The frog in the water

If you take a frog and drop it into boiling water, it will jump out. But, if you take the same frog and stick him in tepid water and slowly heat the water to a boil, he will boil to death. Because the water temperature slowly rises he is unable to detect the danger that is about to take his life. I have heard that story many times over the years as an analogy for our culture. It has been used to illustrate the entertainment industry (movies, records, television etc.).

I remember the uproar when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Older people were appalled at their haircuts, (remember the Beatle cuts) which were nothing more than long bangs. If you watch that appearance in 1964 it will probably strike you as somewhat harmless, even laughable. Yeah they had shaggy hair, but they weren’t lasciviously moving their hips like Elvis. Yet the girls were screaming, fainting and swooning. But, there was a small seed of something there that began to grow incrementally over time; the seed of rebellion. Their haircuts represented a sharp departure from crew cuts or neat and trim cuts favored by the older generation. But, I guess Elvis also broke that taboo. There was something growing slowly that would over time strip away every moral restriction in our society.

Next would come the Rolling Stones with their provocative hit “Let’s Spend The Night Together” (changed to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” for their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show). Then (back to the frog analogy), the heat continued to rise with The Doors getting their Mojo Rising and the Beatles began to heat up with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ (LSD). Illicit sex and drugs stewed in the mix of the music that carried the rallying cry “sex, drugs and rock and roll”. The heat continued to rise over the years as MTV displayed graphic sexual imagery to compliment the songs. And this year there was a hit song by Kate Perry “I kissed a girl”, which has fueled a surge in homosexual experimentation in our youth.

Looking back to 1964 the change in moral values in our culture (fueled by the entertainment industry) is very radical, yet over time the change was almost imperceptible. Imagine in 1964 if the Governor of any state in the union appeared on TV and declared that prohibiting same sex marriage was akin to racial discrimination and that those that want to prohibit homosexual couples from marrying are bigots. Governor David Paterson of New York did just that this week. The interesting thing is that many, if not a majority of Americans agree with him. Do you think the folks back in 1964 would have been ready to accept homosexual marriage? I think our frog is just about cooked.