Culture’s shifting sands on moral standards
By Gilbert T. Sewall
Put together violent, porn-saturated electronic entertainment and armed, shame-free, unparented young men. Crazy things happen.
Sixty years ago juvenile delinquency and what to do about it suddenly drew a round of national soul searching. We no longer even use the term. We think in terms of juvenile monsters.
Yesteryear’s hoods and troublemakers seem quaint and innocent beside today’s appalling school murders, gang rapes and teenage mayhem.
Yet those bad boys and girls of the 1950s were not the doll-like, smiling, dancing John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John caricatures that Hollywood later concocted. They were the early warning signals of anomie – amped up 60 years later with rap lyrics, hardcore porn and violent video gaming.
After World War II, law-abiding Americans wanted their children to avoid contact with a bad juvenile element, even if it meant picking up and moving. Their fears were integral to the nation’s suburban explosion and the 1960s turn toward sunbelt conservatism.
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