There has been a lot of

comment made about Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura's

comments to a Playboy interviewer this year about his

views on religion - and on sex - and on just

about every other topic imaginable.

After it was published,

some wit said that his nickname should be changed from

"The Body" to "The Bigot."

To my way of thinking, he

might be dubbed "The Mouth" - for it does

seem that he is taking a page out of Ted Turner's

playbook and attempting to increase his visibility by

being outrageously outspoken.

Now, Ventura is not the

first politician to be entrapped into sticking his booted

foot deep into his mouth and chewing vigorously on a

leather sandwich.

During the 1976 campaign

for the presidency, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter said

in response to another Playboy interviewer's question

that - while he had always been faithful to his wife

Rosalyn - he had "looked on women with

lust."

Expanding on the comment,

Carter added that he had "committed adultery in my

heart many times!"

The interview was published

just a month before the election, and - to say the

least - it made headlines and drew a lot of comment.

The pastor of the nation's

largest Baptist Church denounced the interview and called

the whole situation "distasteful."

Now, all of us who live

down here in the Bible Belt did not think a whole lot

about Carter's statement, because we knew what he was

saying.

We realized that Carter was

simply saying that while he had not ever had an actual

affair, he was just as guilty because - using the

standard imposed by Jesus during His mountaintop

discourse as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew,

Chapter 5, verses 27 and 28 - he had "looked

upon a woman lustfully."

But, to many folk outside

the realm of the wanna-be righteous, they just didn't

catch Carter's allusion and they were left to wonder at

what he really meant by what they perceived as his quaint

verbiage.

Boy, if that Baptist

minister - who obviously did understand Carter's use

of the allusion - found the future president's

discussion of his peccadilloes "distasteful,"

what would he think about the way the world is nearly a

quarter century later?

Today, our society is

saturated with sex, and we are constantly bombarded with

imagery so graphic - indeed, so pornographic -

that only the perverted among us could want more.

Now, I never thought of

myself as a prude, but I am almost to the point that I am

sick and tired of sex.

Obviously, I am not talking

about the kind of intimacy which loving couples in a

monogamous relationship express behind the closed doors

of their own bedchambers!

But, I am fed up with a

society that uses sex to sell everything from automobiles

to zoos and I am tired of living in one in which even the

most private moments are discussed graphically on the

evening news.

As a journalist and as an

American, I have always supported total and completely

unfettered freedom of speech - and I still do.

But, there comes a point

when even the most freedom-defending among us has to

exclaim, "Okay, you have the constitutional right to

say whatever you will - but does that mean that you

have to say it?"

I do not think so.

Nor do I think I am the

sole voice crying in the wilderness when it comes to

expressing revulsion at the sad state to which our

democracy has fallen.

Someday soon - and

hopefully it will not be too far off - there are

going to be a lot of people throwing up their windows and

crying out in the middle of the night, "I am mad as

hell and I am not going to take it any more!"

Then, we will find out how

many of those so-called opinion setters in society are

really listening to what the people they claim to be

leading have to say.

[Lee N. Howell is an

award-winning writer who has been observing politics and

society in the Southern Crescent, the state, and nation

for the past 25 years.]

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