Thoughts Of The Moment from Katie's Dad

Name:
Location: Near Reading, Pennsylvania, United States

"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Benjamin Franklin

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Lord protect Us From Our Protectors

So tell me ..... When is enough enough? Don't these people have something more important to worry about? After all 24 is my favorite show. Maybe we should send Jack Bauer to Washington.

" .... .But don't relax yet, River City: the guardians of decency are warning about new trouble, with a capital T, which rhymes with V, which stands for violence. The Parents Television Council (PTC), the group at the vanguard of the TV-sex wars, has lately focused on prime-time blood: power-tool torture on 24, serial killing on Criminal Minds, vivisection on Heroes. And the FCC has prepared a draft report suggesting that Congress authorize it to regulate broadcast violence, as it now does obscenity, and possibly force cable companies to let subscribers opt out of paying for channels that run brutal content....

To suggest that children need federal protection from "accidentally" watching shows well known to be violent at best lets parents off the hook and at worst masks an agenda: to prevent other parents from making choices that antiviolence activists disagree with.....

Certainly, many families want alternatives to violent TV. And guess what? They have them and, amazingly, can wield a remote well enough to find them. Family-friendly American Idol is the biggest show on TV. Cable, that font of gore, offers more family and documentary shows than ever were available in the three-channel era. But if politicians simply respected the audience's choices, stopped posturing against theoretical violence and fictional bad guys, they would have to focus on, say, the thornier problems of stopping actual bloodshed in the real world.There's a term for that in the entertainment business. They call it escapism."

The Coming Fight Over TV Gore - Time