That seems to go hand in glove with my being a (closet) prig.
Most prigs are (for those who remember the TV show M*A*S*H) like the character Maj. Frank Burns: self-righteously moralistic, Burns was a nitwit who always came off as thinking himself superior to everyone else.
My type of priggery is cleverer than that. I pretend to be a Hawkeye Pierce or a Trapper John McIntyre or a B.J. Hunnicutt. Most of the time, for my own benefit as well as for that of others, I play the role of a "regular guy."
But deep down inside, I'm Major Burns.
A prig is not precisely a prude, but prudery is definitely part of the profile. Major Burns was always furtively hooking up with Hot Lips Houlihan, with an emphasis on "furtively." So there's a big component of hypocrisy built into the priggery/prudery profile.
I'm not gay, but in many ways I feel I'm like the evangelical leader Ted Haggard, recently exposed as a homosexual. The things that Haggard criticized (as it turned out, hypocritically) about today's culture are things that the prig/prude in me tends to criticize too.
That said, I do not understand the culture today.
Maybe it's because I'm a prig and a prude masquerading as an up-to-date kind of guy that I feel so out of it. I feel like (sorry to keep bringing up characters from ancient TV history) Mork from Ork.
Mork wasn't a prig or a prude, but he was an extraterrestrial who never could quite get the hang of Earth's more peculiar ways.
I can't quite get the hang of a culture in which just about every kind of behavior is defended by somebody — by plenty of somebodies — with possible exceptions being made for forcible rape and child exploitation or abuse. Yet when a male member of the U.S. Senate is caught in a sting operation tapping his foot for sex in a men's room stall, he has to resign. Isn't that hypocrisy on our parts?
Or is it that Senator Craig got crucified not for his true sexual nature but for his hypocrisy in pretending to be Mr. Straight all this time, and the furtiveness in his manner of satisfying his gay urges? Is our war on hypocrisy the thing Mork from Ork most needs to understand about today's culture? If so, perhaps there is only one sin left. It is being what I seem to have become: inauthentic.
If that's anywhere close to being correct, then the keynote of the cultural change that has taken place over the course of my 60-years-and-counting of life would seem to be this war on inauthenticity.
Sure, we've seen many other important trends, including the items on this list:
- the growth of sexual freedom
- women's liberation
- gay liberation
- the civil-rights revolution
- the opening up of higher education to the masses
- a historically unprecedented high standard of living
- a teen-friendly mass culture
- an atrophied public or civic religiosity
The list could go on, with many more items. But maybe they are all trumped by — or allies of — the war on inauthenticity and hypocrisy.
I'd better qualify the last list item. When I say that "public or civic religiosity" has dwindled, I don't mean that most Americans aren't religious. I mean that religion has become strictly a private matter. It's no longer allowed in the "public square," except for occasional glints such as when politicians end speeches with "God bless the United States of America" — and even then, atheists howl.
But notice the irony. What people do in the privacy of their bedrooms, even (or especially) if it's kinky, is OK to talk about on Jerry Springer, but if it's pious and prayerful, we need to hush it up. Would Mork from Ork even begin to have a clue about that?
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