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Saturday, September 01, 2007
Brent Bozell :: Townhall.com Columnist
"Dr. 90210" -- or Dr. Crotch?
by Brent Bozell
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


(Editors' note: The following article contains subject matter that may be offensive to readers)

After reading this piece, you may be tempted to think that Bozell finally has lost his marbles, simply because what is presented just cannot be true. If you will trust me that everything I'm going to present you is very real, you may instead conclude it is La-La Land that has gone completely Ga-Ga.

Channel-surfing with your remote, you've doubtlessly come across the E! cable network -- and clicked right past, for good reason. E! is owned jointly by Disney, Comcast and Liberty Media, making you wonder where all the adult supervision went. With the exception of the original "Talk Soup" show with Greg Kinnear way back when, it's mindless junk, usually consisting of programs focused on the vacuum that is Hollywood, produced by people who are just as mindless, and designed for -- well, that's the rub. It's directed at youngsters enthralled by all things Tinseltown, and that means it must be ever-edgier in order to retain the attention of a generation that has seen it all.

Meet "Dr. 90210," an E! series starring Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Rey, a fussy young doctor with half-bleached hair who looks qualified to rebuild iPods, not the human body. When the show was launched in 2004, it was fairly straightforward, with the usual cocktail of Beverly Hills plastic surgeries -- tummy tucks and face lifts and breast implants/reductions.

Fans of the Discovery Health Channel and its attendant medical shows might defend these intimate procedures as having more than a cosmetic value given their ability to improve physical health, boost self-confidence and the like. But this isn't Discovery. This is E! "Dr. 90210" isn't aimed at sophisticated adults. As its TV-14 rating declares, it is deemed acceptable for eighth-graders. And it's not about health. It's all about sex.

So what to offer the young ones (and the adults who refuse to leave childhood) with their insatiable appetites? You can imagine the production meetings. How about we find patients who are porn queens? No, we did that last month. OK, wait ... wait ... I got it! How 'bout we find patients who are teenagers themselves? Yeah, that's the ticket!

That's where they went, but soon that wasn't enough, either. So lower and lower they plunged.

The other day the audience -- do not lose sight of the fact that this show is deemed by E! to be acceptable for eighth-graders -- was treated to an episode titled "Sexual Healing," with three procedures featured. Calahan, a woman trying to enter the male world, had her breasts amputated. (How that's defined as "sexual healing" is anyone's guess.) A man named Mike had a genital wart removed, an underwhelming procedure that lasts about two minutes, but which also allowed E! to focus on Mike's happy promiscuity. "This is no wakeup call for me! I'm still going to lead a pretty promiscuous lifestyle. I waited a long time to have success!"

Then Sara came to the doctor seeking -- are you ready, all you E! channel kids? -- a labia reduction. More sex talk: She thought her genital malformation might come from her promiscuity, but the doctor assured her it was genetic. But now, visuals! While much of the surgical procedure was blurred or pixilated, the portions of labia removed were proudly displayed on-screen in all their E! glory. And then more sex talk, with Sara's friend joking about putting the excised parts of Sara's genitals in a scrapbook or in a picture frame.

Later in the episode, E! followed Sara to a "pleasure party" (and vibrator sale), showing a lubricant saleswoman telling Sara to "go into the bathroom and rub this on your clitoris ... rub that on your clitoris ... and tell us how you feel."

Earlier, there was a different episode about a couple where both the male and female had malformed genitals: Natalie needed a labia reduction, and Josh struggled with an overly large scrotum. Another scene even featured a former porn actress named Tabitha getting a fashionable new procedure -- anal bleaching. "I'm addicted to anal bleaching!" she declared enthusiastically. I will save you the details of the visuals and the narrative. Just use your imagination, then accept that you're not even close, because your imagination can't match Hollywood's.

What compels anyone at this network, from the CEO to the lowliest of interns, to associate himself with this product? Just how proud of themselves are the sponsors, from Visa to Macy's to Fisher-Price, makers of babies' toys?

This isn't an industry that has lost its mind. It has lost its soul.

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About The Author
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.
 
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©Creators Syndicate
dyerje
Covertly turning off TV in a public waiting room DOES give me a perverse pleasure, I admit. Over the years I have been involuntarily subjected to far too much "entertainment" that way. I would never be so thoughtless as to extinguish a TV in a place where I am not stuck. But in the one clinic where my wife goes, it's either the comfortable seats in the room with the TV, or a nasty chair out in the hall, where everyone trips over your feet going by.

