Posted on 09/12/2009 3:43:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Cable television is a minefield of unspeakable raunch for children, who, like it or not, freely roam the hallways of this medium at night. The Parents Television Council has issued its list of the Top 10 Worst Cable TV Shows for Kids. One hopes that someone out there is shocked.
Leading the list is Comedy Central and its vile celebrity roasts. These mean-spirited and vile knockoffs are nothing like the sidesplitting, kid-because-we-love Dean Martin roasts of the '70s.
August's roast of Joan Rivers was the ugliest yet. Rivers came out on stage holding hands with six little kids of different nationalities and joked that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were having a yard sale. She shoved the kids and snapped: "All right, kids, go make jewelry!" Behind the kids' backs, she flipped a middle finger and said, "I hate children."
That was the tame part. The "comedian" Gilbert Gottfried yelled in his obnoxious high monotone that Robin Quivers, the sidekick to sleazy satellite-radio shock jock Howard Stern, is "proud" of being molested by her father and "won't shut up about it." Quivers is so ugly, thinks our funny man, that "Oh, the shame that poor man must have felt having to hide the fact that his molestation standards were so low!" Yuk, yuk.
The most familiar cable show that's not for children but watched by millions of them is "South Park," now in its 12th year on Comedy Central. The lowlight of the last season was the spoof of the Jonas Brothers, who apparently made grade-school girls want to perform oral sex. In this skit, the Jonas boys were pressed and even beaten to wear their purity rings by the dictatorial CEO of Disney, Mickey Mouse, who maniacally claimed he was selling sex to pre-teen girls and boasted, "I've made billions off Christian ignorance for decades now. And do you know why? Because Christians are retarded."
MTV and VH-1 each make the list for their reality shows that make a mockery of "love" in their titles. MTV's "Shot at Love" lined up both men and women to compete for the attention of aspiring Internet musician Tila Tequila, who's most recently been in the headlines as a victim of domestic violence. Then MTV multiplied the sleaze with "Double Shot of Love," again lining up men and women to compete for the attention of the "Ikki" twins, Rikki and Vikki Mongeon. If the setup doesn't send you lunging for the remote control, there are also stripping and underwear competitions, foul language and discussions of masturbation, group sex and other "love" topics.
For their "Love" shows, VH-1 has used washed-up '80s musicians: rapper Flavor Flav ("Flavor of Love") and former Poison lead singer Bret Michaels ("Rock of Love"). The two raunchy programs were successful enough that each of them had a spin-off starring a losing contestant ("I Love New York" and "Daisy of Love.") These reality shows often have scenes set in strip clubs, with the show contestants often acting like strippers, complete with blurred nudity and sexual situations. "Love" is never really found, since that would ruin the chances of yet another season of "reality."
But the very worst neighborhood for children seems to be the cable network FX, which secured five out of the top 10 worst spots. (Rupert Murdoch, take a bow, you "conservative" tycoon.) The most notorious FX show on the list is "Nip/Tuck," the dark and sick story of two amoral plastic surgeons, with plotlines including incest, necrophilia and bestiality. "Rescue Me," the firefighter drama with Denis Leary, has writers with a thing for coerced sex: marital rape, drugged-up sex and a father pushing his teenaged daughter to have sex with her boyfriend.
So much for firefighters being heroes.
The other three shows aren't as well known. There's Danny DeVito's oddly named "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," with classy episode titles such as "Who Pooped The Bed?" There's "Sons of Anarchy," based on a criminal motorcycle gang, which has featured a human castration and an ax going into a man's head, as well as references to necrophilia. "Testees," a show about two men who serve as "guinea pigs" for the corporation called "Testico," features bizarre sexual scenarios, fetishes, S&M, and couples shown during intercourse. Rounding out the PTC list as the most obscure entry is "Skins" on the BBC America channel, which featured teens using drugs, cursing, having sex and displaying a variety of sex toys.
Think about these shows the next time your child wants to watch TV alone downstairs.
I can understand the Joan Rivers roast being ugly, Joan Rivers herself is ugly, her comedy is ugly and no plastic surgeon in the world can change that.
This isnt a condemnation of cable TV , it is a condemnation of what people call funny these days. The real comedians are dead, and in thir place we get shock comedy or vulgar comedy.
These so-called comedians are not funny at all. Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, were funny and enjoyable to watch and listen to
Life is so much better without TV. We got rid of it three years ago and no one, including the kids, has any desire to bring it back.
It’s porn masquerading as comedy.
I have all the Dean Martin Roasts...now them was some great TV! :-)
Here are 2 clips I put up on YouTube....very funny stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEtDidm0pRE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OrE83eKGtk
Here are a few more clips put up by others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYusPRre07k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ALHiadIsKo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOhNHYcfZI
If parents are concerned about their unsupervised children watching these channels, the cable and satellite systems I’m familiar with have parental controls - they can lock out unwanted channels.
I agree that there’s a lot of garbage on TV, even the broadcast network sitcoms. I find myself watching the Military Channel, History Channels, Science and ID channels - even Disney and Nickelodeon.
I’d occasionally feel embarrassed about the last two until I found out I wasn’t the only older adult watching them. The subject came up when the bartender was channel surfing. I asked her to leave it on “Suite Life” and most of the people at the bar agreed. We were all tired of the gratuitous sex and violence found on most of the regular programs.
Yeah, they were funny
That’s about it
agreed. I cancelled my a few months ago, mostly due to economic reasons. What I have found is that I don’t miss anything except fox news. I make up for that loss on the net.
Comcast had a guy, just last night, going door to door in my neighborhood offering cable for half the price it was when I cancelled it (I was paying 57 per month for BASIC and they now offer over 120 channels plus free HBO for a year for 30 per month). I still told him no thanks. He looked despondent by the time he got to my door. I will no longer pay for programming that I had to endure commercials and the lame shows bordering on pornography when I can get programming for free and endure the commercials. I find myself not changing the commericals on my local stations anymore. They annoy me less because I am not paying for programming now, they are........
I got up early one morning and turn on the TV. As I was going from channel to channel I found a show where two women were selling sex toys for women.
Are we better off today then we were when we had standards?
All they want to do with their low offer is to lurk people to sign up. Six month later they raise the rates again. No thank you
Wow, even Freddie Prinz in there - that’s goin’ way back.
Seriously, when I was in college, working for the campus radio station, there was an unspoken rule of thumb - you always tried be creative and to entertain cleanly. If you didn’t, and had to resort to using cheap fallbacks like sex, it meant it was because you had run out of ideas, and was looked down on as a sort of failure to do the job.
So, judging by today’s proliference of porno-culture, it’s pretty obvious that the days of creative writers have passed. But why are people proud of it?
exactly. Empires are coming crashing down. This economy does have a silver lining. Customer service going up, prices coming down, uneccessary products and services are dying out, new, innovative programs coming up. It was long overdue IMHO.
Who in their right mind would even consider letting their children have access to any of those shows?
This was one the best of last season's shows. Either Brent Bozell is playing the shock game himself or his just has a bunch of sand somewhere there probably shouldn't be sand. Plus, V-Chip, it's standard on all TV sets and set-top boxes. Most of the shows are rated TV-14 or in the case of the FX shows, all TV-MA. No point in complaining, just block them if you don't want your kids watching it.
Don
t like Comedy Central block it.
Don’t like something block it.
Really its just not hard..
Thank you Bill Clinton. A huge contributer to the dumbing down of morals in this country.
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