BREAKING NEWS: PTC FILES COMPLAINT AGAINST SUNDAY'S "FAMILY GUY" EPISODE (Updated 3/12)

On my RSS reader, Google Reader, I subscribe to this feed that picks up news about the "Parents Television Council" from Google News. It's easy: Go to news.google.com, type in any keyword/phrase about an interesting topic, and click search. On the search results page find the orange "RSS" logo (the orange square with the white stripes). On Firefox it's on the way tail end of the address bar; on Internet Explorer it's on some sort of toolbar (I personally use Firefox anyways so I'm not too sure about the IE situation.)

Now I've discovered that PTC has filed an FCC complaint out on Sunday's episode of Family Guy, one of my favourite shows ever. The episode was titled "Family Gay" and was about Peter experimenting with homosexuality. According to John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable:

"Family Guy is squarely aimed at young viewers and is never lacking in crude humor and explicit content, but this episode crossed the line," said Tim Winter. "Imagine the shock of a family who stumbled across the show during the Sunday evening programming block, as early as 8 p.m. in the Central and Mountain Time zones. Fox treated viewers to everything from an ‘eleven-way' gay orgy to baby Stewie eating a bowl of cereal with horse sperm instead of milk."

Pardon me, Mr. Winter, but there's a reason why Family Guy is always rated TV-14-DL (that episode was TV-14-DLSV actually, I saw the ratings box as I edited out the commercials on my DVR'ed copy of the episode). How many times do I and other bloggers have to say: Animated does not always mean kid show! I mean think about The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park! How can you compare those shows with whatever's on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network daytime blocks right now? I'm sure that the PTC will resort to its usual tactic of duplicated electronic complaint forms from outraged PTC members, whether they saw it or not.

If you happened to have stumbled upon this program when channel-surfing with Johnny and Jane in the room, I guess you have the right to complain. But that's why you look up the TV listings, use a V-Chip, or just not watch TV with the kids at Sundays 9:00PM (8PM in the "Heartland")! Shouldn't the kids have a good nights sleep Sundays preparing for the week ahead at school to "get their learn on"? But if you are a responsible parent and do take whatever measures to prevent the little ones from seeing Seth MacFarlane's cavalcade of filth known as Family Guy, be honest and abstain from filing a complaint about a show you don't watch. Think about the old saying, "If you don't like a show, turn it off." There's a reason why Nielsen Media Research monitors the TV ratings. There's a reason why the networks discard failed, low-rated shows after an episode or two. For example, Fox cancelled Do Not Disturb earlier this season. From what I've heard it's a cheap knockoff of the much much better The Office on NBC (That show is so much cleaner than Family Guy in terms of content but I still like it.)

Anyways, I'll be awaiting the FCC's findings. In 2005, PTC filed a complaint against Fox over the FG episode "PTV", which was about Peter creating his own sleazy TV station. That episode mocked the FCC's indecency enforcement, but PTC didn't find that too funny.

Now what else could PTC be making a fuss of? I pulled up its website on good ol' Mozilla Firefox - the sensible alternative to Microsoft's Buggy Internet Explorer - and notice that PTC wants the Walt Disney Company to stop advertising on "family unfriendly" shows, wants the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the recent Ninth Circuit Court decision to overturn California's ban on selling violent video games to minors, and demands that the fast-food chain Jack in the Box pull ads from those sleazy, violent programs that are screwing up America. Those are the first three items on its homepage at this time. The rest is old news. But surpisingly I see no sign of Family Guy; I have no idea why they didn't front-page it yet. On its "Best/Worst Shows of the Week" section, which was updated last Friday, the PTC praised NBC's special Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five based on the Oscar-winning animated film Kung Fu Panda. However, it didn't like the fact that this TV-PG rated program (the film was rated PG as well) was led out by the TV-14-DS Kath & Kim, a show I personally have no interest in watching. Did you know that that show is "tacky and devoid of humor", at least in the PTC reviewer's opinion? Thankfully I have The Office, 30 Rock, CSI, and the final season of ER to give me a good Thursday night's worth of shows. But I don't know why the PTC didn't mention that Thursdays 8PM (when the Kung Fu Panda special aired) is normally for the cruder redneck sitcom My Name is Earl, a show that's a regular on PTC's Worst List. However, Kath & Kim has always been on Thursdays 8:30PM as the lead-out for Earl, and the PTC gives it a mild "Yellow" rating on its traffic-light rating scale. (Earl got the most severe Red though.)

