FROM THE EMERALD CITY TO PLEASANTVILLE

WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

When Dorothy and Toto left Kansas, they couldn't imagine what they would find. But neither could they imagine what they left. Not only school boards wary of Darwin, but churches panicked by porn!

Oh, not the usual kind. This is female porn. Evangelical churches there have found organized porn for women which they say has become epidemic. In Christian theology, women are the non-sexual member of the species; but things haven't worked out that way in Kansas. And now some religious groups in cities like Chicago are also concerned.

The question isn't where women can find pornography, but why they're looking for it? I'm old enough to remember Sinatra's crooning voice and Elvis's grinding hips. Seems to me the only difference between young women then and now is now they've kicked their swooning and screaming up a notch. Lets see -- the same Darwin Kansas so dislikes would probably say: "It's just the female of the species evolving..."

EXACTLY HOW HAPPY WERE THE "HAPPY DAYS?"

According to Ron Howard and the Fonze, the Fifties were the "Happy Days." The greatest boom-decade in America's history when we were number one in the world, with jobs, salaries and chromed convertibles everywhere just for the asking. Like we were portrayed from the 30s & 40s in cozy sepio-tones, in the 50s we're usually pictured in crisp black&white. The fizzy fun of "Uncle Miltie,"I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners," "Ozzie and Harriet," "Make Room for Daddy," "Dobbie Gillis," and my particular favorite "Father Knows Best."

I loved Robert Young in that role, because as a young father I looked forward to when I too could come home in neat suit & tie to my waiting white-fenced family, mother in dress and earrings, children agog with young wonder. Unfortunately, as things turned out in the 60s and 70s, most of us discovered fatherhood didn't come with Robert Young's script and dialog.

Other things were similarly out of joint with the gradual arrival of Rock n Roll, the Beatniks, pink shirts, perfect Debbie and Eddie getting divorced, gritty foreign films without patented happy endings, the mushroom cloud dictating daily duck & cover drills in school, and the oozing virus of McCarthyism.

Yes, there were little dispiriting signs all around us. If we dared pay attention. Like the characters did in the recent film "Pleasantville" in which the placidity of their black&white 50s gradually gave way to a whole new reality. Now I perfectly understand the audience is supposed to celebrate this dawning new reality pushing aside the banalities of our 50-ish ways and days. And yet as I watched Pleasantville mature before my eyes, frankly I wasn't entirely pleased.

Call this reaction a foolish nostalgia refusing to embrace the world as it's actually becoming. On the other hand, have you ever asked yourself what Dorothy really felt once she returned from the technicolor glories of the Emerald City to the gritty reality of dusty Kansas? I have....!