"Art" and Life: Imitation or Representation

I'm old enough to remember shows like Father Knows Best, I love Lucy and Leave it to...(get ready) Beaver (which was NOT a comedy like South Park or The Sarah Silverman Show) just to really indicate how naive and simple the 1950s were.

Point is that the TV depictions of married life had lawfully wedded couples sleeping in separate beds and not one single double entendre or joke about sex uttered. One never went on TV while "in a family way" and ordinary women worse oose fitting clothes during those months, when today's mothers bre it all...a style I attribute to Demi Moore.

Then came Seinfeld, followed by Friends and single hook-ups changed from subtle hints to in-your-face. In 1994 Roseanne "daringly" showed two women kissing, albeit from the back. Yet, Ellen DeGeneres' character coming out on the the successful 1994-1998 Ellen seemed to be before its time.

Flash forward to 2010 and Brothers and Sisters has a homosexual brother who lip locks his live-in lover (or husband?) on most every episode. But the B & S motto seems to be one is good, two is better. So they also decided to make the old uncle also gay (and this is NOT a comedy!)

At this point I need to insert disclaimer: While I am admittedly a TV-holic, I do not watch soaps which I think have been exploring surrogacy for sometime now.

In addition to pushing the limits and public acceptance (comfortability ?) of same sex love, this same show is also making surrogacy common place. Of course, they were not the first broach this topic on prime time. Friends featured Lisa Kudrow's character being surrogate for her brother. Guess once that in-family altruistic surrogacy arrangement test passed, TV producers felt safe moving to the next level: paid surrogacy by two men.

In between B & S very fair Calista Flockhrat's character, Kitty, who is married to "the Senator" played by Rob Lowe adopt a Black baby.

House went with the single mom career woman - a hospital administrator who dresses in short skirts so tight they look painted on and blouses showing lots of cleavage - who goes adoption route.

And all of this without so much as a blip or a beep....a far cry from the brouhaha when the show's 1991–1992 season, featured Murphy Brown becoming pregnant while single and deciding to keep her baby. THAT set off a conservative fire storm and apparently desensitized us for what was to follow.

Any-who...now, the sit-com Rules of Engagement also has gone to paid surrogacy as an appropriate prime-time topic.

And we wonder why kids grow up today thinking biological connections are meaningless and anyone - man or woman - can have a child any time she want, no matter how old and no matter what their sexual orientation....as long as they have the price tag.

Now let's look at Sandra Bullock's real life adoption and her comments which are being scrutinized in hindsight, such as her Oscar acceptance speech which included: “I would like to thank what this film [Blind Side] is about for me. The moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from. Those moms and parents never get thanked.” And, at the Golden Globes: “A family is not just who you were born to, or what color you are. It’s who’s got your back.”

Ellen DeGeneres now says in retrospect she feels as if Sandra was just begging to be asked outright if she was adopting, when in November she said: "You'd be profoundly amazed at how many children are out there and just so waiting for you to love them."

Ellen asked Bullock if she ever thought about adoption (which she and Jesse James, we are now told, had been planning for years. Bullock replied: "You know, I have always felt like, just because a child didn't come from inside your body doesn't mean it's not your child, it just arrived somewhere else...There are so many children just waiting who need love and to give you love back a thousand times more and they're everywhere...You would be profoundly amazed at how many children are out there just waiting for you to love them."

The media is all ga-ga about her secret keeping abilities and hint dropping. [Adoption - a secret? Shock!] What I see is a general attitude today. Has acceptance of "casual sex" led to casual baby creating? Or is this - and Sarah Jessica parker's real life surrogate twins, Atwood's Handmaid Tale coming to reality?

It's all accepted as just "another way to make a family." This seems to be Bullock's mantra and message to the world. She seems to have gone from secret to wanting the be ambassador and spokesperson for adoption.

As an aside, Ms. Bullock must have a team of attorneys to rival O.J. Simpson's. Like many baby brokers, they know how to play the states. She filed for divorce in Texas and adopted her baby in Louisiana: a state in which the relinquishment is immediately irrevocable.