Well, then, just think of the commercials as coming from an alternate dimension where hippies rule the earth. Take it as a cautionary tale.
The impression I’ve gotten is that you want society to change their collective attitudes about sex, thereby reducing, or, ideally (in your mind), eliminating pre-marital and extra-marital sex. That’s the same as “telling people what to do with their sex lives”, just as you do here:
You disguised it in your OP as a desire to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies in the US, but your proposed solution (i.e. “stigmatizing” pre-marital sex, as you suggest here) wouldn’t have as significant an effect on the unplanned pregnancy rate than improved availability/research/education on contraceptives. Why not promote something that can actually help solve the problem you seemed to care so much about in the OP? Because you want other people to live their lives the way you dictate. Why?
Or, as I said, write a letter to the station, or find an avenue of complaint that can REALLY make a difference. Again, I’ve never seen a GGW commercial in the afternoon – only in the evening.
Alternatively, you could lobby CBN, TBN, and the ABC Family Channel to start producing crappy made-for-TV “sci-fi” movies, and get into a bidding war to obtain syndication and production rights to Battlestar Galactica, the Stargate franchise, Babylon 5, and Lexx.
Well, maybe not Lexx. That Xev is practically a GGW commercial all by her ownself.
Yes, and I stand by that. There are a lot of family friendly channels out there. Tons of them.
Yes, really, they can. It does take some work on your part, because things change, and a station that at one point was going for the family friendly dollar might decide that there’s more cash to be made targeting adults. So, yeah, you have to pay attention to what’s going on, and maybe something you used to like goes in a direction you don’t care for. That’s life for you, though.
I never watched a lot of the SciFi Channel. I do know that, ten years ago, they used to run the show Lexx, which was border line soft-core porn. Five years ago they were showing the new Battlestar: Galactica, which while not sexually explicit, is one of the more violent television shows out there. I question the contention that the SciFi channel was ever a place one could blithely leave their children unsupervised. Particularly if your standard of inappropriateness is a commercial for Girls Gone Wild.
I’m sorry that you’re too busy to effectively parent your children, but I’m not sure how that’s suddenly my fault, let alone responsibility.
Morality is vanishing? Man, that’s news to me. Historically speaking, I don’t think you can do much better than contemporary Western society in terms of morals. I mean, fifty years ago, we had rampant, vicious, institutional racism through out the nation. That doesn’t strike me a moral society. A little more than a hundred years ago, fully half the adult population was forbidden to vote because they were born with tits. Is that more moral? Kids today might hear the f-word more often, but on the other hand, they’re not being worked to death in factories. So, that one’s probably a wash. But, yeah, when someone tells me we’re living in a time of moral decay, I gotta wonder what sort of mythical, moral past are they comparing it to?
That’s just what I’ve been saying. We do have both.
How am I supposed to do that? Do we pass a law? Cable companies are never allowed to change their formats? If they show one type of program, they can only ever show that type of program again, forever? Does this cut both ways? If Fox starts making shows without gratuitous sex, can the FCC fine them for not having enough dick jokes?
Look, it’s a free market. Companies go where the money is, and there’s a lot of money in sex. There’s a hell of a lot of money in family, too, and there’s plenty of people chasing that buck, too. As long as people have both options, from time to time some companies are going to reassess where their best interests lay. Sometimes that’s going to be in your favor. Other times it’s not. I can understand being frustrated when something you like turns into something you don’t. But you really don’t have any right to demand that they not change. It’s not your company. They’re not obligated to only carry stuff you want to see.
The SciFi Channel is not a right.
In that situation? No one is treading on anyone. Seriously, your rights are not even involved in that equation. A company has a right to decide what sort of product it makes. Consumers have a right to buy products they like. If nobody is making a product you like, that’s too bad, but no one is required to produce one for you.
Don’t worry about that. If I’m interpreting him correctly, he’s not only too busy, he’s also too childless, too virginal, and perhaps even too prepubescent.
I do not believe you. Basic cable and broadcast TV are not showing those commercials during prime time. Premium channels and after hours are another story.
I have never seen a “Girls Gone Wild” commercial. I guess my TV watching is too snooty.
I’ve seen them, and I dislike them, but I just change the channel/turn mute/turn tv OFF/turn my music louder. And I’ve seen them during late night Comedy Central, when I’m seeing stuff that is definitely NOT kid-appropriate (South Park the movie, for example).
