cable rant...

I am irked. miffed. irritated. pissed off.

GROWL.

I am generally very careful about my child's television viewing.

I AM.

But I do let her watch TV. I do. And no, I do not think it makes me a bad parent. There are many excellent reasons for a child to watch TV. Education is one of those.

I give you an example. Yesterday at 9am K and I watched Sesame Street. Fun. Happy. Smart. It was the J episode were that little rat Elmo (love the show hate that Muppet) runs around calling himself "Jelmo" and only doing things that start with a letter "J". Good educational tool. At some point in the show there is jumping and the word "jump" is spelled a few times. K asked me "What does J U M P spell?" I said jump. She said "cool".

So a bit later at 12:30 I was in the kitchen making lunch for us while K sat at the table with an art pad and her universe sized collection of pens. She was working hard on a drawing she was keeping hidden, this is standard MO. She draws, sighs, draws some more, gasps, smiles huge and hides the drawing until the "big reveal" where we applaud her amazing artistic talent.

All good.

So as I bring our lunch plates to the table she shows me the page she's completed. It's a lovely depiction of me jumping on a pogo stick, next to me in bold print are the letters J U M P.

I was impressed, I smiled, hugged her, kissed her, told her I was proud, patted her on the head and immediately reached for the phone to call Mr. Kaos. He did a little jig in his cube (I'd imagine) and said how proud he was. I then preceded to call Nana and Uncle Matty as well. See educational TV makes me happy.

That brings me back to my TV rant. My cable rant specifically.

At 1:oo in the afternoon should the Cartoon Network really have commercials for R rated movies??? HUH? Does anyone else think that is a bad fucking idea??????

Not just the Cartoon Network but ABC Family too. Anyone catch the last word in that network? OH "FAMILY".

Now the particular commercial was made by our cable provider and was for The Departed On Demand. are the 5 years olds that are home from school at that time the target audience for a rated R movie??? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe Cartoon Network and ABC Family didn't know what the cable provider was supplying in way of content so I have this to say:

Dear Comcast and other stupid cable providers,

Look jerkos, I spend enough time trying to keep my kid safe without the added worry of her seeing scenes of implied murder and violence on THE CARTOON NETWORK and ABC FAMILY in the early afternoon. It isn't like I have my kid up watching TV at midnight, so maybe we could clean up the advertising on family channels just during the day.

While we're at it maybe you can work on the commercials for your on demand screen. Generally when someone is on the "kids" menu for "On Demand" in the morning they don't want to see previews for violence or sex based programming.

Oh, and just in case you want children and their families across America to enjoy the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade, maybe this year your could consider not showing commercials for a particularly violent and inappropriate episode of ER.

Love (or seething anger), CamiKaos

There will be a letter sent, that isn't exactly what the letter will look like though. It will be longer, more specific, maybe a little more articulate, but they will be getting one. Will it do any good at all? Probably not but I'm going to make my displeasure known anyway.

Parenting is my job and I take it very seriously so when I let K watch anything I make sure it is appropriate from start to finish. Some may think that's a little controlling, but she is 5 years old. Anything that could contain questionable content Mr. Kaos or I watch with her. Anything that contains commercials Mr. Kaos or I watch with her. Why? Because that is part of the job.

Other people may choose differently, hell I know someone who let their 3 year old watch CSI and the Soprano's. They've made their choice, and I've made mine. My kid doesn't need to see people killed, even if it's only in a 3 second clip.