Prude on BBC

Spent the morning recording interviews for the BBC. I expected challenges to Prude to come from the left, of course, and they did. Perhaps my favorite was the one asking me if what I really wanted was to see America's young girls swathed in burquas, as women are in many Muslim countries.

Certainly, as I pointed out, there is plenty of middle ground between selling thongs to 12 year olds and swathing young girls in burquas. But what I also pointed out was that -- while America's culture and behavior should never be subject to a "global test" -- it was remarkable that many of the same people who worried about the impact on America's image of our efforts in the war on terror were so sanguine about the impression left worldwide by so much of our popular culture. At the same time that we're telling Muslim countries to "respect" their female populations, our popular culture is celebrating "artists" who refer to them as "bitches," "skanks," "hoochies" and "ho's" on a regular basis.