16-year-old Miley Cyrus and pole dancing...

[Mental]

http://www.billboard.com/news/miley-cyr ... 2733.story

The only thing I want to know about this all is, what the HELL is wrong with Billy Ray? Stop building your dream house and raise your kid right!

[Eric]

Monthsbehind?

[Kupek]

Better yet, why care?

[Eric]

Better yet, why care?

Well played sir.

[Mental]

'Cause, I don't think it's good that she sets such a trashy example for other kids. Call me a prude, but pole dancing definitely belongs in the "18 and older" set for me.

[Eric]

You prude, these kids need to learn how to pole dance at a young age, that way when they are 18 and older they know what they're doing.

Sheesh.

[RentCavalier]

You prude, these kids need to learn how to pole dance at a young age, that way when they are 18 and older they know what they're doing.

Sheesh.

Wisdom.

[Mental]

I need to go wander vaguely around my room and think about that for awhile.

[Julius Seeker]

The way I see it, if a 16 year old is old enough to drive, rent, and work; then they're old enough to have good fun.

[Mental]

The phrase "Brave New World" keeps coming to mind.

[Zeus]

Better yet, why care?

Perhaps as a commentary on the ever-degrading morals in our society that he may believe leads to a lot of other issues and problems that need to be addressed. Grass-roots discussions like this is simply a method of hopefully starting to just maybe bring change into the equation

[Mental]

Look, Miley can do whatever she wants. But the Teen Choice Awards? It's like, if I actually believed the "hooker with a heart of gold" myth, I'd be more tolerant. But the two strip clubs I've been to (both ill-advised excursions encouraged by friends) were tawdry, fucked up places. I'm not sure our teenage girls shouldn't be aiming higher than the pole, TBH.

Has anyone heard Chris Rock's routine about his daughter and all this stuff? How his one objective as a father is "to keep my baby off the pole?" I'm with Chris on this one.

[Mental]

Actually, let me rephrase the wording on that one: I am very very very sure that our teenage girls ought to be aiming higher than the pole.

[Mental]

It's one thing for 40-year-old housewives to take "pole dancing classes" to try to reconnect with their sexuality, or whatever the explanation was I heard for that one, though I am somewhat of the opinion that if at forty you need to hop on a stripper pole to get your husband to notice you, maybe you don't need a stripper pole, maybe you need a new husband. But this girl is still a kid. I'm picturing a Britney-style flameout and decline, or worried about one. One time having to watch all that crap was enough.

If you had told me when I was a teenager that not only would I someday see a picture of Britney's junk, but that it would also be a horrid and degrading experience for everyone who had to endure the tabloid media blitz around it, I would have called you crazy. But, it indeed happened, and there you go. If I have to watch Miley flashing her poon around town at some point I'm gonna go nuts and move to the damn woods.

[Kupek]

How do we go from a girl dancing next to a pole (yes, next to a pole, nothing but her hands ever touch it, watch the video) to the complete degradation of society? This is like discourse on Fox News.

Mental, if you don't want to watch her potential flameout, then don't. This is celebrity gossip. Don't fool yourself that you're paying attention because it matters. You're paying attention because it feeds the desire we all have to gossip.

This does not matter, and the only value in paying attention is for your own entertainment.

[Shrinweck]

There is also a very large difference between a somewhat scantily clothed millionaire teenager dancing next to a pole and a naked adult getting paid $20 to grind on a middle aged guys crotch.

[Zeus]

How do we go from a girl dancing next to a pole (yes, next to a pole, nothing but her hands ever touch it, watch the video) to the complete degradation of society? This is like discourse on Fox News.

Simple: it leads to the question of "should she be allowed to do this without backlash"? 20 years ago, if a 16 year old even hinted at anything remotely related to stripping, striptease, etc, there would have been an enormous outcry. Now, people just shrug it off and say "whatever, she has a father who's her manager, she can do what she wants".

So, is that appropriate?

And a Fox News correlation? Please. These types of topics used to be the core of Rum and a lot of our discussions. Now they're taboo because they require some level of discussion beyond one-line responses that may possible lead to some level or argument?

