Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

A Program I Will Never See....

As I've pointed out before, in the Omniculture, everything happens. A particularly vivid current proof of that is the Fuse Network television program Pants-Off Dance-Off, "the only naked dancing game show on television," as Fuse describes it. The content is exactly what you might expect, given the title: "ordinary" people strip off their clothes, to the accompaniment of rock music, before the hungry cameras of an obscure music video channel. The participants are nonprofessional, and their naughty bits are tastefully covered with video "towels" when the ecdysiasm is complete

The venture doesn't sound particularly constructive or even interesting, but the reality is that whatever one might choose to put on TV or the net, somebody will watch. Of course, a good sophist could make the case that a program like Pants-Off Dance-Off does good by breaking down unfair socially constructed ideas of beauty, but a good sophist can make a case for anything. The fact remains that in the Omniculture, everything is permitted, but not everything is good.

From Karnick on Culture.

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