A google search of "Family Guy" under Parentstv.org yields nothing about the most recent episode. Oh well, I haven't seen that episode yet but am more tempted to do so now that PTC, America's greatest moral guardian of all time, has alerted prudent citizens about it! Oh, don't forget to annoy the PTC by watching next sunday's Family Guy on Fox at 9PM (ET/PT)/8PM (MT/CT) - that episode will parodise the locked-up-for-life/not-guilty-murderer/ex-football-player/actor OJ Simpson!

UPDATE: PTC didn't put their statement on this episode when the news broke about their complaint plans, but now they have. Well-mannered folks, Family Guy fans, any sensitive Internet viewer: Please proceed with caution before clicking the before link. Erin Brown, a blogger for the conservative blog NewsBusters (aligned with the Media Research Center, the right-wing media watchdog from which PTC branched off), posted an entry about this episode too. Here's what PTC had to say on the front page: Sunday night's episode of the cartoon show, Family Guy aired explicit sexual content and was rated TV-14 DLSV by Fox, meaning that in the network's opinion, this content was appropriate for 14-year olds. Yes, PTC does assert that there's a TV-14-DLSV, but in its narrow mind it doesn't matter if there were zero or 100 "content descriptors" (the letters that follow each TV-whatever rating, TVGuidelines.org explains, Fox still considered the show "appropriate for 14-year olds". Well I'm sorry PTC, but innocence can't last forever. Parents, it depends on how clean YOU want your kids' TV viewing to be. If you want to shield your child from everything "offensive"/politically incorrect until he reaches the age of majority, why don't you keep filtering out the TV-14 shows even when he's 14?

Where's the morality of pro-traditional marriage figures?

It seems hard these days to find a "morally straight" advocate of traditional marriage (the "man and woman" type). A list of pundits (politicians, activists, etc.) serves to prove my point here. But first let me share my latest disappointment.

On Saturday, I watched a recording of the previous day's episode of Dateline NBC where Ann Curry interviewed pastor Rick Warren. Rev. Warren will speak at Pres.-Elect Obama's inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, 2009 (the day after MLK, surprise!) Curry asked questions about the bad state of the economy and then on his position on "same-sex" marriage. Warren brought up some pretty good points in his interview that I bet no one could ever disprove. NBC News has posted a transcript on its website and a link to a video.

But then at the end of the interview Warren admitted this:

"I don't think gay marriage is any threat to marriage. So that's not why I'm voting the way I did. I think divorce is a bigger problem to marriage than anything else."

Whoa wait a second. Rev. Warren, if you really really think that divorce is so much more of a problem than SSM, why don't the churches start enacting anti-divorce laws? I predict that we'll see "Prop. 8.5" that'll outlaw divorce in the 2010 election ballot. Naw, I ain't serious, but I'm just saying that if the conservative "pro-family" activists really want a perfect society they've got to go after everything else that's wrong with the world.

And now I dare you to challenge these of Rev. Warren's remarks:
"Well, here what I'm saying. I've had many gay friends tell me, "Well, Rick, why shouldn't I have multiple sexual partners? It's the natural thing to do." Well, just because it seems natural doesn't mean it's best for you or society. I'm naturally inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman I see. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. And why should I reign in my natural impulses and you say, "Well, because I have natural impulses towards the same sex, I shouldn't have to reign them in." Well, I disagree. I think that's part of maturity. I think it's part of delayed gratification. I think it's part of character."

"For 5,000 years every single culture and every single religion has defined marriage as a man and a woman, not just Christianity [but also] Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism."

"Tolerance used to mean, "I treat you with respect even though we disagree." Some people want tolerance to mean now that all ideas are equally valid. That's nonsense. There are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong."

And now my list of "hypocritical" proponents of "traditional love"
Unfaithful = having divorced or cheated, or just hypocritical on opinion against alternative marriage
Faithful = married to one partner constantly; remarriage only due to death of current partner
The morality of...Pro-"Traditional Marriage" politicians
Unfaithful
- Dick Cheney (Vice President, Republican, 2001-2009) - The Bush/Cheney team has like Clinton/Gore back in the day pushed for laws banning same-sex marriage, such as the Federal Marriage Amendment. But VP Cheney had no problem with his own daughter Mary getting married to another woman and having children with her.
- Bill Clinton (President, Democrat, 1993-2001) - signed Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 - but nearly cheated on Hillary! Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey sued him for sexual harassment; and then Bill's wild adventure with that White House intern almost got him expelled from office.
- Newt Gingrich (former Speaker of the House under Clinton) - From a man who's been married four times in his lifetime and has a lesbian half-sister who works for the pro-gay group Human Rights Campaign, try believing his proclamations supporting traditional marriage. Seriously!
- Phyllis Schlafly (activist, president of Eagle Forum) - Although she's an opponent of SSM, one of her sons, John, is gay.
- David Vitter (Senator, Louisiana, Republican, 2005-present) - typical Republican/conservative opponent of same-sex marriage but was a client of the "DC Madam" prostition ring.
Faithful
- Larry Craig (Senator, Idaho, Republican, 1981-2008) - voted for DOMA and other oppositions to same-sex marriage; got arrested over the Minneapolis airport bathroom incident, doesn't exactly qualify as a gay act; stated in news conference he "love[s] his wife"

