BY: JOE YATES
After a class assignment was made this semester, I decided to take it one step further in my continuing efforts to make something out of nothing. The assignment itself was a research paper concerning the effects of sex and violence on television.
In my study of this subject, I found a large amount of material in the form of magazine articles written by doctors, psychologists and little old ladies from Pasadena. The consensus of this group was that sex and violence on television was bad for children because it made them behave in an unusual manner. I’ve got news for them. Children always behave in an unusual manner! That’s why they’re just kids.
Anyway, I decided these references would make a good research paper, but they just didn’t tell the whole story. So I interviewed a true expert on the subject, my seven-year-old niece, Kelly, to find out if TV is really as bad as some so-called experts say it is.
“What is your favorite television show?” I asked her.
“I like Wonder Woman best,” said Kelly, “She is real pretty and always helps people.”
“It doesn’t bother you that she always beats up on people to help others?”
“She never hurts them though. She may beat up on people, but it is just so they can put them in jail. I really don’t think she is mean or anything.”
“Why do you watch Wonder Woman?” I asked.
“Daddy always turns it to that channel. If he misses it he gets in a bad mood.”
“He does, huh? Maybe I should be worried about my brother more than you.”
“We never miss the Bionic Woman, Charlie’s Angels, or Operation Petticoat either,” Kelly said.
“Seems odd that those are the only shows you watch.”
“Not when Daddy is watching TV it isn’t. I like those shows anyway.”
“You don’t think you’re being overexposed to these kind of shows?”
“I thought exposed means something somebody does with a raincoat.”
So, kids aren’t really being corrupted by television. They are just a little bit smarter than they used to be. I asked my brother Sam, why he lets his kid watch these shows. All I got out of that question was a wink and a grin.