I'm just gonna say it: "liberal media" is a myth.

Has TV sex become too graphic?
x Yes, it's offensive
x No, I can always change the channel

OK, firstly, yes, AOL sucks. And that's from whence the above survey came.

But honestly. Are these our only options? "Yes, sex offends me," or "no, sex doesn't offend me but because I can get away from it?" Some choice, eh? What kinda nutsoid puritan writes stuff in which the idea that someone might actually want to watch sex on TV is wholly absent? And tonight, they're airing the 11th episode of Dateline's To Catch a Predator, which I have already railed against a-plenty. This deep-down cultural anxiety about sexuality really annoys this piss out of me, of course. Fair readers, you might have taken note of this.

And so here, I try out a new term: sex-negativism. This is a term that is complicatedly entangled with a conservative mindset -- and pervades American news media. Easton and Liszt (The Ethical Slut, again) define the term as a concept comprised of the following notions: "Sex is dangerous. Sexual desire is wrong. Female sexuality is destructive and evil. Male sexuality is predatory and uncontrollable. It is the task of every civilized human being to confine sexuality within very narrow limits. Sex is the work of the devil. God hates sex." I personally find every one of those notions to be pretty scary in and of themselves.

But this thing where the media is shaping our thinking by outlining our very choices in such a reductive and limiting manner seems like a real problem. In the teases for that Dateline bullshit, The Today Show people don't even stop to question the atrociousness of all that vigilante-ism and entrapment (and, yes, I know The Today Show is yet another suspect media outlet... but I like the weather reports in the morning! A curly-headed girl's gotta prepare.) And how is this not all symptomatic of a repressive and retrogressive conservative media? And why do I feel like the prudishness is escalating?

Sooner or later, I'm going to have to write a longer blog about all the ways in which mainstream news outlets are shaping the cultural mindset in increasingly limited ways--and how that's fundamentally conservative, not liberal, not even remotely. For now however, I'm gonna have to limit my fury towards that dumbass AOL survey. And it seems like SUCH a justified fury, seeing that an awful lot of very mainstream folks get their news from sources like AOL and The Today Show.

I'll save that other post for another evening when I'm feeling more inspired than incredulous.