Take this V Chip and…..

It seems like every few years someone, be they on the left or the right, has to start screaming hysterics about the content of television and radio programming. If the fact that we now have a far more active attempt to have the State regulate what you can and can’t say about any subject, including the current President’s performance in office, the sick humor of the whole situation would make it more entertaining than threatening.
The vituperative outrage from our Self Appointed Guardians of The Republic seems to ignore the fact that we’ve had this debate before. The outcome in one instance was the creation of a “protect the innocent children” system that promised us a technological solution to this “problem,” and was heralded by “parents” as the solution that would save the nation. Years later, we find that this great (and expensive) system is largely unused by the people who demanded it so fiercely in the first place.
Today’s LA Times has an interesting retrospective on the V Chip solution/debacle, and points out that theoretically, we already have a system in place that has been proven to work, allowing parents to protect the kiddies from Bad Things.
And yet, the Hysterical Parents don’t use it at all, instead more interested in telling adults who’d like to watch some entertainment that doesn’t involve a purple dinosaur or mumbling British puppets that they can’t watch anything that might hurt their little dears’ ears and eyes.
Quick Recap: When you buy a new television, it has what’s called a “V Chip” in it, as required by law. Adding in this little bit of circuitry increased the price of your TV, but only slightly. By using your remote control, you can decide what programs can be watched on that TV, and which cannot, using the V Chip’s ability to display, or not display, programming based on the parameters the user decides.
As it stands, the parents that are most likely to whine and moan about such things are also most likely to be the sort of people who buy new TVs. So, in theory, these models of “parenting” have the power, with a few clicks, to block out the entire FOX network, and protect their kids from certain damnation to hell.
Likewise, other parents can block out the entire Trinity Broadcasting Network, and protect their kids from certain damnation to hell. This would seem to be a good solution for everyone, since allows a household to decide what it would like to see for themselves, and no one else.
The problem is of course, after all the expense of developing such a system, no one uses it. I’m really not interested in hearing the bullshit excuses people offer when asked why they don’t use the V Chip system. We would seem to have an idea response that’s in place, and allows individuals to make their own decisions as to what to watch. Yet it’s the people who demanded it in the first place who are now the ones not using it. Meanwhile intelligent, rational individuals have to pay the V Chip “tax” when they buy a TV. Thanks, guys!
When I think of all the hysterics that the Congress and our Defenders went through to ram this system through the regulatory process, the expense and hassle it created when it was established, only to see it go unused, it makes one’s head spin.
Frankly, any so-called “parent” who whines about the state of the media today, and yet does not spend the 15 minutes it takes to set up their own household using the V Chip system, is an idiot. And their stupidity, as it gets passed down to their own precious offspring, is a far greater threat to civic, moral, and social fabric of the nation than anything on the FOX network.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com

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