BIRDS, BEES AND THE DUMBING-DOWN OF AMERICA.

Byline: Joseph Honig Local View

SEX is making us stupid.

Talk about sex has replaced talk about ideas.

Radio broadcasts revolve around getting it and savoring it.

Television comedies, once centered on human frailties and foibles, portray one crude sexual conundrum after another.

This while the Fox Network's Joe Millionaire, a monosyllabic TV Samson, cuddles and spoons under the false flag of wealth.

This while a camera-hungry cupcake named Trista gets famous in a hurry on ABC's ``The Bachelorette.''

As if there is nothing else to say about the American condition. And it's getting worse.

Last year, in the still-mourning city of New York, an enterprising huckster opened what he called the country's first Museum of Sex.

Never mind that bookshelves bulge with the history of this driving force. Dan Gluck, museum founder, believed from the outset he was on to something. ``We're going to be the Smithsonian of sex,'' Gluck told The Washington Post last fall.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Because it is a fact of life that the mighty have fallen and societies have been revolutionized as a result of sexual impulses. But just when did sex become the focus of our national conversation? The nexus of humor? The engine for style and entertainment?

Remember, we are not talking about romance or attraction, mainstays of classy, popular diversions from Shakespeare to Billy Wilder. For songwriters from Cole Porter to Rodgers & Hart made art out of sparks between men and women, though what a vast difference between music revealing the thrill of attraction and most 21st century love songs.

Whereas pop tunes once described desire, many now simply ask for intimacy. For sex.

There was a time you had to be a little smart or amusing - or try to be - to gain a partner. Those days have passed. Too much of the culture tells us that graceless, ham-handed grappling may be the way to go. Either that, or auditioning for some nationally televised game of spin-the-bottle.

The act has replaced the overture. Generations ago, flirting was a skill, an excitement in itself. Now some of us, influenced by rough-edged music videos, simply ask for orders to be filled.

Recently, much was made over a pair of New York radio hosts broadcasting play-by-play coverage of a purported sex act inside St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their employer, Viacom, sent them packing. Their bosses, too.

Perhaps the larger story, though, is that such programs command millions of listeners across the country, because there is a new adjunct to what was once simply known as talk radio. It is sex talk radio: hours and hours of semiliterate men and women yapping not about the pleasures of sex, but the mechanics. The getting. The finer points of anatomy.

This is not an argument for censorship. Sexual freedom meant that intelligent art and entertainment became more accessible. Sadly, it also helped canny, exploitive panderers make wonderful livings off the stupid, creating a mass audience for poorly crafted dirty jokes. This is certainly not the stuff Lenny Bruce went to jail for.

On television, sex gives writers a pass from having to be clever. Wordplay has vanished. Why reach for timeless farce when easy sex jokes are coin-of-the-realm? Dumbed-down viewers simply don't know the difference.

Even our sexual icons have lost value: Marilyn Monroe was a dumb blond full of wistful humor and curiosity. Britney Spears is just dumb.

What's worse, the success of Spears and her MTV playmates sends a message that ignorance pays: Be alluring and provocative and life will take care of itself.

Sexuality, no matter how banal, is promoted as an achievement in and of itself.

And you don't even have to talk.

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Reality shows like ABC's ``The Bachelorette'' are turning talk of sex into the focus of national conversation.

ABC