moral panic: "Rainbow Party"

what is moral panic?
A moral panic refers to the reaction of a group of people based on the false belief that another sub-culture or a group poses danger to the society. They perceive that group as being a major threat to their social values and culture. Since these panics often cause social tensions, they are not open for discussion in public.

The major impetus for these panics is provided by the media. Moral panic is often expressed as anger than fear. These panics generally have a variety of outcomes. Moral panics are only semi-spontaneous. The term moral panic is coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 for describing media coverage of Mods and Rockers in UK in 1960s.

The most common themes in moral panics are the influences and behaviors of young people. The term moral panic is of recent one. But many social scientists are of view that the in-depth study of this phenomenon is conducted in 1925 itself.

Rainbow Parties

 

 

We Heard About It From:
The Queen of Believing Anything, Oprah Winfrey.
The "Threat:"
"Rainbow Party." Doesn't sound too bad, right? It could be a coloring party for kids, or a house decorating get-together. Maybe some kind of friendly gay pride thing.
But no, according to a guest featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, rainbow parties were wild, oral sex parties that were being held by teenagers all over America. At these orgies, each girl would wear a different shade of lipstick and as they each serviced a lucky guy in sequence, it'd leave a "rainbow" of colors on his dong.

The story was so widely believed that sex educators across the country started to investigate. Simon & Schuster quickly published a young adult novel imaginatively entitled Rainbow Party to warn of the non-existent danger. Don't bother reading it. We flipped right to the end and the party never happens. Turns out the girl's dad comes home early, so the party gets canceled. Fucking douche!

It didn't matter, the damage was done. Once the teen literature industry dips its filthy beak into something, the moral panic is on.
But alas, as awesome as these parties sound, they turned out to be absolutely, tragically, untrue. According to that wicked cool newspaper for kids, The New York Times, sex educators couldn't find any evidence of even one rainbow party having taken place, ever.
Teens were aware of the slang, but no one had ever been to an actual Rainbow Party. And that's remarkable because it just sounds so totally plausible, and not like something a 15-year-old boy thought up during a masturbation fantasy. Relieved, the busybodies of the world went back to worrying about their neighbor's uncut grass.

reference link:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17040_the-6-most-insane-moral-panics-in-american-history.html