A great deal has been made of religious "values voters" who are more concerned about public morality and religious values than they are about their own economic circumstances. The problem is that the apparent behavior of these "values voters" doesn't really match their rhetoric. So if the values a person exhibits in how they live aren't any different from the values of everyone else, how can that first person be any more of a "values voter" than the rest?
According to an old report on Billboard:
[T]he states with the three highest divorce rates are all red (Nevada, Arkansas, Wyoming), while Massachusetts has the lowest rate.
Top three states for readership of Playboy magazine? Again, all red (Iowa, Wyoming, North Dakota), and they all top heathen New York by 2-1 margins.
Suicide rate? Once again, all red (New Mexico, Montana, Nevada), with the lowest rates all-blue (New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts).
Murder rate? Again, reds in the lead, with two of the three the worst (Mississippi, Maryland, Louisiana). Blues hold two of the three with lowest rates (New Hampshire, Maine, South Dakota).
As I understand it, there is something much more interesting about the murder rate than the fact that it is higher in red states: murder in blue states is far more likely to occur in the process of some other crime (rape, robbery) but in the red states it's more likely to occur in small towns and as a crime of "passion" (someone feels insulted, so goes out to kill the person).
How is any of this consistent with the popular perception of "red" states being the repository of values, morality, and religion in America? Oh -- blue states have higher abortion rates. I guess that makes all the difference. Seems like another sign that being "pro-life" too easily ends once the fetus exits the womb.
The New York Times reported a couple of years ago:
In interviews, representatives of the four big broadcast networks as well as Hollywood production studios said the nightly television ratings bore little relation to the message apparently sent by a significant percentage of voters. The choices of viewers, whether in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City, New York or Birmingham, Ala., are remarkably similar. ...
[I]f it is true that the public's electoral choices are a cry for more morally driven programming, the network executives ask, why are so many people, even in the markets surrounding the Bush bastions Atlanta and Salt Lake City, watching a sex-drenched television drama?
When "Desperate Housewives" first hit the air, some of the storylines were so extreme that some advertiser pulled their ads -- but it was still a ratings hit, even among conservatives. In the Atlanta market, for example, it was the highest rated show in counties where Bush received 58% of the vote in 2004. Somehow, I rather doubt that the ratings for shows like this were due entirely to liberals, with pious Republicans and Tea Baggers spending their time praying and reading the Bible instead.
"We say one thing and do another," said Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment. "People compartmentalize about their lives and their entertainment choices."
They do compartmentalize -- it would also be fair to say that they "rationalize" and, to be frank, are hypocrites. People want their smut in private but they want to be seen in public complaining about smut and trying to ensure that smut isn't available, even in private.
Such "values voting," then, could be seen as a form of public theater. One way or another, those with the most social power are always able to obtain the smut they want, even as they work to ensure that others can't get smut as well. After all, it might "harm" others -- but it surely won't "harm" those of great moral virtue, right?
The divide between what people accept as proper in public and what they choose to enjoy in their private lives is, unsurprisingly, nothing new in the history of the world or this country. "When the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock left behind writing, it was William Bradford's, and you can clearly see what they believed in and what their values were," said Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University, referring to the colony's first governor. "Then you look at the court records and you see all kinds of fornication, adultery and bestiality."
People say publicly that they consider certain behavior sinful, or at least very bad, but rather than work to control themselves or encourage others to exert some self-control they work hard to eliminate the temptations (i.e., the existence of "bad" television shows). Is it really very moral, though, to successfully avoid sin when one isn't even faced with temptation? Not really, no -- not even within the framework of Christian theology. It might be argued, then, that these public moralizers don't consider themselves or others to be capable of being moral people who make the right choices.
Americans are nothing if not hypocrites.
Of all the nations in the Anglosphere, USans seem to have the highest disconnect between Public and Private Morality (witness the immediate thunderous outburst about Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ vs the lack of concern shown after several weeks had passed) – and of course they outstrip most of the Europeans by miles in this respect.
However, since many muslim societies come close (male homosexuality gets a death sentence, but only when it becomes public, it seems – or when it is consensual rather than an act by which one man establishes his power over another), I suspect that it has something to do with the more extremist versions of abrahamic religions.
But you are right in saying that ‘the best people’ can always satisfy their ‘needs’ while denying the opportunity to ‘lesser folk’ – in the US, the ‘best people’ are the wealthy, and so the well-heeled (even those made rich by their position at the head of ‘mega-churches’) will be able to procure abortions for their wives, daughters and mistresses while denying them to the poor.
And murder to avenge one’s honour is surely one of the most basic of Conservative ‘family values.’