David Brooks Uses Foley to Slam Eve Ensler, V-Day!
Wed Oct 04, 2006 at 08:46:26 PM PDT
David Brooks takes a shameless and out of context jab at
The Vagina Monologues in tomorrow's column
"A Tear in Our Fabric". According to Brooks' analogy, what Foley did is the same thing as the character in "The Little Coochie-Snorcher That Could" which tells a story of a young woman surviving horrible abuse and finally having an teen-age affair with a 23 year old who lived in the neighborhood!
I guess abhorring 'moral relativism' means that any differences in the situations are irrelevant, like a 10 year age difference versus and 40 year age difference, and not abusing power. It is shameless hypocrisy!
Brooks is absolutely shameless in his dissembling and omission. He begins:
This is a tale of two predators. The first is a congressman who befriended teenage pages. He sent them cajoling instant messages asking them to describe their sexual habits, so he could get his jollies. The second is a secretary, who invited a 13-year-old girl from her neighborhood into her car and...then she had sex with the girl."
Here's the differences Brooks conveniently leaves out (although he includes tons of details): The "secretary" is 23. Twenty Three!!!! Now Brooks does mention that in earlier versions the girl was 13 instead of the 16 in the later productions. But by ignoring the woman's age (only one year older than Monica, who we are now told was a teenager), he tries to create far more similarities than truly existed between Foley and the secretary.
Second of all--a 23-year-old picking up a 16 year-old on the street doesn't have the kind of power that a congressman has over pages, away from home, living in the dormitory and away from their parents. I'm not saying that it is appropriate for 23 year-olds to pick up 16 year olds, but age does matter, as Brooks had to know or else he wouldn't have left out that detail!
Brooks argues there are 2 moral codes, the one of the play, "expressive individualism" that "code dominated cosmopolitan culture during the 1970's and 1980's," which believes "Sex is not wrong so long as it is done by mutual consent."
And an older code: "Under this older code, we are defined not by our individual choices but by our social roles."
This older code emphasizes not so much individual exploration as social ecology. It's based on the idea that people are primarily shaped by the moral order around them, which is engraved upon their minds via a million events and habits. Individuals are not defined by their lifestyle preferences but by their social functions as parents, job-holders and citizens, and the way they contribute to the shared moral order.
Brooks loves separating people into two groups, all sharing and defined by a common trait: People who drink lattes versus people who love their kids, or some such nonsense. But what he is doing here is negating the details that make a huge difference.
If I were an author of fiction, I wouldn't include "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could." It disturbed me when I oversaw a production and is quite ambiguous. But the point of the Vagina Monologues isn't "if it feels good do it" as Brooks implies. It is that our lives are far more nuanced, confusing, difficult and exhilarating than anyone can easily grasp.
And, contrary to Brooks' assertion, when "everyone roared in approval," it wasn't of the sexual act, but of the woman, hideously abused from a very, very early age learning to find her voice. To turn it around and try to equate it to the Foley affair is repulsive.
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