsky scandal, in which the tawdry and ultimately boring and cheap inciting event languished luridly and self-consciously in the press for what seemed like ages. In America the public confession is an athletic art form, as contrite and humble as interpretive dance. Meanwhile however we hurtle toward a tawdriness of ever-more-Lewinksian proportions. The elevation of good taste in attractive women to the criterion of absolution can only by nature dumb down; if the original male weakness is made a staple of our sense of the natural then the weak judgment of beauty will come right along with it. Really who is a man to deprive a girl of himself? The Hollywood vanguard takes the questioning to its natural conclusions -- no party is complete without a midget. In the free world of constant change, even uninterrupted beauty eventually becomes a bore. Look at poor Hugh Grant, who managed to fuse British and American perversity in a single act. Profumo entitled himself to the fleshly urges at a time when upper-class style, discretion, and public embarassment were just going out of fashion. If the right to pleasure is, after all, the postmodern translation of the pursuit of happiness, then our sex-with-the-lights-on society is destined at the same time for the great Lights Out, where we all look the same in the dark of decadent physical democracy. James G. Poulos is the Postmodern Conservative. Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by James G. Poulos at 10:39 AM |
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