Much Ado About Spring Break

In the very second post of my blog, I speculated that people who are guardians of public morality provide out of the goodness of their heart the social service of exhorting the moral way; and to give the rule transgressors some exemplar so that they can feel more daring than what the action calls for. As a matter of fact, I described them as very much like public servants!

A recent possibility of this type comes from Buffalo State University in olde New York. There, the student newspaper published a special April Fool's satirical paper reporting (falsely, I think) that the University President launched drone strikes against student leaders and that Governor Cuomo banned snack foods. No less than the SGA types took offense; and froze the funds for the student newspaper.

Now, in my opinion, that satire was pretty weak and not particularly believable or offensive. But offensive, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder! A little bit of SGA overkill; but they are almost always a humorless lot.

Recently Elvis posted a posted a video from Fox News in which a panel, led by Todd Stearns, ripped into the university students who went to Panama City Beach for Spring Beach. Kind of an edition of The Spring Breakers without Selena and with a horse's gluteus maximus moralizing on the side.  Anyway, Stearns decried in apocalyptic terms about lack of a moral compass, where are the parents, and other stuff. Why is this poor man channeling Cotton Mather? And then I had an insight: it's the bikini-wearing teens who are providing this news commentator with a service: They provide a convenient occasion for the prudish to spend a whole week visiting P.C.B, and ogling the bodies while waxing moralistic about it all. Plus Fox News has an easy to come by way of filling air space.

Geesh! Is this overkill, or what? Have the Democrats been lazy by failing to provide sufficient material for them to get worked up about? Or are they simply jealous because they have to slave in a hot newsroom while teens frolic on the beach? Is it the old ants vs. grasshoppers theme from the fable? No, I think we all know why they spent so much time. Naughty news commentators! Clean up your act!

Or are you preparing to declare a War on Spring Break©? Just remember: Spring Break is also an all-American event; and the present-day spring break revelers may have grandparents who were spring breakers themselves!