The House Minority Whip's office, in an email tonight, made issue of Sen. Carl Levin's use of the word "shitty" during hearings with Goldman Sachs executives today. "We could maybe understand letting it slip once but 11 times? Even Joltin' Joe Biden must be shaking his head. It's time to clean up-- not only Levin's mouth--but the way Democrats are conducting business in Washington."Back in the 90's, of course, large chunks of the right would really get exercised by trash culture, porn, profanity, and all the rest. I don't agree with censorship but I could understand where they were coming from, and I could sympathize to an extent. I'm not really a fan of trash culture either. But, at some point, conservatism became a prime purveyor of that trash culture, through the angry, profane tirades of people like Bill O'Reilly, not to mention stuff like Kim Kardashian getting a primo interview on Hannity, or John Gibson providing wall-to-wall coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death, etc. I could go on, but I would just like to note that it's interesting that the GOP can't do better for this kind of job than their second-in-command, who likes to send out profane clips to reporters. Clearly someone who sees profanity as a moral wrong, there.
It really is a topsy-turvy world, where the apparent cultural conservatives are the ones who seem to most disdain the respectful, civil society that used to be the American ideal.