I’m just amazed at how many young women have star-shaped “Order Now!” tattoos over their nipples. Must be the latest fad.
But the number is dropping. YOU MUST ADMIT THAT. Answer me that.
Is the number of family friendly channels dropping or not?
Last week sci fi was (reasonably) family friendly, at least on a Sunday afternoon. This week it’s not. So your contention that we can have plenty of family friendly commercials is tenuous. Sure we have Disney (although their morality lessons are in question these days - but that’s an argument for another time), Nickelodeon, and PBS, but channels that we think might be family friendly now might not be family friendly next week.
You admit that things are changing, but you apparently think we should just throw our hands up in the air and get on board because there is nothing we can do about it.
Well, that’s a reasonable argument, but you are sidestepping the point. Since morality is slipping, how long before the Discovery Channel starts to show girls gone wild commercials? How long before ABC does? CBS? NBC?
I told you that I wouldn’t parent like that. I said that the issue isn’t with me but with REAL parents. FREAKING READ!
"Of course I as a parent would be a bit more careful and I would watch it with him. I’m illustrating the more common family of today."
Those issues you brought up are not questions of morality. Morality is about gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity. You know… the same things that determine the ratings of a TV show, movie, game or CD. Racism and Sexism aren’t even criteria that the MPAA and others use to determine a show or movie’s ratings. So you tell me…
Is there more gratuitous sex in the world?
Is there more violence in the world?
Is there more profanity in the world?
The answer to all of those is a resounding YES!
We are living in a state of moral decay. People are more free today (and that’s certainly an improvement) but the free people are also more immoral.
I keep keep keep keep hammering this into your argument, for the SEVENTH TIME It’s not about TV!! This issue isn’t about my right to watch Sci Fi. It’s about my right to expect other people to keep their immoral actions from making my life and my children’s lives more immoral. THEY are intruding in MY life. Not the other way around.
Allowing… no… ENCOURAGING moral decay in the world does trample on my rights.
Believe it or not, it happened. Give it time. You’ll see a GGW commercial on in the afternoon.
Not yet.
Hmpf. That question was supposed to reveal that you are an evangelical theocrat, hence you’d reject it even if it worked.
I don’t know much about Buddhism either. IANAB. Thanks for answering.
ETA: Though I did actually have sex with a Buddhist.
Clearly Alx must steer his children toward old-fashioned, wholesome, family friendly diversions.
It’s a pity they don’t publicly behead people in the town square anymore. Kids used to love that. Then those filthy hippies kicked up a fuss and ruined it. I hate them.
Marriage is a right. Watching television is not. And even if you subscribe to standards for over-the-air broadcasts, the sole controls on what is carried on a cable franchise are, first, the company running that franchise, and second, the local government awarding it.
If you are offended by something carried on a cable channel, such as SyFy or the Discovery Channel, your recorse is to go to the company that owns the franchise or to the county, city, or alternatively tp whatever local government awarded the franchise to that company.
Profanity has nothing at all to do with morality.
Morality is about acts that are right or wrong in the eyes of the community. Profanity might or might not be about describing some of those acts.
At the very least help us out and point to your ideal society, past or present, in which everyone lived in pure harmony (and not fair considering Negroes and Chinamen an ‘afterthought’ or women’s inferior status as ‘the price that must be paid’).
No way is the number of family friendly channels dropping! Less than 20 years ago, a lot of homes had 13 channels on their televisions. Today, a standard cable package will get you hundreds, if not thousands. I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re too young to remember this.
The Mississippi River gets shorter every year by a few feet. This means that eventually St. Louis will be in New Orleans, right?
To be fair, the absolute numbers are on your side, but the percentages are on his. In the past, there might have been 13 channels but 100% of them were family-friendly (at least by modern standards). Then broadcasts after midnight became gradually more adult-oriented, the absolute number of channels began to grow, and now rape and torture are casually woven into 9 p.m. network dramas.
It’s still a crybaby argument, though; “protect me from the bad people!” I have to figure anyone who uses it for himself should lose all claim to adulthood, with voting and driving privilieges adjusted accordingly. Anyone who uses while claiming it’s for the protection of society needs an eyeroll of cosmic proportion.