{"id":1571,"date":"2009-08-10T06:36:15","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T12:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2009-08-10T06:36:39","modified_gmt":"2009-08-10T12:36:39","slug":"easy-moralism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=1571","title":{"rendered":"Easy moralism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two quick things about this op-ed by Ross Douthat<\/a>. First, he has an extremely shallow view of liberalism's moral theory:<\/p>\n

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Don’t laugh. No contemporary figure has done more than Apatow, the 41-year-old auteur of gross-out comedies, to rebrand social conservatism for a younger generation that associates it primarily with priggishness and puritanism. No recent movie has made the case for abortion look as self-evidently awful as “Knocked Up,” Apatow’s 2007 keep-the-baby farce. No movie has made saving — and saving, and saving — your virginity seem as enviable as “The 40-Year Old Virgin,” whose closing segue into connubial bliss played like an infomercial for True Love Waits<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I know, liberalism doesn't have a specific moral theory.  But it does involve moral stuff, etc.  Douthat seems to think it's all about hooking up<\/a>.  Really.  Now having said that, he also doesn't get the joke he just set up:<\/p>\n

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Both “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” were designed to hit this worldview’s sweet spot. There were threads of darkness in both stories, but for the most part they made their moralism look appealing by making it look relatively easy.<\/p>\n

Still a virgin in middle age? Not to worry — you’ll find a caring, foxy woman who’s been waiting her whole life for an awkward, idealistic guy like you. Pregnant from a drunken one-night stand? Good news — the oaf who knocked you up will turn out to be a decent guy, and you’ll be able to keep the baby and<\/span> your career as a rising entertainment-news anchorwoman. Frittering away your life on porn and pot? Fear not — your wasted twenties won’t stop you from being a great dad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seems like that's part of the joke, I mean, the easy moralism–it's fun and funny to watch the stoner try to be a dad, but seriously folks, that's the joke (sorry stoners–no offense). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two quick things about this op-ed by Ross Douthat. First, he has an extremely shallow view of liberalism's moral theory: Don’t laugh. No contemporary figure has done more than Apatow, the 41-year-old auteur of gross-out comedies, to rebrand social conservatism for a younger generation that associates it primarily with priggishness and puritanism. No recent movie … Continue reading Easy moralism<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413,581],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hollow-man","category-ross-douthat-op-ed-writers-sources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}