Defending Miley, or Why we don’t have cable

Former teen star, now “adult” performer in every sense of the word, Miley Cyrus lit up the Twittersphere Sunday night with her less than decorous performance at the Video Music Awards. “Miley Cyrus gets embarrassingly raunchy” was how NBC News put it, reporting that the Twitter response was immediate and mostly negative.

It may surprise you (it surprises me) to know that I intend to defend her performance. Not because I condone or excuse her scanty attire or lewd sexual simulations…yikes…pretty raunchy indeed. But because I don’t believe she deserves to be singled out for raunchiness when she was simply being the visual aid to the popular songs being sung.

I don’t listen to contemporary music at all, so though I’ve had a general awareness of the cesspool much of it lives in, it was quite eye-opening to read the lyrics of the songs, if you can even call them that, which she was dancing to. I’d reproduce some of them here, but I’d rather not smutify my page with them. Suffice it to say, they’re about as explicitly sexual as you can get. And Cyrus was just giving the audience what she reasonably assumed they wanted, as she gyrated to co-performer Robin Thicke’s “massive summer hit.” Plenty of folks are obviously on board with filling their minds with his crudeness. Why chastise Miley for just acting out what they’re loving and supporting when they buy his trash?

And frankly, her on-stage lewdness was not much, if any, worse than what hundreds of thousands of teens and pre-pubescents see everyday on MTV. And not only there, but network programs like “The X Factor,” and others that showcase contemporary music, routinely feature scantily-clad dancers in practically pornographic postures and gestures.

What’s more (yes…there’s more), the Texans-Saints NFL game Sunday afternoon provided a preview of sorts of what viewers would be tuning in to Sunday night, as the Texans cheerleaders in their own scanty outfits all bent over in unison. Derrieres in the air like they just don’t care. Some or all of them would surely go on tour with Miley in a heartbeat.

There’s an audience-cam shot from the awards show going around of actor/rapper Will Smith and his young son and daughter, reacting to Miley Cyrus’ naughtiness. His daughter’s mouth is open in disbelief, his son looks painfully uncomfortable. Their dad – hard to tell if it’s shock or arousal. But it prompts me to wonder…who in the popular entertainment industry cares about our children? Do any of them care at all about the damage they’re doing to our nation, our culture, our families, our posterity? And why do we support them if they don’t?

Miley is a product of our anything-goes society. She probably woke up this morning to all the fuss about her performance with a “WTF (Why The Fuss)? Everybody’s singin’ about it, makin’ music videos about it, everybody’s doin’ it. They watch people doin’ it in the theaters, on their laptops, and on their smartphones. Nobody’s makin’ much of a fuss about all that. Why are they pickin’ on me?”

Good question, Miley.