I am fine with people sharing "intel" about what's nasty on television. But government censorship is a double-edged sword. What becomes objectionable depends upon who is in power. In a situation where (God forbid) the Presidency was in the hands of a Hillary, and Obama or a John Kerry, there's no telling WHAT might be banned by the government.

In any event, God created us with free will, and the test of our "goodness" lies in how we exercise that, is it not?

Solutions
1. Get a TIVO-we've had ours for about 5 years and our young kids don't even watch commercials. They watch what we program the TIVO to record. There is plenty of programming that is kid friendly and you can watch it at your convenience with a TIVO. It also makes limiting TV easier when you're not an appointment TV watcher. They can only watch after school and chores are done and then only for an hour each day.

OR

2. Get rid of your TV. I have several friends who choose not to have a TV because they either a)don't want to monitor what the kids are watching or b) they don't want their kids wasting time watching TV.

Like their ancestors before them they read books, play games, make things, play outside, listen to music, play instruments, etc.

Lolo2, I agree with
your comment about Walt Disney. It is profoundly sad that companies like these three produce/finance shows such as E! taking society further into the toilet with each and every passing day. The fact that so many kids are ignored by their parents for hours and days, so that they find this crap to watch on cable TV is also quite sad.

My husband noted that shows like these probably attract a great deal of pedophiles as well.

I am so thankful that our family has "just said no" to cable TV (much to the consternation of our children.) Never in our wildest imagination did we ever think there would be a market for a show like E! Utter depravity. We have also stopped buying as many Disney products as possible (and movies.)

As for the poster who suggested rating the column with one check...1)Readers were clearly warned prior to CHOOSING to read Mr. Bozell's column, and 2) Isn't that akin to "shooting the messenger?"

Regardless of party
"For the children" = more government

"For the children"
is a lib. mantra except when it comes to sex.

They can't have enough sex. A stat. bandied about is 80% of 11 year olds have seen internet porn.

I'm sure libs. find that exciting evidence their prog. for society is working fine.

Words
You're ... a contraction of you are ...

Your ... possessive pronoun ...

Stan47
While I agree with you that nobody is forcing any of us to watch TV, I also note that at least Bozell has (uncharacteristically, but let's give him his due) NOT proposed government censorship here.

As long as people aren't proposing new censorship measures, I don't find "minding one's own business" to be a conclusive argument for shrugging off the existence of offensive content.

It has become typical of our age that the only alternative most people can see is demanding the government do something about offensive TV. If parents want to alert each other, and mothers want to notify advertisers of things they plan to boycott, I have no problem with that. There's plenty of that kind of information being retailed at Townhall. It doesn't seem out of place.

Merely tsk-tsking over everything that has happened since 1960, the "TH Lament," does seem like a time-waster. But it IS possible to take an interest in broadcast programming without planning to involve the government, or to unduly burden one's fellow citizens.

(In fact, most courses of action seem less invasive than roaming the world stealthily turning off the TV in public places... at least would-be censors only want to deny people SOME of their programming. :-))

NO BOUNDARY, NO VALUE
Those who that run that show, it just shows how low their value has been.

You have values because you have boundaries in your life.

Apply this simple dictum to your life. You value your money because it has limit.

Modern liberalism has no regard on values. They think freedom is value and free, which of course not. Freedom is not free.

lonestarblues -- Conservatism
quoth lonestarblues: "So conservatism's umbrella stretches to the breaking point of liberalism?"

In some cases -- and beyond.

quoth: "Government does not exist to coerce morality, it exists, according to our Declaration and Constitution, to protect unalienable rights."

I agree with you, at least in so far what everyone *should* know. Unfortunately, I feel there are far too many examples where people do *not* know this.

I mean, look who's column we're commenting under! Perfect case in point!

Off the grid
What puzzles me about all the Bozell talk is the tacit assumption that you cannot possibly survive without TV. Cable TV in particular.

TV and the Web become the source of trouble because parents introduce children to these media before they have developed critical thinking skills.

If you look at the youngest generations living, they are woefully uninformed about the kind of knowledge that should be the base upon which all the exciting new stuff is built, and the standard by which it is judged.

Being the brightest and shiniest of all distractions, the TV and Worldwide Web drown out every other form of sensory input for a child. TV in particular, with all the jump-cutting that has become popular, must make it impossible for a young child to focus on one particular thing.

