Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Sad State of Affairs

A recent study by the Parents' Television Council found that visual references to voyerism and sadomasachistic sex outnumbered married sex by 3 to 1.
References to adultery outnumbered references to healthy marraiges by 2 to 1 and the highest references to adultery were packed into the "family hour" or the first hour of evening programming children are expected to watch.
They also found that the current system for labeling shows with sexual content as a warning to parents was inconsistent, at best. The Council stated that prime-time TV "seems to be actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently painting it in a negative light."

Well, who runs prime-time TV? God? nope. So, yes, the force that is driving prime-time TV is relishing the fact that marriage looks boring and lame. He is doing all he can to put the worst stuff on at the time when the kids are there to soak it in. No surprise there. Appalling, yes. Surprising, no.

This is another example of committees and councils blaming anyone but the parents for what the children are exposed to. (They're pushing for stricter government regulation because of the findings.) It's the PARENTS' responsibility to check out the shows they're putting their kids in front of. I think, if you can judge character well at all, you should be able to watch one, maybe two episodes of a show you've never seen before to know if it tends toward objectionable content. You could probably even just read a review somewhere online and know. It's not that hard parents! And since when do we have a RIGHT to be able to have a certain number of tv shows that aren't objectionable? How long has tv been around folks? Just since the 1930's. Maybe we should dry plopping kids down infront of the radio like they did then. They won't see sex scenes there.
Ok, I'm really not that extreme. I'm just trying to battle the entitlement syndrome. I plan on letting Eden watch TV, but we'll probably have a lot of DVDs and just a few shows that she's allowed to watch. From the sound of things, we may only let her watch pre-recorded things while she's little, we'll see. You can't even trust Sesame Street anymore. I remember seeing a skit years ago where a little bird was flying from one nest to the other to visit his two sets of parents and singing about how it was perfectly normal and ok. Just a note on that: I understand that divorce is a real part of a lot of kids' lives, but that doesn't mean I want Eden to think it's normal and ok. There's a difference between a disease running rampant, a plague, and a normal, healthy human being. Catch my drift?

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