Kevin's Royals Blog: Quick Thoughts For The Weekend

Quick Thoughts For The Weekend

I think I had some bad Waffle House food last night, so because I’m feeling pretty nauseous and tired, I’m taking a break from breaking down the Royals. In place of the usual, here are some fairly quick and lovely notes:

I know a lot of you find my fascination with the talentless Ashlee Simpson to be a little bit strange, so I want to clear a few things up. Yes, I have given some thought to turning over the designation of Official Fantasy Girl to Katie Holmes. Additionally, I do not in any way think Ashlee has any singing or dancing talent, nor do I get the impression that she’s an extremely nice or generous person. But on a Cuteness Scale of one to ten, my opinion is that she rates a twelve, so she gets to stay … for now. However, even I have limits, and one more horrible performance like her screechtastic Orange Bowl halftime show will probably cause me to bring in Holmes from the bullpen.

Earlier this SMS Bears basketball season, I briefly mentioned an ugly 64-51 win over Arkansas-Little Rock and at the time didn’t think the Bears could play worse basketball and still win. Last night, however, they proved me wrong, beating Indiana State 58-34. No matter if the SMS defense was really that stifling, if Larry Bird U just had one of those nights, or if it was a combination of the two, the Sycamores were downright terrible, especially after halftime. In a second half in which they scored all of 14 points, ISU committed 20 turnovers, shot 14.3 percent from the field (4-28), and made only two of their nine three-point attempts. The Fighting Hinsons weren’t much better, making just 37 percent of their shots and hitting one out of ten three-point tries for the game.

The only thing that saved this game from being a complete snoozefest were slam dunks from small guards like Blake Ahearn and Deke Thompson, yelling at the referees just for the heck of it, and watching Tyler Chaney repeatedly fall down and not be able to handle the basketball cleanly. Chanes, you’re a heck of a good basketball player and a nice guy, but let’s try to be more like Jason Kidd than Ken Harvey, okay?

Very few things get me riled up to the point where I start spewing brash opinions left and right, so when I see something that really makes me angry, I tend to use a lot of pent-up energy on it. Two of those things – censorship and irresponsible parenting – are directly related, in my opinion. When I read a headline on Yahoo! saying Study: MTV Delivers a Diet of ‘Sleaze’ I had a pretty good feeling both of the aforementioned categories would apply. Reading the first three paragraphs of the article would confirm my hunch:

NEW YORK - Approaching the first anniversary of Janet Jackson's famed wardrobe malfunction, a study released Tuesday criticized MTV for the "incessant sleaze" of steamy programming aimed at young people.

During one week last March, the watchdog Parents Television Council said it counted 3,056 flashes of nudity or sexual situations and 2,881 verbal references to sex.

"MTV has clearly chosen to cater to the lowest common denominator, to offer the cheapest form of programming to entice young boys ... dangling forbidden fruit before their eyes," said Brent Bozell, PTC president and conservative activist.

This bothers me for a couple of reasons. First, I think it’s extremely disturbing that a topic like sex is considered so taboo by parents that a "watchdog Parents Television Council" took the time to count each flash of nudity and verbal references during a one-week period on MTV. Second, it seems to me that the sexually charged programming there isn’t intended to be watched by people under 14, hence the TV-14 rating many of MTV’s shows probably have. (This is an assumption, I was unable to find TV ratings early this morning.) Moving on down the article …

Thompson said the report offers valuable consciousness-raising, particularly when many children have televisions in their bedrooms that aren't monitored by parents. He said, though, that it's dangerous to leap to a conclusion that MTV's programs influence young people's behavior.

Here’s where the irresponsible parenting comes into play. Does anyone else think it’s at least a small bit hypocritical for parents to allow their children to have a television in his or room and then criticize the network for the child watching its programming? The way I see it, if a parent doesn’t want his or her son or daughter to see shows like One Bad Trip, Room Raiders, or any of the spring break-related stuff, the solution is to be a parent and take the TV away. If you don’t want your child to watch college-aged people taking body shots off each other, then do what you think is right, and eliminate the possibility directly. It terrifies me that today’s parents believe that TV shows are going to corrupt their child. I don’t think this would even be an issue if moms and dads were actually teaching their kids right from wrong, if only because a child who understands how to lead a good life showing respect for others isn’t going to put much stock in reality television.

Poor parenting is a serious, serious problem we haven’t even begun to address as a nation. We’re too busy blaming Comedy Central for South Park and MTV for Laguna Beach. It’s really pretty simple: If a large percentage of this generation of 14- to 18-year-olds turn into hooligans because of things they saw on TV, the consequences of that should fall directly on the shoulders of their guardians. It’s time to attack the real problem.

In-Case-You-Missed-It Reading:

My Updated Starting Rotation (Thursday)
The Fantastic Four (Wednesday)
A Bad Start To February (Tuesday)
Battle Of The Backstops (Monday)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 04, 2005 at 2/04/2005 01:57:00 AM. |

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