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Getting Snowed


snow.JPGLike much of the United States, Colorado has been in the grip of some extreme winter weather this week. While we dodged the heavy snow that dumped on Chicago and the inches of ice that blanketed much of the South, thermometers here plunged down to 25 degrees below zero—cold enough to freeze and seize the brakes on my car!

The first night that the temps plunged that low, you would’ve thought it was the end of the world to hear the newscasters talk about it.

But, for me at least, it took me exactly one day to get used to the arctic blast. On Tuesday, I bundled up as if I was going on an Everest expedition. By Wednesday morning though, with the bank clock reading minus 10 on my way to work, I didn’t even bother to zip my coat. Mind you, I knew it was cold. But I remember thinking as I got out of the car, This isn’t so bad. I can handle this. No big deal.

Yet the temperature remained so extreme that if I’d made a real mistake, like having an accident on a deserted country road or running out of gas, I would’ve been in real trouble. I would have found out that some things—like 25 below zero temps—are indeed just as dangerous as the newscasters warned.

That leads me to this observation: I think we acclimate to cultural extremes in much the same way.

One day we hear a news story about some new precedent in pop culture—whether it’s the salacious content on MTV’s Skins or hearing about P!nk or Cee Lo Green using the f-word in song titles. How could things have gotten so bad? we wonder. Where’s it all going?

Very soon, however, those extremes become the new normal. Soon we’re yawning and shrugging at entertainment’s new lows—It’s just the way it is, we think—content that would have earned protests and boycotts and broad cultural censure not very long ago.

And, just like my response to extreme weather, we sometimes get snowed by the next lie as well: This isn’t so bad. I can handle this. No big deal.

But just as getting stuck in a snow bank with the temperature at 25 below is deadly business, so the increasingly severe content in our entertainment has a damaging, corrosive and ultimately deadly effect on our culture as a whole, whether we recognize it or not.