Christmas Paranoia
< john-lennon > So this is Christmas… < /john-lennon >
Does America realize that they are a nation of fear? If it wasn’t obvious enough with the fear mongering to validate the war on terror, it’s obvious now.
This Christmas is all about fear; the fear of purchasing presents for our children that will facilitate the private download of porn. Last year the PSP was the big cheese at Christmas, but did countless reporters and religious columnists write article upon article about the dangers of mobile porn? Not to my recollection.
Why, then, is the mainstream media so adamant about communicating the concern that perhaps we shouldn’t be buying video iPods or high resolution celphones for under-18s? As I’ve said before, it’s just part of a right-wing religious agenda to create fear in the hearts of every parent and to put pressure on porn industry distributors to think twice about releasing racy content.
Last night I was watching The Situation Room on CNN and, although I normally snub my nose at CNN’s ridiculous farce of programming, I was actually surprised at the interesting opinions expressed by the viewers about the dangers of celphone porn. When viewers were asked what they thought was the biggest danger of celphone porn, the answer I enjoyed hearing the most contained one word, “Eyestrain”.
In an e-mail yesterday I was talking with a friend about the quality of porn. His argument was that video-podcasts gearing towards pornographers and porn connoisseurs should not be compressed too much since these people thrive on seeing high quality porn. If that’s the case, why should we worry so much about a tiny 2″ screen? (Besides, isn’t walking in on your parents having a sex as a child more traumatic than seeing it on TV? It’s kind of like the difference between seeing a murder on TV and seeing one in person.)
USA Today published an article yesterday about the new emerging market for celphone porn and about how concerned Christians parents are worried that their children will have easy access to pornography. Parents are angry at porn distributors because the hype teaches them they should be, but why aren’t they getting angry at the liberal celphone networks? After all, it is they who allow the content to be sent to their kids.
What the USA Today article neglects to mention is that the Wireless industry association CTIA has already announced its “Wireless Content Guidelines” which is meant to solve this problem. So, it seems all we have left barking about the danger of porn is right-wing activists hunting for new things to boycott:
Pick a cause and join a boycott.
Tackling corporate America these days on issues ranging from triple-X video sales to taking Christmas out of Christmas can be as easy as clicking on a Web site. But whether the campaigns do any real damage is hard to measure, experts say.
Even one of the most active boycott organizers, the American Family Association, says there is evidence the threat of a boycott may be more potent than the action itself.
“Everyone’s afraid to be bitten by a snake but the fear can be much worse than the bite,” says Randy Sharp, the AFA’s director of special projects. “Our policy is that before you call a boycott you do everything in your power to avoid it. They’re costly and time-consuming. You take the easy road first and work with the companies in private.”
So, to parents and religious fanatics I say this: < public-enemy > Don’t believe the hype! < /public-enemy > American celphones are only starting to get more advanced screens, but those are reserved for people who can afford to pay for them. I highly doubt you’re going to buy your child an iMate, so why don’t you just sit back, sip some egg nog and wait for the CTIA to implement their new guidelines.
December 14th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Why do Christians always have to be at war with someone? oh yea… their a persecuted people
America’s 50,000,000 right wing Evangellical Christians are voting base for the top policy makers (Bush received approx 53million votes in the last election, 95% comming from this base makers in the US government ).
So what you have hear is a government propped up by a small but LOUD minority (there are about 200,0000,000 eligible voters in the US).
Don’t you think if these politicians truly had these conservative christian views, they would be cracking down on the things that their base wants done away with? The Republicans have been in power for 5 years now, mainly on the basis of pro-life… abortion is still legal in the US?!?!
this was a little of topic but my point is simple… Christians make good dupes. You light a fire under their ass & they’ll never shut up!
December 14th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
hey, my sarcasm tags didn’t show up. The last sentence in the first paragraph was sarcasm!
December 14th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Zawm- I heartfully agree with you… it’s almost as if the Christians are the ones voting because their churches organize them to do it… and do it in a certain way.
The reason your sarcasm tags aren’t working is because you have to put a space between the greater than/less than characters or else the text editor treats it as rubbish. For example:
I love how CNN has a faith and values correspondent.
December 14th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
I thought it interesting they were considering a boycott. The technology is going to come whether the Christians want it or not, and most importantly their own kids are going to crave this new forbidden technology.
They cannot boycott the adult industry because [at least in theory] these anti-porn folks aren’t buying porn in the first place so by boycotting they are in no way effecting the adult industries sales.
By boycotting Apple they are only harming themselves because consumers will always set the demand and not politicians. Regardless of how vocal the religious right screams, the phone companies and adult industry make mutual profit allowing official adults access to adult material and anyone [Sam Sugar’s PSP Porn] who takes advantage of this new technology will profit greatly.
In the end, with most of their crusades, they are fighting a battle they _know_ they will lose because they are against public opinion. So they can feel content and justified with being pursecuted, isolationist, and judgemental.
[That said, there are plenty of wonderful religious people who aren’t fearful, closeminded, bigots at heart.]
December 14th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
People are stupid. They believe something is true either because they want to believe its true, or because they fear that it might be true.
I love the whole americans live in fear thing. My the americans are quite the sheep, although one wonders when they’ll eventually learn that the government and religious advocates are crying wolf all the time? Don’t want your kids watching porn… don’t let them… if you catch them beat them whats wrong with beating your child? nothing as long as your not perpetually beating them for every little thing they do. I got spankings and such when I was a child, it sure learned me a lesson real quick. http://store.theworstpageintheuniverse.com/shirts.html#PARENT now this may seem harsh, but people respond to pain… and who would have thought fear!
December 15th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
Spiklos- I got spankings when I was a child too. Telling new parents that sure does make them think twice about it… heh.
Kitka- I’m not sure if you were being dry when you wrote “it’s almost as if the Christians are the ones voting because their churches organize them to do it… and do it in a certain way,” but the right-wing churches in my state do issue voting guides endorsing candidates of a certain party (which is illegal for any tax-exempt organization to do). They’ll register new voters at the churches and drive them to the polls. Their minions are organized.