I realize this is a very dead horse, that was ineffectually and inaccurately beaten years ago by one Jerry Mander. The undesirability of uncontrolled TV exposure is obvious; Mander's "four arguments" were weak, though.

Because of aging problems, my wife and I are visiting a lot of medical offices these days. I bought one of those universal TV turner-offers, and have been experimenting with it. In one instance, I observed a twentish woman having physical withdrawal symptoms when the tube was extinguished. In another instance, this little family group focused its attention on relighting the "campfire" that had gone out for them when the TV went dead. But in many more instances, turning off the waiting-room TV has gone unnoticed.

Bottom line: nobody is FORCING you to watch. So if what's offered offends, DON'T WATCH. To do otherwise is a silly as going to a Ruth's Chris steakhouse and demanding a vegan menu.

Paula Jo
"Flagged" apparently means that a strike against the post has been recorded. But we don't know how many strikes are required before something is deleted, or the sender's "account" suspended.


Flagged
Two of the posts are just offensive adolesent sex talk. What does it do on this website when you ask that a comment be "Flagged as Offensive"?

Earth To Bozell

One-hundred percent of adolescents have genitals and anuses, and have therefore seen same. Shocking, isn't it?


-CB-

The cure comes ala carte...
There's nothing wrong with E! that ala carte cable pricing can't fix. I'm paying $70 a month (HDTV) for 100 channels of which 5 are frequently watched and, perhaps, another 10 occasionally watched.

Lolo2 writes:
Saturday, September, 01, 2007 2:17 PM
"Evidence...
I am sure Walt disney is rolling over in his grave at what the Disney moniker has become. Like cockroaches the left overtakes everything and ruins it."

================================
I agree, Lolo2
Disney executives and the executives at Comcast and Liberty Media should be contacted with regard to this trash. Especially Disney! It has reached the point where a parent has no idea what name can be trusted to provide good entertainment for their children.

After all the good reviews of High School Musical and HSM II, one would think the executives would get the message...it doesn't have to be trash to sell!!!

Grandma writes:
Saturday, September, 01, 2007 11:01 AM
"Unbelievable, but not really...
What happened to letting children be children? Sad world to have children in these days, perhaps that is why so many liberals off theirs before they ever draw their first breaths. Then they want to destroy ours with their nonsense."

===========================
Exactly, Grandma!
Guess they think we "deserve" whatever they try to inject our children with since we had the audacity to have them in the first place!!!!

I can see where home-schooling is becoming more and more popular. Parents seem to be up against the liberal agenda everywhere they turn!


Duck
Yeah, yeah, we got it! Geez.

Conservatism
preserves tradition and custom before leaping into every hare-brained change someone proposes.
It looks to the ancient Greeks and Romans for inspiration and not the romanticism of the Middle Ages.

Conservatism does not emphasize feelings and emotions or the individual's ego, but considers the "commonweal," real science (not the enviro-GW fear-mongering "science" of today's MSM), and open debate.

Conservatism exists without Christianity and was not developed from Christianity particularly. Rome had conservatives who opposed the empire and idealized the republic.

Conservatives during the Fr. Rev. preferred the monarchy, and after Napoleon, France did return to a monarchy.

Cons. did not believe the Russian Revolution would work, and in the end, it didn't. They opposed FDR's expansion of gov't in the mid-30s and predicted the problems for Soc. Sec. if the pool of young contributors was overwhelmed by an aging population, exactly what is happening today.

Conservative prefer strict reading of the US Consti., support of the 2nd Amend, personal gun rights, and abhor what's called judicial activism, altho' some would prefer a cons. activism--a contradiction in terms.

Cons. do not believe all progress is for the good, and the drug-addled, sex.-obsessed entertainment industry is an example of what ill change for change's sake can bring about.

Usually, modern conservatives support capitalism, oppose gov't regulation, and have of late adopted an involved foreign participation that was, until Johnson, a liberal position. It was Wilson that declared every group should have the right of self determination and JFK who pledged to the world US support for freedom.

In Jesus' time, the Sanhedrin and Roman rule were conservative. Jesus' message opposing Temple Judaism was radicalism of a threatening enough kind that the Romans, not the Jews, killed him.

Unca Alby
So conservatism's umbrella stretches to the breaking point of liberalism?

Government does not exist to coerce morality, it exists, according to our Declaration and Constitution, to protect unalienable rights.

