Don’t look now, but slowly and surely—and insidiously—sex has come back to local TV screens, sometimes as early as the daytime and even morning hours! Do we have to state the obvious, that TV is a mass medium that enters people’s homes, so what it shows has to be For General Patronage, because vulnerable minors are watching?
If that’s so “stupidly” obvious, why do some shows still pollute our screens with sexy, randy and scurrilous “information” and “entertainment?” Either some TV people are as clueless as Inspector Closseau, or they’re flouting the rules intentionally, just to make their shows more popular, exciting and profitably controversial—and to see if they can get away with it!
‘Murder,’ no less
Well, it looks like they are getting away with murder—at least the “murder” of vulnerable, young sensibilities—because they continue to do their worst. And our government and citizens’ regulatory bodies, not to mention parents and teachers who view their excesses, aren’t complaining—at least not loudly enough to put a stop to their officially and legally disallowed practices.
Do concerned viewers feel that it’s useless to complain? Ah, then they’re playing right into the hands of the scurrilous sex-mongers and “sex-mongrels.” By feeling so impotent, they have rendered inutile their individual and collective Viewer Power, which has in the past effectively counteracted, vetted and vetoed other flagrant excesses on the tube.
Stinky, ‘winky’
Current “sexy” gambits on daytime TV are there for everyone to see and call regulatory bodies and erring channels’ attention to: dancers graphically gyrating in itsy-bitsy mini-bikinis on noontime shows; purple and below-the-belt innuendoes in randy program hosts’ leering patter; guests in interview programs blithely talking about scorchingly adult topics, experiences and unusual relationships; “advice” shows going even more grossly graphic; unmentionables not just being mentioned but actually flaunted, both in terms of visuals and “aurals”—from morning till night, a stinky, winky, and flatulently fetid montage of outrageous sights and frights.
A particularly disturbing spectacle recently presented itself as an educational discussion of what we can most politely describe as different sizes and abilities of various exterior sexual characteristics, orifices or protrusions. Is that polite enough for you? If not, it’s the best we can do!
The enthusiastic and sometimes even giggling and gleeful discussion was made even more of a major caution by the fact it was conducted on a morning talk-variety show. Did the TV people involved even consider the appropriateness of the discussion to their show’s time slot, and the likelihood that young viewers were watching? And, did the show’s adult viewers have apprehensions, if any, about how their young children would take the scorchingly detailed discussion?
If the answer to both questions is no, then we’ve got a really huge problem to solve—to save our vulnerable children from some errant and aberrant TV people, and from our clueless selves!