He's today's daily example, but rest assured there will be another tomorrow

It's time to post about Dan Savage.  I have, in fact thought about posting about him for a few days. I suppose part of my procrastination has to do with wondering whether I have any original insights to contribute, or what angle to take.

Mostly, though, I'm just plain tired of addressing the ubiquitous vulgarity.  Yes, there are aspects of what he's about generally, and what he said at that journalism pow-wow, that are important to deal with.  If one steps back a level in scope, however, the picture that emerges is one of a society so inured to the likes of this being who has dog vomit where his soul ought to be, that it's giving up on embracing dignity , common sense, any notion of tradition, or even the most vague, generalized respect for God's will.

Dan Savage is no more vulgar than Bill Maher, Keith Olberman, Nikki Minaj or the metastasizing plurality of Facebook posters who can't keep expletives and body-function vernacular out of their rantings whether they are overtly political or merely attempts at general humor.

I'm winding up my semester teaching rock and roll history at our local community college.  I've been grading research papers, and, as usual, it's hard not to get depressed.  Throughout the semester, I invite the students to consider the breadth of possible topics - a look at changes in the radio industry over the past seventy years, for instance, or the remarkable racial harmony that characterized the southern soul scen of the 1960s, or the relationship between the Brill Building on the east coast and the pool of studio talent loosely known as the Wrecking Crew on the west coast, or the contributions of a given demographic - say, Italians - to the development of the music.  But, no, with a few exceptions each semester, they routinely go for the ugly stuff - fanzine-type then-their-third-album-came-out-and-went-platinum-and-then-they-had-to-go-to-rehab - junior-high-level reports on the careers of the must cartoonish and spiritually ugly figures from the last 60 years of American culture.  Actually, the last forty-five years.  These kids aren't much interested in anything that transpired prior to the mainstreaming of drugs.  So I have to slog through perfunctory accounts of the rises and falls of the likes of The Doors, or Madonna, or Aerosmith or excrutiatingly arcane parsings of neurotically distinct genres like psychobilly or thrash metal. And, no matter how emphatically I state in the syllabus that I'm not looking for the student's feelings about a musical act, I always have to slog through a couple of paragraphs about how this crud meant so much to them in junior high.

So the Dan Savage outrage is part and parcel of the way American life looks now.  Yes, it's important for some pundits and talk-show hosts to spend some columns or show segments making sure the public understands just what this guy says and does.  The real work we must do, though, is much more basic.  Anyone can start in anywhere at any point in his or her day.  This sewage is all around us.  Today, you and I will be faced with multiple opportunities to decide if we have the courage and energy to take it on.