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If I am home tonight and not otherwise occupied, I plan
to watch Desperate Housewives,
as usual. It is sharp
and wicked funny, and besides, I like raunchy
entertainment.
Granted, there are people who do not, and they are fond of complaining about how America is being debased and debauched. And I am sick of their whining.
When I was a kid, there were no remote controls for TV sets; you had to get up and cross the room.
Today, you can control the set from your couch just by
aiming the remote and moving your fingers. It is far easier
to change the channel, or to turn the set off and read a
good book, than it ever has been. No one holds a gun to
anyone's head and says Watch this or else, and if I see
your eyelids droop, you're toast.
So why all the squawking? And why does anyone take these complaints seriously, since no matter what you put in front of the public, it will annoy somebody?
Politically, the pressure for purity comes from both
left and right. The left-wing puritans attack ethnic jokes
as hate speech,
and the mildest double entendre can
contribute to a hostile work-place environment.
They
hate humor, perhaps because they're scared that sane people
will start laughing at how inane they are.
The right-wing puritans hold considerable power these days, and they boast about it. Just check with one of their prominent organizations, the American Family Association.
If the AFA wanted to urge its member families to do something else on Sunday night, like go to church, play a board game or volunteer at a homeless shelter, that would be one thing.
But instead, the AFA tells its followers to send
messages, via telephone and email, to firms that advertise
on Desperate Housewives,
explaining how they are
supporting a show that fails to protect
children.
To some degree, this works. After the AFA assault started last month, Lowe's and Tyson announced they would quit advertising on the show, and Con Agra, although it made no formal announcement, had quit advertising its packaged foods.
Then OneMillionDads.com, an AFA subsidiary, boasts about
how it has advanced righteousness by attacking advertisers
on Desperate Housewives,
along with many other
programs, ranging from Footlocker on South Park
to
State Farm Insurance on Law and Order.
Why do they do this? We do not tell them what to watch, hear or read, so why do they feel compelled to try to control what we see and hear?
As the AFA explained in its attack on a cross-promotion
for Desperate Housewives on ABC Monday Night Football
Tens of thousands of young children tuned to ABC
expecting a football game. Instead, they got a despicable
pornographic scene.
What do you see at a pro football game? Painted half-naked drunk guys in the stands. Provocative gyrations from scantily clad cheerleaders on the sidelines. Intense violence and wrenching injury on the field. This is what a pro-family organization thinks is good for children?
But I don't care. I'm an adult. I pay for my TV set and
the satellite service. I can handle Saving Private
Ryan,
Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction
and
Desperate Housewives.
I know how to change channels
or to turn it off for Howard Stern.
Unlike the millions of lazy American parents who expect their TV sets to rear their children, my wife and I did not put a TV set in our daughters' bedrooms. We kept our TV right out in plain sight, and when our kids turned to something unsuitable, we turned it off.
Sure, sometimes our kids sampled questionable fare while
visiting friends. They'd tell us all about it, how one
family watched MTV all the time and another watched
really gross movies.
Our goal was not to shield our
children from the world and thereby make them ignorant and
vulnerable. It was to help them develop a sense of what was
right and wrong and worthy.
Maybe more parents should try that approach, instead of expecting TV networks to raise their children for them, and thus demanding that all American adults to be treated like children. Why can't they spend some time with their own children, instead of trying to control what the rest of us watch?
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