Dollars with Sense

You know, I've had just about as much of Paris Hilton as I can stand. Say it with me: people who take ethical shortcuts in life end up somewhere they don't expect. Even worse than the choices is the lack of remorse other than being caught.

The media barrages us all the time with the lowest common denominator without qualification. Filling our heads with sensational stories of corruption and violence, during family hour, without the insightful parables of goodness coming out of moral decay, is wrong. Whose fault is it all this crap is being shoved down our throats? Ours.

All we seem to be able to manage is idly standing by wringing our hands in despair at the decay of this country when we spoon feed our children these examples to live down to. I resent having to explain to my 8 year old about the Gay Freedom Parade before he is old enough to hear the talk about the birds and the bees, because I had the misfortune of turning on the 6:00 news while making dinner. Where is the national conscience and common sense to put that on the 11:00 news?

Children are sponges and we are their filters -- not just their parents, all of us. Parents struggle to monitor and qualify what is seen and heard, set family boundaries and steadfast values, and the media undermines them, as though they have no moral obligation to its society. Where is the protective cultural framework that gave us our strength, the deep roots in God, Family, Country? This is why our societal fabric is shredding. HELLO?? Everywhere other than church and at the dinner table, we're shown how to take what we want without consequence.

But I was thinking ... what might happen if we only endorsed entertainment and news with values-based story lines? What if we bit the bullet and sacrificed the immediacy of our no-holds-barred entertainment fetish to establish a baseline here? In other words, practice personal restraint by not buying it at the movies, on DVDs or computers or TV. Free or not, we control market share, and that makes the world go round.

I'd like to see the day when PBS, Disney, History, Discovery and HG TV dominate the ratings for 60 consecutive weeks. Watching the media scramble for funding sources would be so entertaining, we probably wouldn't even miss all the murder and treachery. If we play our cards right, we might be able to also jettison all the sexual dysfunction ads...

Social reform is easy in a country driven by greed. Our voices wouldn't be a whisper, they'd be a shout. America would respond in a hurry if we leveraged our dollars with sense. The ball's in our court.