Splitting Hairs?
TheEngineer--
lonestarblues--

I don't want to get into a quibble over the definition for "conservative" -- other than the obvious "not liberal" -- ;-)

Let's just suffice it to say that the conservative umbrella covers a lot of wide and varying beliefs, not the least of which is the belief that government exists to enforce morality in general, and in some cases, Christian morality in particular.

Unca Alby
"LOTS of conservatives believe in using the power of the government to enforce their views. They want "limited government" unless it's enforcing a moral code based on Biblical inferences."

They, while perhaps religiously conservative, are, thus, not politically conservative. Like the Engineer says they are part of the problem, not the solution.

HOWDY DOODY CORRECTION

.....Bunky and Lolo2 ...

.....My source has corrected me on a few technical points ...

.....It was Clarabell who pogo sticked himself to death ...and Mr. Green Jeans was borrowed from the Captain Kangaroo Show where Howdy stuffed his green jeans up his anal cavity in a wild game of ride the bucking bronco ...

...just to set the record straight .....COLOSSUS

The left is like a
perpetual 15 year old entranced by his own erections.

Parents need the insight and fortitude to see their children are not seduced by this disguised pornography.

Let's Hear It For a Free Market
Actually, it gets worse. I read just yesterday that the latest thing in plastic surgery is the restoration of virginity. The point of the article was that mainstream plastic surgery is against this, but there's no telling what may turn up on TV nowadays. After all, as townhall has taught me, "Market is never wrong": if people want to buy it, somebody should be selling it, and without any sort of regulation---isn't that the Republican mantra?

Unca Alby
True, some who CLAIM to be conservatives want big government enforcement of their ideas of morality, but real conservatives see government as the problem, not the solution.

Proofreading some more --
"Looking to the power of the federal government to cure it is not at all conservative."

On second thought, I must disagree with this sentence --

LOTS of conservatives believe in using the power of the government to enforce their views. They want "limited government" unless it's enforcing a moral code based on Biblical inferences.

TheEngineer - -
"Brent has written a few articles in a row without calling for big government censorship to enforce his views."

Hey, you never know, maybe he reads the forum comments, and has actually listened to some of his critics?


"IMO, publicly rebuking networks and shows for what they show is good and proper, and is properly conservative. Looking to the power of the federal government to cure it is not at all conservative."

In MY opinion, that is NOT opinion, that is FACT.

Get real-stop complaining
Just imagine if your great great grand parents came down for a visit and walked on the beach or if they observed their progeny no longer looked at virginity as any big deal and the rest.

With TV talking about curing your headaches, hemmroids, acne et al, why is surprising that talking about sex is now of matter of fact. We enhance hour houses, our cars, our hair, our nails, so it is only natural that enchancing things re sex would come about. It is just that things are happenning so fast that people are "shocked". Viagra is a good thing because sex is good for one(like everything else with prudence). And of course there are laughs to be gotten from programs dealing with sexual things.

Lighten up. Time is passing you by.

Evidence
If you need any evidence that our society is becoming progressively dumber, all you need to do is look at the ratings for these stupid shows.

I am sure Walt disney is rolling over in his grave at what the Disney moniker has become. Like cockroaches the left overtakes everything and ruins it.

baseballdoc
Your killing me! LOL!

oy oy oy
Baseballdoc: ...Sounds about right,except a bit tame for Disney these days...Can't wait for the updated version of Snow White and her Seven Vertically Challenged pals....HI HO HI HO..

Bozell
No,Brent,we sure as he// don't need more gov't,but passing those channels and sponsors would help. Baseballdoc,you needed a Spew Alert on that one!

E!-eeeek
Don't watch it since they got rid of the "real" Talk Soup. What the surprise with all the reality shows starring people no one cares about. Flavor Flav? The black Carrot Top. or how about the Nicole Smith Show? Come on, Oberman! Is she REALLY "America's Rose"? But if you don't wanna see it, don't watch it! I do admit I like Jackass, so... guilty as charged!

smartass yes i am!
Packrat writes: Saturday, September, 01, 2007 8:19 AM
hd
what were you doing standing outside the stall?

He's become the new lobbist. lot cheaper then the old way, but hell on the knees.

hdhouse
In case you're wondering, I'm the one who flagged your pointless, profane, and irrelevant post as offensive.

BUNKY

.....It gets worse ...my sources in Tinsel Town tell me that E is going to bring back an updated version of Howdy Doody ...

