Someone recently pointed me to a post by Brent Singer on parentdish.com about reports of a new pole-dancing doll . . . yes, you read that right—a little girl's doll that dances around a pole!!
Here are his opening lines:
Gizmodo has an item about a new doll. Does it burp? Does it breastfeed? Nope. It dances. On a pole.
If anyone was wondering if the world was doomed, here is your confirmation.
The scoop on this new plaything came from Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz, and features a somewhat grainy photo of a doll in a shiny dress hanging on a pole. A giant heart emblazoned with the word "Pole Dance" is at the top. The box promises "Style." "Interesting." "Music." "Flash." "Up and Down." "Go Round and Round." It might've said "Ewww," "Gross," "Criminal"," but in all likelihood the upstanding manufacturers ran out of room. (http://www.parentdish.com/2009/08/31/next-up-a-pole-dancing-doll/)
Singer goes on to express hope that the reports are false (I hope so, too!), but also identifies the disturbing trend of stripping becoming mainstream. And not just mainstream among adults—stripper poles are showing up in marketing and media targeted at teens and younger children.It's enough to terrify parents, worry child psychologists, turn optimists into pessimists, fascinate doom-sayers, and probably put the final nail in the coffin of the once popular notion that human civilization was evolving to higher and higher levels (if that coffin hasn't been buried already).
Selling stripper-pole dolls to little girls! Has the world completely lost its mind??
It seems that St. Paul thought so:
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. (Ephesians 4:17-19, Today's New International Version)
That was Paul's evaluation almost 2,000 years ago.I don't think the level of sanity is improving.
