the cringing of america

I wrote a little post on FaceBreaker the other day:

I hate when people use the term American Values, as if the many millions of us, spread over thousands of miles, all share the same exact ones. Its like they're trying to sound stupid on purpose.

What does that even mean? American Values? I've never really seen it defined. It's like I missed a class in grad school or something.

But morality, the American kind in particular, is something I think about, writing inappropriate stuff as I do. People ask me what QUENCHED is about and I have to make a judgment: do I say it's a vampire stalking horror story? Or do I say it's inappropriate? Or do I say "You'll love it. Lots of hothothot sex. Threesomes, even."

Then the publishing world suddenly went all apropo on my ass when I read a report I found about a morals clause in Harper Collins contracts.

When I first read the clause, I really started thinking about morality, like being decent to people, being brave and upright and true. Defend the weak and lift up the helpless. You know. Knight-like. Moral.

But the writer of the article about it instantly leaped to sex. And I think it was a fair leap. Sex (or, well, the lack thereof) seems to define morality in the US. She mentions a Harper Collins bestseller which goes into anal sex:

Toni Bentley is a former ballerina who published a memoir entitled The Surrender. It happens that what she surrendered to was the bliss of anal sex.”My ass,” she rhapsodized, “is my very own back door to heaven.”  

Apparently it was the anal sex that pushed the book into Big Sale territory. Hmm. Cuz anal sex is so rare? Cuz the writing was so grand? (Rhapsodized, indeed. I've seen better descriptions on bad porn websites.) Cuz no one ever talks about it, much less films it?

Um, yeah. Not. All you have to do is google (NSFW) and you can see a whole bunch of backdoor jollies. About 5,150,000 results [in] 0.25 seconds, actually. Go google. Go anal sex.

You might not be aware, gentle reader, but can do similar googles with equal or better results with all sorts of sex. Immoral acts, all, if the American psyche is to be believed.

People like to call us puritans. I guess when common vernacular refers to sex as "dirty", we are. A bit. Except we're not. At least most of the folks I know aren't. Lots of us do lots of stuff in the bedroom. And, get this, we're still nice people, most of us. And this is what drives me crazy, being associated with a reputation that does not describe me. You know, the American Values kind of reputation. Mostly because I fail to understand why something that makes so many people smile so frowned upon.