Trashtalk and Trash Behavior

Recently two fortyish Republican Representatives from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace, held a public “bad girls” dispute over—something.

By Moe White –

It was laughable, sad, clownish, and execrable, depending on one’s point of view and political persuasion. But it’s also more than that: it’s the culmination of four decades of diminished standards and increased acceptance of behavior that, in the past, was unacceptable in what was then known as “polite society.”

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, every parent I knew, Black and White, admonished their children about behavior and language. There were words that were not said out loud, and actions not taken—or seriously apologized for—in order to maintain comfortable relations between neighbors, family, friends, and even strangers. Children in neighborhoods knew they couldn’t get away with anything they shouldn’t be doing: if adult neighbors didn’t stop them outright, they were sure to let the kids’ parents know of their transgressions.

There were excesses, of course. The refusal by the producers of I Love Lucy to use the word “pregnant” when Lucy was pregnant, and the fact that twin beds were in the Ricardos’ bedroom, was absurd even in the 1950s. Post-war censorship of American life by anti-communists, puritans, the Hayes office, even the civil trials over selling James Joyce’s Ulysses, were not just overboard, they were anathema to the realities of adult life—and to the First Amendment.

Even in the 1980s, when I worked in the headquarters of a major television network, the Broadcast Standards department vetted everything that was broadcast. A seven-second delay button was used to keep profanity off the air, and pre-taped shows were checked as well. Even advertising was subject to review: drug advertising was not allowed except in narrow circumstances (aspirin, analgesics, cold medicines, etc.), and any claims that were made for any product had to be backed up by documented research before commercials could appear.

But since the 1990s, public discourse has been demeaned: gutter talk has become the norm, and the more outrageous a lie is, the more widely and eagerly it’s spread. The “seven little words” that Lenny Bruce could not say are now common on network and cable television and radio; and revolting, obscene talk from the highest government officials, including a former president (“s***hole countries” and “grab ’em by the …”) is not ignored, or even tolerated, but applauded—usually by people who call themselves moral, Christian patriots. Along with their once and future king, they seem to be the shock troops in the debasement of society and its culture of decency.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m no prude. I was part of the gay scene in New York City in the wild 1970s and 1980s, so I’m no stranger to the curse words, expressions of anger, obscenities, and the rest of what we used to call low-life. The difference is that throughout my lifetime, those words and behaviors were not used in “polite society.” Watching a football game with a bunch of buddies, or in a moment of anger at a bad driver cutting you off, or even as school-aged kids trying out “dirty words” to sound sophisticated, maybe—but not in school, or at the office or grocery stores; not on television shows, and not in the halls of Congress.

But since sometime in the 1990s, once-frowned-upon language and behavior have become acceptable to a larger and larger swath of the public. Even those self-styled “Christian” and evangelical movements that pretend to moralistic absolutism support political candidates who exhibit the least Christian, most obscene (and often illegal) behavior.

Think of the current culture just in terms of television programming. Back in the 1980s one of the cheesiest British imports, Cockney-born Robin Leech, had a successful US TV show in which he exalted a sort of no-holds-barred, over-the-top spending: no matter what the item, if it was expensive and gaudy, it was good. That was paralleled by the Donald & Ivana Trump lifestyle in New York: it didn’t matter that nobody with taste, class, or cultural background would have anything to do with the Trumps or their ilk. What mattered was that they had loads of money and flaunted it in the most tasteless way (gold-plated toilets?!? Give me a break!).

In 1994, Bad Girls, a movie about a group of former prostitutes engaging in what was basically a crime spree, came out. The next year, O.J. Simpson engaged in a real-life crime spree, leading police on a live-action, made-for-television low-speed highway chase. His lawyer during his 1995 trial was a defense attorney named Robert Kardashian, who parlayed his newfound fame into celebrity status. One of his daughters, Kim, took her own scandalous 2002 sex tape and brazenly—with the help of her father, mother, and sisters—turned a sex scandal into a lucrative “lifestyle” show, 2007’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians—as though this trashy, nouveau riche, tasteless clan were supposed to be something aspired to by the rest of America.

Think about the other trashy people who are supposedly either warnings—or perhaps role models—to many Americans. the Real Housewives of Orange County and everywhere else; the Duck Dynasty Louisiana swamp family; Mama June the drug abuser and her unfortunate daughter “Honey Boo Boo,” who first came to fame on the show Toddlers and Tiaras; the real-life toddler in a tiara, Jon-Benet Ramsey, who was murdered in 1996; the real-life figure-skating wannabe Tonya Harding who had her boyfriend kneecap her primary competitor … and, more recently, Diamond and Silk, two know-nothing “celebrities” who decided their best claim to fame would be as Black female supporters of the misogynistic white supremacist himself, Donald “Guttermouth” Trump.

Think of Kanye West sending his “publicity” person to threaten a Black Democratic election observer in Georgia, and then following through with the threats to the extent that she had to have police guard her home. Because Kanye—now “Ye”—the billionaire wants to hip-hop around with the racist Trump and other Republicans.

So when the people of Georgia elect someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, they want her to be as trashy, low-class, ignorant, and fundamentally as stupid as possible … and as they are. (The same with Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and, of course, our own Madison Cawthorn.) And ideally for them, someone like Taylor Greene getting into a Bad Girls bitch-slap fight with her fellow Congresswoman, Nancy Mace, is better than “reality television”: but unlike reality TV, it’s actually real.

And sad. Sad for them, for their constituents, for the Congress, for the American polity, and for our future as a nation.

Maybe Santa Claus will deliver some class this Christmas. We sure could use it.