MOMS last week were scraping jaws off the sofa and hunting for the re mote — or a convent.
It wasn’t an accidental click into televised open-heart surgery that had us running for the Maalox. It was my 11-year-old daughter’s favorite prime-time TV show — and mine — “Glee.”
At the start, two high-school cheerleaders, Santana and Brittany, were in bed kissing, fondling and talking about “scissoring.”
“What’s that?” asked the kid. Ah, those teaching moments.
Exasperated by Brittany’s mushy affection, Santana made it plain that she wanted to bed the blonde only because her boyfriend had been locked in juvenile detention “for, like, 12 hours.”
“I’m like a lizard,” she said. “I need something warm beneath me to digest my food.”
Dumped, Brittany sought revenge by taking the virginity of the first boy she saw, who uses a wheelchair.
In the time it took to yank off the tube, my kid was confused. I envied the Amish. But it wasn’t the show’s gayness — my kid’s schools have been shoving a “Gay is OK!” agenda down her throat since preschool. And it wasn’t the skimpy cheerleading outfits worn by adult women playing girls of 16.
It was the cruelty. The whisper of sexual violence that colored an encounter between a girl out for sexual jollies and one out for love. Also, the emotional devastation of a vulnerable boy, who learned he was used as a pawn in the girls’ sleazy games.
Fox’s “Glee” is far from alone.
While you were napping, family programming turned sharply from sap to sleaze. It didn’t start with Miley Cyrus, Disney Channel’s squeaky-clean “Hannah Montana,” who at 15 posed naked. Now, at 17, Miley can be found writhing and grinding against men and women in a video.
The New York Times pegged the downward spiral of TV morality to the loss of power of the Parents Television Council watchdog group, which it says coincides with the recession. I disagree.
For a decade at least, the culture foisted on children has turned from a safe harbor into a Church of Moral Relativism, pushing an “if it feels good” agenda on youth who need to hear “No.”
Movies such as “The Kids Are All Right” glamorize a family headed by two mommies. But mention studies that prove fatherless kids are more likely to get pregnant or go to jail, and you’ll be the subject of a protest from GLAAD.
Shows such as (adult) “South Park” bash religion. But glorifying faith is for losers. Just try mentioning that Muslim garb scares you, and you will be fired.
The journal Pediatrics this week released a study revealing a shocking amount of “dating violence” experienced by city teens who try homosexual activity. This came as little surprise to some shrinks.
“The kids who engaged in more sexual experimentation were also the kids who got involved in bullying and in being bullied,” said Dr. Martin Evers, associate director of behavioral health at Northern Westchester Hospital.
“I think there’s a lot wrong with the relativism going on, the reluctance to say, ‘This is wrong’ or ‘This is right.’ At the same time, they’re being hit with oversexualized images.”
A few kids at elite Stuyvesant HS — where students last semester posted a list of all the kids they’d like to “tap” (have sex with) — owned up to the consequences of risky sex, even while they defended the bashers.
“Nobody respects you if you play like that,” said a junior girl.
“What do you expect?” her friend put in. Amazing.
“Today, our children have to fight to keep their innocence,” said Pat, mom of 13- and 10-year-old girls.
Well, I’m not giving up on “Glee” entirely. The next episode was a blessedly tame production of the raunchy musical “The Rocky Horror Show.”
But I’m firing up the DVR. It pays to check first.
MOSQUE IMAM IN T-NIAL
The self-described “peace builder” who wants to plunk a mosque near Ground Zero has trouble mouthing the t-word.
In June, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization, denying the label used by the State Department. Now, he won’t tag as “terrorists” the butchers who slaughtered nearly 3,000 souls on 9/11.
“Islam was seen as a national-security threat in America because the” — he paused, then restarted the thought — “because those who’ve attacked America utilized the vocabulary of religion,” Rauf told al-Jazeera TV.
Placating terrorists does not make them friends. It makes more terrorists.
Bloomy’s cynical flip-flop
Now he changes his mind.
Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t ready to quit bullying the masses into eating, breathing and driving the things he likes, so he strong-armed the City Council into giving him a third term in office. Now, as his sell-by date approaches, Bloomberg wants to make sure that nobody else serves more than two consecutive terms.
Bloomberg’s final years brought this city the tyranny of the calorie count, kamikaze bike lanes, and the threat of a soda ban for food-stamp recipients. It’s time to go.
NY star struck
Charlie Sheen has pummeled and shot women, hired hookers, wrecked a hotel room, and ingested substances he can’t even pronounce. Each time, the slimeball trots from trouble with his hair in place. Well, Charlie stars in a hit TV show. What have you done with your day?
In the ’90s, Charlie shot his then-fiancée, Kelly Preston, in the arm, then avoided LA jail for beating the stuffing out of his next lover — arguing that she deserved it because she was a “whore.” He squealed on well-used madam Heidi Fleiss, then last year slid like a skunk from the Colorado slammer for threatening his wife with a knife, copping a plea that allowed him to enter the druggy’s summer camp of choice, rehab. He was still on probation when he transported his one-man crime wave to New York.
So why wasn’t Charlie arrested? He was found this week, naked and admittedly coked up, with a terrified porn star, inside a trashed Plaza hotel suite, his kids and ex-wife nearby. Proving that this city is going down the Hollywood celeb sewer, Sheen avoided a cell by checking into a hospital. Infuriating.
Russell Crowe. Cameron Douglas. Plaxico Burress. All slithered from the grasp of New York justice with light or no sentences, enjoying this city’s newfound affection for people with fame and dollars. Charlie’s next act is sure to be a whopper.
Short story
Grandfather Brett Favre admits pestering Jenn Sterger with lewd messages when he was quarterback of the New York Jets. But Favre says photos of a man’s small, unclad manhood — pictures that could cost him his career, if not his co-dependent wife — did not depict anything belonging to him.
Either someone with a jolly sense of humor hacked into Favre’s e-mail, or the jerky jock wants a do-over with a wide-angle lens.