Instead of driving traffic to a publication supporting the vile and crude mentality of a teenage-centric cable channel, I hope to keep you here long enough for us to chat about TV’s latest below-the-belt blow to our youngsters.
There’s a repulsive show that featured blood dripping from a cheerleader during that time of the month onto a boy’s face while he held her up for a stunt. This show airs at 10 PM. The premise of said show is the size of a teen boy’s private part.
Did this pique your interest? That was precisely the intention of the unmentionable show’s creator. Just look at what he tweeted:
The Parents Television Council (PTC) is again on the front lines of a bloddy battle with buggle calls to this shameful scene and warning parents about it. The PTC is also challenging advertisers like Burger King and Taco Bell to pull their ads from this program.
The Daily News offered up an article blasting the PTC for calling out a despicable show called “The Hard Times of R.J. Berger” which airs on MTV. The article excoriates the PTC for bringing attention to the TV program instead of advocating education for kids about these shows and their raunchy content through parenting.
The author wrote, “My 16-year-old mind also grasped immediately that this simple drop of blood, while wince-inducing, was the penalty Miles got for joining the cheerleading squad for the wrong reasons.”
He then went on to ask, “You'd think the adults at the PTC should have seen that too, right? Probably not, since the PTC press release warns that the show is not only “distasteful,” but “dangerous to teens?” Really? Dangerous to teens? Driving drunk is a danger to teens. Smoking, sure, is a danger to teens. TV? Not so much.
As usual, not one word of the PTC's attack suggests parents take some interest in what their kids are watching. It doesn't suggest they use the V-chip to block offensive programming. Nor does it say, hey, folks, sit down and watch TV with your kids.
Of course, that would be slapping the hand that feeds the PTC. Failing to do that, though, is much more dangerous than an MTV show will ever be.”
There are several sides to this situation which I’ll try to outline.
First, many claim that the PTC exacerbates the problem by helping increase awareness about these shows’ existence, and therefore reaching more kids because of the fuss it makes calling attention to them. They think the PTC should INSTEAD maintain a stance on simply warning parents to control the remote, have the talk with kids, or sit and actually watch these shows with their minors.
The other side of the argument is that by making a big deal about each moral and unethical show or scene that airs, this organization tries hard to call out the uncommon behavior these shows are making light of so they DON’T become common place.
By ensuring news about these crude scenes hit the media, viewers become sensitized about the exception to the golden rule the writers, producers and everyone associated with the base content of shows like this are making.
Like I wrote on this previous post, uncommon violations to our moral or honor code should make the news precisely so they don’t become common.
I call foul and sensazionalizing on the part of the Daily News because the author didn’t do his fact-checking about the premise for his article against the PTC’s mission. Simply take a tour of their website and you’ll read all about how to TRY to manage all the garbage on (M)TV lately, as well as a rating system (per the PTC, not the networks), and other useful tools for parents to fight back the assault on their kids' moral sanity. (By the way, in an ironic twist, thanks to this daily for helping to get the word out about this bloody mess, too.)
What do you think, is it right, wrong, or somewhere in between to make a big deal about this show's crude scene so parents are aware of it, as well as alerting advertisers about the association of their product with questionable TV content?
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