What kind of media do the moral janitors at the Federal Communications Commission consume when they're not busy making the public airwaves sparkle like Martha Stewart's bidet? Well, probably not the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology.
If they did, they'd know about a new study conducted by Duke University professor William Parker that compared hygienically pampered lab rats to their filthy cousins who live in urban sewers and earthy barnyard squalor. The results? The wild rats are like, say, Iggy Pop. Vigorous and indestructible, they have highly efficient immune systems that ignore trivial germs while blocking out the more serious ones. Meanwhile, the immune systems of their coddled laboratory counterparts grow so sensitive through underuse even a sneeze from an Olsen twin could potentially take them down.
Parker's study lends credence to the "hygiene hypothesis," a theory that attempts to explain why people in comparatively germ-free industrialized societies are more susceptible to allergies and diseases than people who live in countries where toilets that require user manuals do not yet exist. Or, as the Associated Press put it in an article about Parker's work, "Clean living may make us sick."
But if we've gotten too sanitary for our own good here in the developed world, well, at least, our pop culture is still as pungent as a Bangalore outhouse, right? It packs such a devastating punch, in fact, that its detractors often accuse it of tangible physical toxicity. Liberal hand-wringers decry advertising and violent entertainment as airborne pathogens that pollute the minds of our children. Conservative crotch sentries claim that pornography actually has the power to reshape brain structure.
And the FCC? It wants us as unsullied as lab rats. Two weeks ago, it finally got President Bush to sign off on the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, a law that gives it the power to fine broadcasters a whopping $325,000 for a single tasteless moment. The previous maximum fine was $32,500, so theoretically, the new improved law, with more than 10 times the scrubbing action of the old one, should brighten up our airwaves considerably.
And those hard-to-clean spots where government mops can't quite reach yet? Private-sector sanitizers pitch in to help. Just apply a little ClearPlay, CleanFlicks or TV Guardian to Hollywood's standard trashy fare, and watch the gory violence, nudity, graphic vulgarity and vain references to the deity disappear. Or, if your TV is less than six years old, simply use the V-chip it came with.
Consume such wholesome fare at your own peril, however. If you listen to, say, the concerned citizens at the Parents Television Council, who have made it their life's work to monitor the rates at which Saturday morning cartoons depict "implied defecation" and various other categories of dangerous content, we're just one fart joke from cultural Armageddon. And yet, somehow, despite all those objectionable kiddie shows, despite the digital mayhem of Grand Theft Auto and all the other sexy, violent media our nation's youngsters consume, statistics show they're a surprisingly chaste and civil bunch.
In 2004, for example, murder rates dropped to a 40-year low. Today's rape, robbery and assault rates are half of what they were 30 years ago. For the last decade, teen birth rates have been declining, too—1950's 15-to-19-year-olds had roughly twice as many babies as today's.
Alas, the good times aren't likely to last forever. Howard Stern has been exiled to satellite radio. Politicians on both sides are forever introducing legislation designed to keep our cages safe and sterile. Raised in filtered, digitally altered, overdubbed Edens, our children will grow up pure of spirit and heart—but will they also be as fragile as Parker's lab rats, imploding at their first flash of celebrity nipple? This is how the world ends—not with a bang, but a Pussycat Dolls video.