Newstalgia on Bush

By now, a lot of Americans still remember the incident where Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference. That incident has been played often on the news, late-night shows, and even spun off into online Flash games!

With George W. Bush leaving office in about 30 days from today, why not have a look back at a funny incident that happened with Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, who served as Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1981-1989 and President from 1989-1993.


Here's a New York Times article on the incident. Happy holidays!

Some thoughts on the newer Sansa plugin

I recently upgraded the firmware for my almost-dead Sansa e250 music player, and it has its advantages/disadvantages. The good thing is that hopefully it'll be more stable and not freeze up like the older version did. Also for my songs with multiple collaborating performers that are entered on Windows Media Player's media library simultaneously, the new firmware displays all their names, as in "Artist1/Artist2/Artist3", "Artist#" representing a name. That way the other performers get the credit they deserve, like let's say T-Pain for Kanye West's "Good Life". However my e250 now responds slower in reaction upon pressing buttons. But for now I can survive, but I still need to find Nas' Illmatic and It Was Written - I can't live without those hip hop golden age era works from perhaps the most talented MC out there! But thankfully I still have NWA's Straight Outta Compton, all my Metallica songs, and all my rare death metal songs too.

I murdered my MP3 Player today...

...after it just refused to start up. After formatting it based on a blog suggestion I ended up losing a lot of my favourite music since I use my Sansa E250 MP3 Player as primary backup since I was trying to save disk space on my slowing-down computer. Here's a random list I could pull out of my head tonight--and it'll just keep getting bigger--of albums/songs I need to re-download:
* Freedom Writers soundtrack (it has some great old school hip hop cuts, trust me)
* The Game - Doctor's Advocate
* Nas - Illmatic; It Was Written
* Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero; The Slip
* The Roots - Game Theory; Phrenology; "Distortion 2 Static" (from Do You Want More?!); "Don't Say Nuthin'" (from The Tipping Point);
* Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Quick follow-ups

- I sincerely apologise for my previous smear article about school. That's what happens when I get mad. I just go on my computer and damage a small portion of the Internet. Because honestly, I don't want to damage the real world and become the next Seung-Hui Cho.
- And my parents decided against taking the ACT since I'm already way too familiar with the SAT and I need to focus on real stuff like growing up and the personal statement. I hope that Mr West goes over 'em tomorrow in addition to reviewing George Orwell's 1984 - a pretty damn good novel right there!

Everything that's wrong with Evergreen Valley High School

Well, an hour ago I got home from the EVHS football team's embarrassing Homecoming Game loss to Independence High School, 22-21. That came after the EV Cougars were leading 21-14 with about 10 seconds left in the 4th quarter, when suddenly defense slipped up in the rainy weather and allowed an Independence player to score a touchdown (6 points) and a 2-point conversion, thus concluding the game at that. At the same time, we learned that the Juniors got 1st place at homecoming and Seniors 2nd (and of course, Sophomores 3rd and Freshmen 4th). And the Associated Student Body (ASB for short) invested lots of valuable money and had its president testify before the District in its September board meeting for a permit for halftime fireworks tonight. Wow. In a time when the economy is sucking so bad it's under Great Depression status and public schools from Puget Sound to the Rio Grande to the Florida Keys are strapped in cash and raped in the behind by President Bush's incompetent No Child Left Behind Act, it is simply a disgrace for a school that was recently ranked silver by US News & World Report magazine as among the best American high schools and having led the whole damn district in API (Academic Performance Index) to look like this in what's supposed to be the happiest time of the year.

