# Tales of Parental Censorship--share 'em! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 7, 2002, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859 "2002-06-07T16:55:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dijon\_Warlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9a28c/32.png) [@Dijon\_Warlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dijon_Warlock)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/41 "2002-06-10T02:47:58Z")
**DarkWriter** : [Is this it???](http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?salesurl=Rshop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp&isbn=157912058X) ---
**Author:** ![DarkWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee59a6/32.png) [@DarkWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarkWriter)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/42 "2002-06-10T03:45:43Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by LifeOnWry \* > \*\*\*\* DarkWriter_\* : Off topic, but I remember that Beatles book. It’s called The Illustrated Beatles, and you should be able to look it up on Amazon or [half.com](http://half.com). IIRC, only a few pics were done in Yellow Submarine style. I remember the illustrations for Lady Madonna and Martha My Dear vividly – the first was a sort of Heironymus-Bosch-meets-Boris-Vallejo thing, the second was a simple photo of Paul McCarthy sitting on a stoop with an English sheepdog. \*\* Hey, thanks! I was able to find one on Ebay. Actually, there are several listed, so hopefully I’ll get one! Sheri ---
**Author:** ![DarkWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee59a6/32.png) [@DarkWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarkWriter)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/43 "2002-06-10T03:48:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dijon Warlock \* > \*\ ***DarkWriter** : > > [Is this it???](http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?salesurl=Rshop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp&isbn=157912058X) \*\* I’m pretty sure it is - but my copy looked like [this.](http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=882088028) Thank you for taking the time to look it up! 🙂 Sheri ---
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/44 "2002-06-10T06:55:06Z")
Growing up I never had anything censored by my parents. I had my own TV and could watch whatever I wanted on the pay channels we received. I didn’t have a radio though so I didn’t listen to over the air music, but I’d listen to my friends Metallica tapes. I was allowed to play any computer games I wanted even strip poker on the C=64. I guess since you couldn’t really see anything on them my parents didn’t care. ---
**Author:** ![Sunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Sunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunshine)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/45 "2002-06-10T21:17:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dead0man \* > \*\*The made for TV movie _The Day After_ was censored. \*\* Reading this thread, I was thinking “Wow, my parents NEVER censored ANYTHING!” and then I got to **dead0man’s** post here and remembered when this movie came out. I guess I was prolly 8 or 9 years old too, and our school sent home a note warning parents of the upcoming movie and recommending that we NOT be allowed to watch it because it would be too scary. My parents debated it for a while and finally decided that they would follow the school’s advice and not let me watch it. I can distinctly remember the REST of my family sitting down to watch it and me having to go to my room for the duration. They way they explained it to me made me actually afraid to leave my room and accidentally catch a glimpse of something so horrifying that it would scar me for life. And then after it was on, at school half the kids got to watch it anyway and told us all about it. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/46 "2002-06-10T22:12:45Z")
I can’t think of a single case of censorship during my childhood. My life practically overflowed with books of all kind, and none of them were off-limits unless someone else was actively engaged in reading them at the time. Likewise, my brother and I were allowed to watch anything we wanted on TV, although we were required to negotiate scheduling conflicts in a civilized manner. We didn’t watch that much TV though–we all had “whole box of cigars” syndrome; we spent so much time in the family TV shop that the last thing we wanted to do was look at the boob tube when we got home. As I recall, we watched M_A_S\*H fairly often, and my brother and I watched Saturday morning cartoons and a couple of nature shows regularly. We spent the rest of our leisure time reading and fiddling with computers. My brother and I watched _The Day After_ but frankly, after some of the things we had read, it didn’t impress us much. We knew the current theories about the effects of a nuclear war quite well, and spent more time critiquing the production than listening to the “message”. ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2002, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/47 "2002-06-10T22:24:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Weird\_AL\_Einstein \* > \*\*Ahhhh…this, _this_ is the thread I’ve been waiting for all my life. In a game of parental censorship Can You Top This, I do believe I will be the winner. When I was seventeen…_seventeen_, a few months from being a legal adult…my parents tried, unsucessfully, to prevent me from seeing “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”. > > Top that. \*\* hell, I think I already did. I was 21/22 years old, and wasn’t allowed to go to a [JOan Baez](http://baez.woz.org/jbchron.html) concert ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/48 "2002-06-11T03:53:58Z")
Unofficially counting most of these posts come from post-Baby Boomers … Unofficially counting most of these post-Baby Boomer posts endured censorship at home … No wonder you guys are so screwed up! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Melandry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Melandry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melandry)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/49 "2002-06-11T04:01:03Z")
I wasn’t allowed to see a single movie that wasn’t by Disney until I turned 13 and could ‘legally’ see PG-13 movies on my own. ---
**Author:** ![Melandry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Melandry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melandry)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/50 "2002-06-11T04:03:14Z")
Oh, and when I was 8 or 9 and started reading _Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret_ (I was an advanced reader) my mom clamped down on that real quick. Still haven’t read that book. ---
**Author:** ![heresiarch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@heresiarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heresiarch)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/51 "2002-06-11T04:21:01Z")
When I lived in Santa Barbara there was this beautiful girl that lived about a block away from me. Every day, on her way to school, she would stop and _take off her bra_! I got a little thrill out of waiting for her every morning and watching her through the curtains. But then my Mom found out and made me stop. ☹ I always wanted to talk to that girl, but I was too shy. I wonder what happened to her. Her name was Lisa-something… ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/52 "2002-06-11T07:55:11Z")
My Mom wouldn’t let me go see _Star Wars_ when it first came out (6 years old), and I had to wait for the pre-ESB re-release to see it. I did get some of the action figures for Christmas, though. Looking back, I don’t think I would have gotten much out of it at that age. I was also forbidden to watch _The Day After_, but other than that my TV viewing wasn’t very censored, and my reading and listening material not at all. Of course, I did plenty of sneaking downstairs late at night to watch the Cinemax Friday Night movies. By the time I went away to college, I had an encyclopedic knowledge of the softcore porn genre. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/53 "2002-06-11T12:45:08Z")
One of my friend’s dad used to make copies of every movie they wanted to watch and would edit out all the sex, violence, and majority of profanity from them before allowing the kids to watch them. They have hundreds of VHS copies of rated R movies butchered worse than anything network television could do. I find that hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Hamadryad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6de8d8/32.png) [@Hamadryad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamadryad)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/54 "2002-06-11T12:57:01Z")
I’m thinking really hard and I can’t recall any actual censorship at all. We were only allowed to watch PBS when I was little, but game shows and soap operas (the only other things available in the '70s) bored me anyhow. I don’t recall my parents censoring any movies, books or magazines. How weird. ---
**Author:** ![Caricci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@Caricci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caricci)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859/55 "2002-06-11T13:09:04Z")
Top this: I wasn’t allowed to speak the name of Simon Bar Sinister, who was a villain on Underdog. Apparently his name was a take off on some famous guy in Jewish history and my mom was the Hebrew Reader at her seminary and all full of herself. She now admits that it was dumb. I am working on convincing her it was idiotic. Oh, and my dad took us to see Woodstock in the Drive-In and drove around during the scenes of nude bathing. Not nearly as stupid, butI will say that he only took us to see that movie because HE wanted to see it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-parental-censorship-share-em/112859.md?page=2)