“Sex is Like a Cheeseburger”: The National Sexual Menu

Sex is like a cheeseburger. Today’s X-rated society has reduced sex to the value of a fast food cheeseburger—hot, fast and cheap. Order it any way you like. Readily available any hour—everywhere. Consume as much as you want. Satiating a variety of tastes, it gratifies the appetite—temporarily. In a hurry? Just drive through, pick it up, devour it on the run. Or, take your time, sit down, and savor the experience.

Burger King’s commercial taglines say it best.[1]

• Sometimes You’ve Gotta Break the Rules
• Got the Urge
• Have It Your Way

Sometimes You’ve Gotta Break the Rules: Books, interviews, magazines, and the Internet and the media lay bare the private lives of public figures. Who would have guessed that sex would invade every corner of our lives and become our national obsession? Splashed across screens, sexual imagery bombards our eyes via the Internet, television, and film.

• Look at advertising! Advertising no longer sells a product’s benefits or qualities. Sex, boobs, behinds, and taunt bodies sell products.
• Look at politics! From the first widower in the White House, Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy to William Jefferson Clinton, all played starring roles in our history’s national sexual script. Thomas Jefferson sired two families—two Caucasian daughters with Martha Wayles Jefferson, and seven African-American sons and daughters with his slave, Sally Hemings.[2] Franklin Roosevelt died with his mistress, Lucy Mercer, by his side—not his wife.[3] Win-at-all costs John Kennedy and his admirer Bill Clinton advertised, “I’m a player.” Circulating among eager, adoring women, history records that they indulged their voracious sexual appetites.[4] Wiener, Gingrich, Franken, and list gushes on and on and on.
• Look at religion! Swept under the carpet for years, a media spring cleaning revealed the sexual tastes of priests whose sexual passions devoured vulnerable children. Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and other televangelists’ sexual trysts became media headliners. Lesser-known religious leaders quietly hid their consuming sexual indulgences.
• Look at the stars! The fast-food-hitech-Hollywood sexual menu gorges our eyeballs, brains, and imaginations. Like gluttons, we stalk the headlines and inhale endless video loops of stars skipping from bed to bed and marriage to marriage. From Kim Kardashian’s break-the-Internet, greased backside to Harvey Weinstein, the media’s nonstop fan slings sexual dung across the airwaves.
• Look at sports! From the sports arena to hotel rooms—it’s all about performance. Each decade has its sports superstars who are sexual players. Some famous sports personalities keep score on how many sexual liaisons they have. Earvin (Magic) Johnson’s scorekeeping ended when he contracted HIV from extramarital, unprotected, heterosexual sex with thousands of partners. Media outlets repeatedly feature sports superstars’ legal battles for alleged offenses—ranging from lewd messages to rape. One Dever Bronco player sired nine children with seven different women. Televised appetizer samplers‑a flirtatious pre-game skit on Monday Night Football, a wardrobe malfunction during a Super Bowl halftime show, scantily clad cheerleaders, or beer commercials selling sex appeal‑are gobbled down with hot wings, beer and laughs.
• Look in your neighborhood! Children uncover pornography at a friend’s house or in an apartment dumpster. Sons come across their dads’ porn stash “hidden” under the bed. Children observe their parent hooking up in a darkened bedroom.
• Look at your own family and friends! Whispered gossip reveals all.

Got the Urge: From adultery to porn, people cannot consume enough of today’s sexual menu—and all the hors d’oeuvres and side dishes and main courses it offers. How has a highly sexualized culture affected the choices and sexual health of our children?

Have It Your Way: To some, sexual choices are merely doing what I feel, doing it my way, or focusing on the legalistic aspects of what ‘is’ sex?

The most notorious re-branding of Have It My Way occurred during a Grand Jury investigation. Paraded on national TV, the Baptist, cheeseburger lovin’ President Bill Clinton hyper-focused on the legal definition of the word “is.” If he reinterpreted what sex ‘is’, then Cigar McClinton could avoid admitting, “I engaged in overtly sexual behavior with Monica Lewinsky.”

Clinton’s I’m-not-going-to-admit-to-something-I didn’t-do attitude led to two nationally televised apologies. The first apology affirmed the legal accuracy of his statements. The second apology admitted he “misled the country, the Congress, my friends, [and his] family.”

And what about Monica, and all of Clinton’s other accusers? Attacked as liars, bimbos, narcissistic, and loony toons, the humiliated and demeaned were treated with no more value than a used, tossed Big Mac wrapper.

With Clinton’s reputation at risk, his redefinition of ‘is’ attempted to deceive and to rationalize his behavior that many believed wrong—immoral even. Amazingly, his political charm remained unaffected. An ABC poll revealed: “Two-thirds of Americans surveyed after the broadcast of President Bill Clinton’s grand-jury testimony say he was evasive, and even more don’t buy his narrow definition of sexual relations.” A TIME/CNN poll found that 87% of those questioned said that oral sex was—well, sex.

After publicly humiliating and privately devastating his wife and daughter, most people still didn’t want Clinton removed from office. His ‘talent’ was more important than his ‘character.’ America prospered economically and Clinton ended his presidency with skyrocketing approval ratings—73 percent in late December 1998 when the House voted to impeach him.

Like Clinton and others who call themselves Christians or Republicans or Democrats or sports ‘role models’ or actors or Hollywood producers or comedians, a disconnect exists between their private sexual mores and their public denials and hypocritical-politically correct proclamations of “we respect and defend women.”

Trivializers and deniers of sexual harassment, Clinton’s defenders ‘persisted’: “Clinton’s personal life should not be a public issue.” Really? What say you now? After decades of victims ignored and disparaged by powerful predators, how are the efforts of the culture enablers who rationalized Clinton’s choices and protected him looking so honorable today? Does every accuser who comes forward really have “the right to be believed?” How is it possible that the power persisters allowed these crimes to continue for so long? World War 2 martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

#MeToo

EEOC’s Legal Definition of Sexual Harassment: It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.

Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general.

Both victim and the harasser can be either a woman or a man, and the victim and harasser can be the same sex.

Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).

The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer.

EEOC Facts About Sexual Harassment

[1] Creative Duo Keeps Flipping Ads for Wendy’s Hamburger Chain, Indian Express Newspaper, (Bombay) Ltd. Copyright 1999. The Indian Express Online Media Limited, a division of The Indian Express Group of Newspapers.

[2] Jefferson’s Children, The Story of One American Family, by Shannon Lanier and Jane Feldman, Random House, New York. Copyright 2000. A President in the Family, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson, by Byron W. Woodson, Sr. Praeger, Westport, Connecticut/London. Copyright 2001.

[3] Love, Eleanor, Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends, Joseph P. Lash, Doubleday and Company, Inc, Garden City, New York, Copyright 1982. A First-Class Temperament, The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, Geoffrey C. Ward, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York. Copyright 1989.

[4] Sins of the Father, Joseph Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, Ronald Kessler, Warner Books, New York. Copyright 1996. Jack and Jackie, Portrait of an American Marriage, Christopher Andersen, William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York. Copyright 1996. The Dark Side of Camelot, Seymour M. Hersh, Little Brown and Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London. Copyright 1997. The Clinton Syndrome, The President and the Self-Destructive Nature of Sexual Addiction, Jerome D. Levin, Ph.D., Prima Publishing, Rocklin, CA. Copyright 1998.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on November 17, 2018.