.....In the Pilot Howdy has a male enhancement operation where his member is increasd to 24 inches ...then mistaking Mr. Green Jeans Viagra for M&Ms Howdy goes on a rampage and stuffs his Jeans into his anal cavity sending him to the hospital ...Clarence is then pogo sticked to death and Howdy suffers the complications of a ruptured ear drum after raping himself ...

.....oy oy oy ...not like the old days Bunky .....COLOSSUS

hdouse
You gotta get to rehab....kick those meds that screw up your brain....causing you to do involuntary sh*t like making a simp of yourself publicly. Maybe you'll be able to stop this hanging around outside toilet stalls activity.

To Brent: Thanks for the heads-up on Channel E. Always scooted past it, now know why I will avoid it completely. Yuck-o!

How Far Down We Have Come
I do not generally consider myself a prude but this show is definitely an extreme example of pushing the envelope. I grew up in the late 50's to early 70's and would never have thought this type of programming possible. I remember watching Captain Kangaroo as a kid and hearing him tell us children to mind our parents and remember to say our prayers. Today the ACLU would have him on the floor in no time flat. I agree that government censorship is not the answer. We can only limit this type of garbage by our choices. Don't watch these shows. Don't do business with the sponsors. Contact the sponsors and inform them that if they continue to advertise on these shows that they will lose our business. And to you liberals: No this not censorship. This is using the freedom of the marketplace to express our views. Censorship is not my disagreeing with your choices of what to produce and what to watch.

Unbelievable, but not really.
My children are all grown, but I have 5 grandkids that are all ages that this crud seems to be directed at, and that worries me.

Even channels like the Disney Channel are spending way too much time trying to brainwash children into acting older than they are. Of course this is understandable since Disney proudly announced that approximately 60% of their employees are gay. What better way to spread their agenda than to work in the very industry that entertains so many of our children.

When I raised my children it was really pretty easy, Fred and Wilma were a standard Saturday morning treat for the kids. Charlie Brown and his goofy friends were seen around the Holidays with their specials, and of course Rudolf and Santa, and then there was the Looney Toons that had been making people laugh for decades. In fact I bought these DVD's for my Grandkids enjoyment since they don't seem to be on the boob tube anymore. And guess what the kids still find them funny and enterting.

It is sad that the liberals all seem to want the children they allowed to live to grow up and have so many problems to worry over that were never an issue when I was a kid. What happened to letting children be children? Sad world to have children in these days, perhaps that is why so many liberals off theirs before they ever draw their first breaths. Then they want to destroy ours with their nonsense.


Bozell is improving
Wow. Brent has written a few articles in a row without calling for big government censorship to enforce his views. Rather, he simply expressed his opinions on the quality of media (in this case, non-broadcast television).

IMO, publicly rebuking networks and shows for what they show is good and proper, and is properly conservative. Looking to the power of the federal government to cure it is not at all conservative. And, there will be a real bloodbath in Nov. 08 if more of us refuse to wake up to this distinction.

I would not call that stuff entertaining
...but it is worth knowing about the popularity of genital plastic surgery. Otherwise how can you gauge how low society has sunk, and how you have maintained your own place on the High Moral Plateau? (sarcasm, folks)

More seriously, it's worth asking why labioplasty has become a popular elective procedure in the USA just a year or two after we learned about forced female genital mutilation in some middle eastern societies. Are we becoming what we loathe the most, as a result of our morbid fascination with it?

If that's so, it makes a very good case for minding one's own business, i.e., worrying less about the sins of one's neighbors and more about one's own.

Enough Already
I get it but this week, I've had my fill of disgusting discourse in the media.

Thanks, BB3.
I learned at least three things in this article that I'll spend a long time actively trying to forget.

I'm giving it 0 stars, not because I disagree with it - because it disagrees with me.

hd
what were you doing standing outside the stall?

hdhouse
Oh, you're brilliant, aren't you?

And People Ask...
...me why I don't let my kids watch broadcast TV.

On a Saturday morning, while at the M-I-L's, I am watching Animal Planet with my children. I don't recall the episode because all I can remember is seeing commercials for male enhancement products, women sanitary products and the other crap advertised on TV. On a Saturday morning KIDS program! Such crap.

oy oy oy
When I was a kid watching TV,the closest thing we had to "anal bleaching"was Howdy Doody.What in God's good name has happened?I'm stupified,and that's no easy task for me!Maybe I'm just getting old.Correct me if I'm wrong,but,didn't Rome have a little entertainment problem right around the time that that particular civilization tanked?To quote the Mother's of Invention(who today are probably considered child fodder)"It can't happen here!..."
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