I was watching a funny video that someone posted recently. It showed old scenes from the original "Star Trek" TV series, interposed with video of Miley Cyrus' 'twerking' at the VMA's. The cut scenes of the Enterprise crew's amazement, disgust and shock at what they supposedly saw on their view screen were hilarious. It was good for a laugh and I shared it on Facebook for my friends to enjoy. Afterward, however, I had time to think about it in more depth.
As a mom, when I first watched the video of Miley's performance, my first feeling was embarrassment - for the kids who'd caught the VMA's on TV, for the parents of the children in the audience, for Miley's parents and, more than anything, for Miley. I can't imagine how she must have felt the next day when she awoke to a huge controversy over her performance and the cruel comments that were made by everyone from the press to fellow performers. My "mom's heart" felt a lot of hurt for what she must have been going through. We all make dumb decisions when we're young - I know I did. Few of us have them broadcast world-wide, however. Almost no one has to go through the public castigation that Miley has, either.
I had to wonder what her parents must have been thinking. I can only imagine their being torn between wanting to be upset with her for the negative comments about their parenting that the performance engendered and their wish to gather their little girl up in their arms and try to protect her. I hope that they didn't give her too much sympathy, though. One of the hardest things - and one of the most productive - that a parent can do is stand back and let their child reap the seeds that they've sewn, even if those seeds are very bitter to the taste.
Someday, when Miley is a parent herself, I have no doubt that she'll have to struggle with how to explain what she did to her kids. Maybe she'll have grown up enough by then to be able to use it as a teaching moment - a way to help protect her children from making their own monumental mistakes. I hope so...
There are bigger implications in all of this. Well, not just Miley's performance - in the current "no holds barred" atmosphere in Hollywood and American culture as a whole. I'm speaking specifically of how America is being presented to the world at-large and how it affects our relationships with our allies - and our enemies, as well.
Any thinking person would probably agree that extremist Islam presents a danger to anyone who disagrees with it. No, I'm not talking about the mostly peaceful Muslims who inhabit America. I'm speaking of the extremist Islamists who have dedicated their lives to destroying America and other Western nations, along with anyone who does not believe in their extreme view of Islam. Unfortunately, the number of moderate young Muslims being recruited into the ranks of extremist Islam grows every day. One of the most successful types of manipulation that the Islamists use while recruiting young Muslims is to convince them that those who don't believe in Islam are morally and spiritually inferior. They convince their young recruits that they are doing the world a favor and doing Allah's work by getting rid of the evil that is inherent in those who don't follow Islam.
Unfortunately, Miley's performance (along with many others' over the past few years) may very well be co-opted by the Islamists as a teaching tool. They may show it and talk of the depravity of the United States and it's evil young people. They may talk of how we, as Americans, speak of the evils of young girls being married off to much older men and then allow a 20 year old young woman to simulate sexual acts on stage with a married man twice her age and broadcast it around the world. They will speak of how Americans teach their young women to be 'whores' and then contrast the way that Muslim women who follow Islam are covered discreetly. They will cast us as moral-less and without shame and teach their young men and women that they, as Islamists, are morally and spiritually superior. Sadly, while their teachings are twisted and used for evil purposes, they are - in a way - too close to true for comfort.
We, as a nation, need to realize how our media is presented to the world. We need to realize that the sexually explicit antics of our music and television stars and the bloody violence of our television and movies say something about us as a whole. It's time that we took the time to step back and look at ourselves from the outside. It's time to reevaluate who we want to be - here in the U.S. and to the outside world, as well. The first step is to consider the choices we make in our own tastes in music, television and movies and those we allow our children to be exposed to. The change, if we are honest with ourselves, will follow.
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