[Shrinweck]

That debate also leads us around to the European versus United States debate (not even really a debate) issue of what's more important to censure? Is it sexual ideas or violence? Honestly I imagine the violence desensitizes more negatively than sex. Nonetheless it's fucking ridiculous that we take more offense to a nipple than people having their brains blown out by a gun.

But it's even more silly that Fox has risen to the level where it isn't even silly any more to bring it up in an argument. Liberal vs Conservative media biases aside, Fox has just risen to the level of being ludicrous. To this day it honestly angers me (and not much really does any more) that CNN has had to sink to their level in Headline News to maintain some manner of positive ratings. At this point Fox and CNN Headline News are nearly impossible to differentiate from each other. CNN wasn't even that great to begin with... It's fucking pathetic that that's the point that we have to hold it up with. Argh. ARGH. ARRGH?

[Mental]

How do we go from a girl dancing next to a pole (yes, next to a pole, nothing but her hands ever touch it, watch the video) to the complete degradation of society? This is like discourse on Fox News.

Mental, if you don't want to watch her potential flameout, then don't. This is celebrity gossip. Don't fool yourself that you're paying attention because it matters. You're paying attention because it feeds the desire we all have to gossip.

This does not matter, and the only value in paying attention is for your own entertainment.

Who said "complete degradation of society"? Kup, I'm disappointed in you. You're supposed to be too smart to put words in people's mouths.

I really don't care much about whether or not you think I ought to be talking about this. I have a TREMENDOUS amount of respect for you, but you have a personality that is in some ways very regimented, and opposed to talking about certain things. This is what I choose to discuss here today. In fact, I *don't* pay attention to it all on my own lights - but I'm living with my moms right now, and she buys the tabloids. Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen eating, I glance through them. I could care less if Miley and Billy both flame out in some kind of spectacular way at some point - I'll take or make odds on that, actually - but it hurt me to see what Britney was going through.

We have no good female rappers left in hip hop anymore. You know why? Because a good deal of rappers would rather see women on the pole than as any kind of capable people in their own right or even worse as a threat to their sales figures or egos. Now, I know attitudes change, and that's all fine. We certainly teach enough women to be ashamed of their own sexualities in this country that perhaps SOMETHING can be good about women being sexual openly.

But a sixteen-year-old girl on a stripper pole on national TV? BEING A STRIPPER IS NOT A NICE CAREER. Anybody else been to a real strip club in the last ten years? At least in my opinion, they're degrading places, and a lot of the women who work at them get hooked on drugs to deal with it, or are already hooked on them. It just makes me fucking squeamish, is all. And I don't get why Billy Ray - conservative bastion and he of the original Achy Breaky Heart - would sign off on this garbage.

[Mental]

Or, to put it another way:

"I NEED A HOUSE, AN ACHY BREAKY HOUSE!
LET'S PIMP MY KID, MY ACHY BREAKY KID!
ACHY BREAKY ACHY BREAKY ACHY BREAKY ACHY BREAKY ACHY BREAKY-" (shoots Billy Ray in the face)

[Julius Seeker]

For argument 2: I personally don't see the point of morals except as a method of guilting people into behaving a certain way. In the case of sexual repression, this has done more ill to society than good. Look at how certain politicians have used morals to gain power.

Morals are a slave mentality. The real question should be, do these cultural values have a benefit to the human rights of people? Do they better society. Trying to keep teenagers away from sexual exploration and fun isn't going to do much for society. It's better to have a knowledgeable base of teens rather than a group where it is less discussed and the weight of certain actions, like not being on the pill, can have.

It doesn't necessarilly have to be like BNW where kids from a young age are encouraged to engage in erotic play. It is just a slight adjustment in current attitude.


Argument 1: I'll just bring up some more names from well before Miley Cyrus whose actions made pole dancing seem very tame: Jodie Foster, Brooke Shields, Samantha Fox, and Thora Birch. The exact opposite happened to them as well, they all became bigger successes than they otherwise would have after they were "pimped out" to the media. I'm pretty sure they were all younger at the time too. It's not necessarilly something new, or in the last 20 years either. Look at it this way, Miley Cyrus may turn out to be fairly successful and rich without necessarilly suffering from any mental meltdowns. That happened to Britney Spears and not Christina Aguilara, for example.

