Americans Need To Get Over Their Hangup About The Human Body

8:05 pm EST April 23rd, 2007 | Politics | 9 Comments

So the Hartford Courant runs a picture about the Virginia Tech massacre, and readers write in to the ombudsman… complaining about the possibility that the man’s genitals were exposed?

Come on. Give me a break. This is the same Victorian-era bull that says that naked flesh in popular culture is cause for an “R” rating, but a guy can pump another man’s chest full of lead and get a PG-13. It’s beyond crazy that we’re so puritanical that we’d rather see graphic violence over mild nudity, when nudity is a basic human condition while violence is an aberration.

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9 Responses to “Americans Need To Get Over Their Hangup About The Human Body”

  1. Wilbur says:
    April 23, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    Best part about that story is that the guy’s jewels weren’t actually showing in the picture.

    It was a tourniquet, but to some sick puppies EEK! It’s penis-shaped!

  2. mambochicken23 says:
    April 23, 2007 at 9:13 pm

    Nice post, Ollie.

  3. WhiteWhale says:
    April 23, 2007 at 9:17 pm

    I concur. Violence= Good, Sex= Bad. We have more perverse sexual crimes than most of the world and yet some jackoff thinks that seeing a nude *dead* man may be unpure or spread sexual deviancy. As the Joker once said “this country needs an enima!”

  4. Xanthippas says:
    April 23, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Thank you for writing about this. Our acceptance of violence is obscene. The incidental showing of genitalia is not. That we get it entirely backwards is not a good sign for our country.

  5. SpiderJ says:
    April 24, 2007 at 10:20 am

    Whale – If I may, the Joker was not so bold; he simply said that Gotham City (“This town”) needs an enema.

    I suspect that the same people who get all huffy about even accidental nudity fail to realize that they’re but a stone’s throw–wordplay intended–from demanding burqas and veils on the women.

  6. Duros62 says:
    April 24, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    From the link;

    an Betty, photo director at the Roanoke Times, said his paper’s readers also questioned the photograph.

    “We checked it out, checked it out, and checked it out again because we got that same question. What you see sticking up on his lap is a tourniquet. Unfortunately, the picture is fuzzy enough that it raised the question. … We appreciate that people want to know and care that we showed respect and decency for the young man. They should also know that he is doing fine and has the picture hanging up on his wall.”

    I didn’t see the picture, but does it sound like some these readers thought this guy had a chubby at the time? “Sticking up in his lap”?
    I agree with OW. Come on people, get a clue.

  7. WhiteWhale says:
    April 24, 2007 at 2:55 pm

    Spider J,
    Yeah, I know but I got to believe Joker would respond in kind.

  8. fd10801 says:
    April 24, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Right, Xanthippas!

    More genitals, less violence!

    Heh

  9. Daryl McCullough says:
    April 25, 2007 at 11:18 am

    Oliver,

    My brother said this about sex versus violence in movies (his daughter was 12 at the time): He feels fairly confident that she won’t try to emulate a movie character who shoots people with a machine gun, but he has less confidence that she won’t try to emulate the sex that she sees.