Brent Bozell: Culture Warrior
For those of you who don’t know who Brent Bozell is, here’s a quick rundown: he’s the nephew of William F. Buckley and one of the many “decency” advocates on the right. He’s the founder of the Parents Television Council and the Media Research Center, which exist to piss and moan about “indecency” on network TV and librul bias in the media, respectively. You can sometimes see him on Sean Hannity’s show as the two throw pity parties for themselves.
Oh, and he looks like this.
Needless to say, most of his columns are pathetic drivel. His most recent output was just too stupid to resist mockery though. Without further ado, I’ll once again make a shitty attempt at being funny by parsing an idiotic column.
A man wearing a Santa hat sits on a roof. He’s talking to his ex-girlfriend on a cell phone, trying with feigned cheer to wish her a Merry Christmas. He asks if she’s with her new boyfriend. Yes, she replies, and she’s with her whole family, opening presents. He says, “That’s great, because I have a present for you,” and he saws off his own head so it falls down the chimney into the fireplace.
Shocking! Wait, it’s 1963, right?
This isn’t a horror movie. It’s a cartoon, filmed in stop-motion animation, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” It runs on the Cartoon Network, which is owned by Time Warner. And it’s aimed at children.
It’s beside the point, but if it’s in stop motion, it’s not really a cartoon. Anyway, back to the idiocy.
This horrific little severed-head sketch was part of a show called “Robot Chicken,” which has aired for years on this network. Nobody watches that, you say. Think again: “Robot Chicken” has turned up on a list of the Top 25 shows watched by children aged 12 to 17.
This show does sound stupid as fuck and I’ve never watched it, but for crissake Brent, I think most 17 year-olds can handle seeing a puppet die on TV.
Some might say all this “fun” is clearly designed for young adults, not children. It’s after dark, when the Cartoon Network turns — from Jekyll to Hyde — into the Adult Swim Channel. But that’s not at midnight. Since December, it’s been moved into prime time at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central. Even before that, Nielsen reported in 2008 that the top U.S. networks for teenagers were Fox, Nickelodeon, Disney … and Adult Swim.
Well, I’m no self-proclaimed media expert, but couldn’t some of those teenagers be 18 or 19, making them, by definition, “young adults?” Even if they’re not, who cares? I used to watch SNL, The Daily Show and, yes, even R-rated movies when I was in my early teens, and I never brought a gun to school. Society will not crumble because some kid sees an episode of Family Guy.
Speaking of Christmas,
No one was speaking of Christmas. You mentioned December in your last paragraph, but not Christmas. You’re just using this as a segway to make your asinine point.
that show also has a cartoon of a man tied up for a stoning, with Jesus saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Ahhh, so that’s where you’re going with this. Can we break out the violins for Brent and all the other persecuted white male Christians?
As men beginning dropping their rocks, Jesus then whacks the tied-up man in the head with a rock and yells “Blammo!” Mocking Jesus is an ongoing theme; In another skit called “Jesus and the Argonauts,” when all his men leave, Jesus complains “Oh, Dad damn it!”
Jokes with Biblical allusions? Unheard of!
This does bring up an interesting point though. Brent is very fond of complaining about the supposed double standard when it comes to Muslims, as in “what if Lady Gaga had made a song making fun of Mooslims? How would teh librul media react then?” I posit the same question to him here. How would you, Brent Bozell, feel if this show mocked Mohammed instead of Jesus? Would you spring to the defense of those offended? Did you slam South Park for their Mohammed parody? I’m guessing not.
In a new survey of the top 20 animated cable shows, the Parents Television Council gave an A grade to Disney and Nickelodeon for its top cartoons. But the Cartoon Network and its “Adult Swim” bloc earned an F for excessive sex, violence, profanity, and drug use.
Parents Television Council…where have we encountered them before? Oh right, they’re one of the organizations founded by Brent Bozell. So to recap, Brent is backing up his opinion with a study done by a group that he runs.
In watching just 123 programs in a four-week study period, the PTC documented one thousand four hundred and eighty-seven examples of offensive material … on cartoons. On average, young viewers were exposed to this junk once every two minutes and 19 seconds.
1. The PTC’s definition of “offensive” material is extremely broad. Don’t believe me? Check out their website. Only Minute to Win It and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition got primetime “green lights.”
2. Again, Bozell founded the PTC. This is like citing a book you wrote in a research paper.
Skipping a repetitive few paragraphs:
These cartoons were loaded with 565 incidents of explicit language — much of it bleeped out of necessity, even by today’s bohemian standards. For example, in one “American Dad” show, the teen character Barry screams into the school public-address system that “You [bleeps] are going to do what I say or I will put my [bleeped G.D.] foot so far up your [bleeped A-word] you will rue the day that you crawled out of your mother’s [bleep].”
Dude. The words are bleeped out. If you know what they’re bleeping out, your innocence has already been spoiled, and if you don’t, well, you’re either very young or very sheltered. Plus, there’s always the option of not watching or allowing your children to watch these shows. I thought conservatives supported personal responsibility. Why does Brent Bozell hate America?
In another “Dad” episode, Francine, the sitcom’s mother character, hates George Clooney so much that when her husband calls Clooney a “future Senator from California,” she explodes. “Oh, I will chop his [bleeped F-bomb] head in two.” It’s a violence-and-profanity two-fer.
On one hand, props for sticking up for the notoriously liberal Clooney. On the other hand, your basic lack of understanding of dark humor takes away those props I just gave you plus some more, meaning you now have negative props.
There were 242 references to drug use. Here again was Adult Swim, replaying a “King of the Hill” show where a friend tricks young Bobby into making crystal meth for a science project at school. She later tricks him into making more drugs at home and sells the meth to a trucker. It’s another uplifting plot line for children, don’t you think?
Pssst, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but most kids are aware that illegal durgs exist. Once again, if you don’t want your own children being exposed to the horrors of animated crystal meth, don’t let them watch this show.
If you think this isn’t aiming “adult” material squarely at children, check out how this network often rates its sleazy programming: TV-PG, or acceptable for children under 14 with parental guidance “suggested.”
Because kids under 14 have no idea that there’s such a thing as drug abuse. We’re right back at that personal responsibility line again, aren’t we? If you’re worried about what your kids watch on TV, maybe you should provide some of that parental guidance the network suggests. Until then, please stop trying to tell me what I can and can’t watch.