[Kupek]

Who said "complete degradation of society"? Kup, I'm disappointed in you. You're supposed to be too smart to put words in people's mouths. :P

Perhaps as a commentary on the ever-degrading morals in our society

I avoid discussing certain things online because I realized years ago that it is pointless. When talking to a person face-to-face, it's much easier to establish common ground and explain potential sticking points. When people put up wall o' text after wall o' text, we get mired down in minor points and lose the bigger picture.

[Zeus]

Who said "complete degradation of society"? Kup, I'm disappointed in you. You're supposed to be too smart to put words in people's mouths.

Perhaps as a commentary on the ever-degrading morals in our society

I avoid discussing certain things online because I realized years ago that it is pointless. When talking to a person face-to-face, it's much easier to establish common ground and explain potential sticking points. When people put up wall o' text after wall o' text, we get mired down in minor points and lose the bigger picture.

The sole advantage of this board over the old one is that we can use quotes to avoid minor points / tangents and intrusions to the discussion by others who add nothing to it (stares in the general direction of [fill in the blank with whomever you want]) and focus on what we believe is the main discussion at hand. You don't think my response has anything to do with Mental's point? Quote him and respond to him and avoid what I said. But don't automatically avoid Mental's point 'cause I put my own twist on it.

I personally don't see this type of discussion any different than a face-to-face discussion in terms of content. What's different is that you can more easily avoid it and be "too busy" to engage whereas face-to-face, we naturally feel more obligated to engage out of social courtesy. Also, others can far more easily get involved which will naturally lead to more tangents as people bring in their own points of view on the discussion at hand. But the good thing is with a discussion on a forum vs face-to-face, it's actually far easier to divert attention back to the main point using the tools mentioned previously. This is also helped in no small part by the fact that you don't have to worry about social awkwardness of calling people out on going off on a tangent like we do face-to-face. On top of that, many people are too shy / not aggressive enough in face-to-face meetings to get their points across in a group of people and they can often have very valid, discussion-altering things to say. More people can more easily portray their points / responses, they can take their time making their point to ensure they're saying what they mean, and there's no possibility of being interrupted by a more socially aggressive individual. As you well know, anyone of any experience / background can make a very valid point at anytime if given the opportunity and more people have that opportunity in a setting like this than real life. If anything, forum discussions are actually far superior methods of group discussions than face-to-face meetings.

Hey, when I see a wall-o-text from Don, Sine, and even myself, I have to fight the urge to avoid it or skim it quickly as well. We have all programmed ourselves, consciously or not, to view the 'Net and anything related to it as very quick, ADHD-style engagement so everything we like to be over in 5 seconds or less. But, more often than not, we are required to write more than 140 characters of text to properly portray our point and have a proper conversation. So, if we are to have any depth to any discussion whatsoever, we have to fight that urge and actually read the posts of others.

But at the end of the day, if you find any depth or Rum-style discussion outside of what you're obligated to engage in for whatever reason (work, school, family discussions, etc.) to be pointless, then everything I've said above is a moot point.

[Mental]

It's the hypocrisy that bugs. Hannah Montana was a Disney creation. I wonder what they think about all this?

[Eric]

It's the hypocrisy that bugs. Hannah Montana was a Disney creation. I wonder what they think about all this?

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/221275

[SineSwiper]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/221275

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. They exist to make money off of child prostitution.

[Eric]

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/hwood_p ... cyrus.html

17 now sir *Buys her a pole*

[Mental]

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/hwood_p ... cyrus.html

17 now sir *Buys her a pole*

I officially blame you for rising teen pregnancy rates in red states. If you see a lot of little white trash kids running around trailer parks in ten years talking flagrant nonsense and stealing your shit don't come crying to me, now!

[Mental]

And if they learn to sing by watching Hannah Montana, God help us all.

[Eric]

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/hwood_p ... cyrus.html

17 now sir *Buys her a pole*

I officially blame you for rising teen pregnancy rates in red states. If you see a lot of little white trash kids running around trailer parks in ten years talking flagrant nonsense and stealing your shit don't come crying to me, now!

I will admit, I laughed. :p