Just Evil Enough

Chapter 22:

 

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An 1816 article in The Times called waltzing an “obscene display” of “prostitutes.”¹ A century later, the tango was “the lowest and filthiest form of human amusement imaginable.”² These sentiments are far away from today’s festival culture, where events like Lollapalooza and Electric Daisy Carnival draw hundreds of thousands of revelers.

Joseph Lehman popularized the idea of the Overton Window based on the work of political analyst Joseph P. Overton.³ He said that in any culture, there’s a spectrum of acceptable discourse. Some ideas are widely accepted as fact; some are tolerated; some are controversial; and some are simply taboo. As cultural norms shift, they change which laws legislators can enact. Today, for ...