There is something that has been bothering me as it relates to a scheme that has been portrayed upon the morality of our nation, an insidious ploy designed and executed with the sole purpose of the destruction of innocence within our youth. For sometime now I have had difficulty seeing the machinations of this plan clearly, though the auspices of its design ruminated around the recesses of my mind. With the recent declaration of demagogic debauchery displayed by Miley Cyrus at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, a light bulb went off in my head, and for the first time I was able to see with greater clarity the deviant design behind our modern day teen idols.
For the purpose of this article, I will focus primarily on our young female idols and their effect upon the teen and pre-teen girls of the country, though the male equivalent is certainly just as prolific and culturally malignant in both scope and intention. One thing that I observed with this most recent fall of an innocent teen idol is the similitude of the playbook relaying again and again this likewise narrative. Like Brittany Spears before her, Cyrus was presented to the girls of America, and more importantly to the parents thereof, as a model of innocence and girlish frivolity. Few parents objected to the enthusiasm found within their young daughters for this giggling mascot of purity, lauded by society and displayed within the sanctified and trusted realm of Disney. Just as Brittany Spears made her entrée onto the world stage as a Mouseketeer, so too was Cyrus introduced to our daughters and permitted into our homes under the guise of cultural innocence that has been the banner of Disney, cemented in the national consciousness established by Walt and his loveable band of characters such as Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and Goofy. With the passage of its namesake and the inevitable change through time, America has lost the thread of cultural degeneracy that has occurred in our most stalwart institutions like Disney. As market demands and pressures have coalesced to create the largest media empire on Earth, the typical American exists in a false state of nostalgia of times long since passed and replaced by ruthless competitive forces devoid of moral consideration where the heir of Walt, Michael Eisner, has slaughtered and cooked the likes of Donald Duck and made Dumbos of us all.
One might rightly ask, why would a conglomerate like Disney purposefully bring down a model of innocence such as Cyrus? There could be many such reasons. One reason is the revenue sustainability of an established figure within a “captured” audience. As Cyrus ages and becomes less palatable to the next generation of teen and pre-teen girls, it is perhaps better to bring her established fan base along through an ever evolving career that allows for the continual return on investment into maturity rather than discard her and start anew with the next selected idol. Hannah Montana, like all fads, simply would not engender the endurance necessary for another decade of sustainment. Twerking Miley Cyrus, however, brings a fresh modality of appeal to an ever increasing society of decadence and thereby increased cultural life to a fruit otherwise squeezed dry.
As a man of faith, however, I do not see simple profit motive in such behaviors, but rather a willful and purposeful design of malfeasance perpetrated upon the youth of the world under the seemingly watchful and approving eyes of a distracted and beguiled parentage. The guise of innocence worn by these teen idols in the genesis of their careers is actually a Trojan Horse by which parents swing wide the gates and allow complete entry into the homes and hearts of innocence found in the living and bedrooms of their susceptible and easily influenced children. Perhaps these parents falsely believe that the influence wrought upon their babes by such figures is relative to the time of their observance