So when I got home, I laid back on my futon and watched a DVR'ed episode of The Steve Wilkos Show, whose title host is a former US Marine, Chicago Police Officer, and security director for The Jerry Springer Show. No, I'm not joking, Wilkos is the bald-headed guy you've seen on Springer since the mid-90s or so. The episode I recorded, "Tragic Tale of 2 Sisters", was from Thursday, about an 18-year-old woman who wanted Wilkos to help her 11-year-old sister stop having sex with teen boys (I'm not joking, it IS the plot of the episode). Steve Wilkos later talks with the sister & parents, who are divorced. Soon it's revealed that the father once sexually molested the older daughter, so Steve didn't let the father see the younger daughter. Meanwhile, Steve also punishes the mother for not looking out for and loving her younger, whoring daughter. In the end, the father is evicted from the stage (in Steve's popular "GET OFF MY STAGE!!!" cry) and Steve gets the mother and children counseling.

Now I'm here all angry about how low my school is sinking. Here's a rough list of everything that is wrong, wrong, incorrect, inaccurate, stupid, messed up, FUBAR, abominable, unbelievable, and silly about Evergreen Valley High School:
1. During the part of the 05-06 academic year when private colleges are asking for letters of recommendation and such, counselors were borderline deadbeat--Steve Wilkos might've beaten them up severely.
2. EVHS has acknowledged repeatedly its over-crowding controversy, but its solution--the off-campus Biotech Academy for 11th/12th graders--was killed late in 2006, thus resuming the bottleneck. This year, the overcrowding got so bad that some students were denied certain classes merely with the excuse that there wasn't enough space. One friend of mine passed the AP Calculus AB exam but was denied Calculus BC for that very reason, yet two FRESHMEN who took a shallow summer calculus I course at community college got in. And while she was repeatedly refused a seat in Calc BC, another student (a leadership student who got a 2 on the exam, a failing score) and another random student were granted space! This is affirmative action and disorganization gone WRONG. I've heard of seniors who were forced to repeat English 3 despite passing it with at least a B just because "oh, there ain't enough space". Yet I know that this year there are students in English 4 who got C/D grades in English 3.
3. EVHS made a terrible mistake by neglecting meritocracy in considering attendance priority. That's why it's more likely that a dirty ghetto kid from the borderline Mt. Pleasant/EV attendance area gets enrolled and eventually wastes our taxpayers' money by repeating Algebra 1 until eleventh grade. At the same time, a rich, hardworking student from, lessay the Silver Creek/EV attendance borderline is rejected because of..."overcrowding". Had EV used meritocracy on its borderline attendance areas, then we'd be chasing after Cupertino and Palo Alto high schools.
4. The ASB has gotten away with childish/just plain silly homecoming and battle themes.
5. An incident in November 2007 where a great mob of students hurled Skittles at each other and at staff members illustrated the students' dissatisfaction that the administration was going all North Korea on extracurricular activities. It took that much pressure for the principal to back off.
6. EVHS knowingly hired registered sex offenders in its arts programs! In November 2006, the drama teacher was arrested for sexual misconduct. Ditto with a former band teacher a couple years later. That teacher willfully allowed a registered sex offender to volunteer at the Band Boosters!!!!!!!!
7. Racism and imbalance is rampant in EVHS's course catalogue. Why can EV provide special ed yet not have foreign language classes beyond Spanish, French, and Vietnamese? Shouldn't we save our API and reputation and harbor off the special ed to Silver Creek/Mt. Pleasant for the sake of our achieving students? Also, EVHS refuses to hire a competent AP Computer Science teacher--the one right now is lying about his 67% pass rate by a HUGE margin, to be honest.
8. Gov. Ahnuld Arnold Schwarzenegger's struggle with the state budget was somehow a tolerable excuse for the school library not to be open before 6th period, but it's almost Election Day now and this still applies. Testimony from many many district parents/students/teachers was not enough either to persuade the district to finalise hours/budget for libraries!
9. I'm still angry at EV for not telling in advance that there'd be only ONE APCS section this year--so I couldn't get in AP English Language, which I planned to be a "backup" in case I didn't get APCS. When I appealed to the APLang teacher, she just gave me a "fuck you" (no, not really) and explained that I should've done the summer stuff. Still--both me and EV are equally guilty of arrogance.
10. EV has no problem with the Gay/Straight Alliance flamboyantly posting pro-gay propaganda throughout campus during "Gay Pride Week" or whatever that is. If a pro-Proposition 8 group were to come up on campus, the ICC would evict them, and if that group were ever to practice their First Amendment rights by posting their opinions in appropriate places, the Thought Police of EV would tear 'em down within minutes. Obviously, EV holds an agenda to brainwash all students with a perverted, blind message of "tolerance for all regardless or whatever" without critical thinking.

Sadly, these are only a few problems. I've got to go to sleep now. More will come later.