U.S. DOUBLE STANDARD NOT UNDERSTOOD ABROAD

Walk into just about any supermarket or corner store in Colima,
Mexico, and you'll find an impressive wall of liquors for sale --
everything from tequila to scotch.

Walk into a liquor store in Oklahoma, and if you're under 21, you'll
be kicked out. Bars have mandated closing times; and complicated,
county-specific regulations govern when, where and how alcohol can be
sold.

And yet, the U.S. sees about 45,000 drunk-driving deaths per 100,000
population as compared with about 14,000 of the same per 100,000
population in Mexico, according to Pan American Health Organization
statistics for the late 1990s.

Walk into a club in Mexico, and although dirty dancing is basically
the same the world over, most guys will keep a respectful distance.
Men stare, honk and catcall at women walking down the street as a
matter of course, but by and large, you won't be followed or harassed.

Walk into a house party at OU, and it's a safe bet that most guys
there are more interested in copping a feel than in moving to the music.

The only guy who will yell at you as you walk down the South Oval is
Preacher Gary, but instead of a simple "hey, beautiful," he'll cry
"whore!" because you, as a woman, have the audacity to wear pants.

And yet the U.S. is where "wardrobe malfunctions" at the Super Bowl
cause furors over broadcast decency standards.

In America, the Kansas attorney general is currently involved in a
trial over whether the state can force health-care providers to report
all adolescent sexual activity, even as simple as French kissing or
"lewd touching," to the proper authorities.

It looks to me like we have a little hypocrisy problem.

Our culture wants to have it all. We want to be both completely
upstanding and completely liberated. It doesn't work that way.

Socially, we draw many of our ideas about what is right from probably
the most repressed group in history: religious fanatics who perfected
seeing the speck of sawdust in a brother's eye but not the log in
one's own. But politically, we pride ourselves on our freedoms -- of
expression, of religion, of sexuality.

This sets us up for a bit of a culture shock within our own
borders.

A part of us wants to be the city on the hill, the shining example of
the straight path. Another part wants to get plastered on Thursday
nights, inhale junk food until we drive the obesity crisis to
monstrous proportions and watch the pop tartlet of the moment writhe
in leather chaps and tongue other women.

So we become Puritan moralists having a Roman orgy. Rush Limbaugh with
a drug problem. Bill Bennett, "Book of Virtues" author, who can't keep
away from the gambling tables. Anti-terrorist crusaders whose death
penalty laws put us in company with countries our president branded
the "Axis of Evil."

We talk out of both sides of our mouths and expect the rest of the
world to take us seriously. I haven't been living abroad long, but
it's already apparent that such an attitude doesn't give us much moral
and political currency with other cultures.

Perhaps, as a first step toward building that currency, we could take
some lessons from those other cultures. In many countries, people are
more open about their enjoyment of life's pleasures -- a cute member
of the opposite sex or a few beers with friends. But unlike their
American counterparts, most people in this world haven't made an art
form of taking that enjoyment way too far.

It's time to recognize our own hypocrisy and face it as a possible
source of our problems. We can't think of the "War on Drugs" as a
"Colombian thing" while leaving in place a draconian drug-law system
that punishes victims while all but ignoring our voracious demand. We
can't continue exporting crass, cheap pop culture while bemoaning the
rest of the world's unwillingness to follow our lead in moral matters.

That log in our national eye is starting to get pretty irritating.
Maybe it's time we looked inward before telling everyone else how to
fix their sawdust problems.