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Kermit the Frog to promote V-Chip
StainlessSteelRat writes "It's a shock to me, but my favorite green man has become the spokesfrog for the v-chip. He will be, "Explaining the v-chip's purpose, its practical applications and the rating system that works with the device," to the same people that can't seem to get their VCR's to stop flashing 12. " My childhood has been ripped away-the question I have, is the V-chip what's at the end of the rainbow connection?
Sitting next to your child every minute may be preposterous, but there's a better solution. Raising them to know what is "good" and "bad". Or raising them to realize the difference between reality and television. It may be too much to babysit their TV time, but having discussions with them at dinner about what they watched isn't that preposterous.
The v-chip isn't about this. It's like security through obscurity. They assume that by removing "bad" elements, we can raise "good" children. How about this, pointing out "bad" elements and introducing them as such?
Grue
Not because parents will assert their rights to raise their kids in their own way.
Not because kids are clever enough to bypass any and all 'child-proof' methods laid before them.
Not because the Federal Legislature is about to grow a conscience and a common sense, and thus realize that this whole censorship in the name of the children is rank with hypocricy...
No. It will fail because most of the parents that would even consider using it, still have 12:00 blinking on their VCR. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him RTFM.
As for Kermit, well... Good riddence to another fallen fairytale. Exposing the children to the fact that even their childhood friends are sellouts is a worthwhile lesson. Disillusionment is good. We do not want our kids growing up in a world of illusions and false beliefs, do we?
Here's to reality!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
It just occurred to me that this would have been a great way to sabotage the V Chip. Back when they were trying to push it, instead of opposing it, we should have tried to bog it down with features (like tagging ads) that other groups (networks) would have opposed. :-) We'de just have to figure out some bullshit way to spin it as being "For The Children" and no one would be able to stop it.
Gotta keep this in mind for next time...
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Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"In the year 2000 - The marriage of Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog will come to an abrupt end when he converts to Judaism and can no longer eat pork."
Ok, bye.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
So...let me get this straight. In order to explain a simple concept to PARENTS....they had to go and contract a children's puppet?!
Werd.
Kermit the Frog is now a puppet of the evil empire. Once Jim Henson departed, Kermit became a pawn of the same company that now owns the first three letters of the alphabet in television. He is under mind control. There's nothing you can do about it. Mickey has his hand right up Kermit's butt and all we can do it just watch him dance. It sure is traumatic, but we hopefully can still cover our butts before the mouse shoves his gloved hand up there too. Otherwise we'll be using "Wholesome Family Entertainment" just like Wilford Brimley used it to describe oatmeal. God help us all!
On a more serious note... Does the estate of Jim Henson control when/where his characters are used to further political agendas? This seems like the sort of thing he'd have been very much against.
Werd.
No. At the end of the Rainbow Connection is a mixture of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cats, cellulose gum, chicken wire, dipotassium phosphate, thiamin, riboflavin, red dye #2, mono and diglycerides, shredded Office97 documentation and artificial colors and flavorings. And it's owned by Viacom.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The purpose of the v-chip is to block content. blocked content=censorship.
Regardless of that, anything which arbitrarily labels content is censorship. The mere act of labeling something is a very real form of censorship.
Here's what the ALA(American Library Association) has to say about labeling: (full text can be found here)
Labeling is an attempt to prejudice attitudes and as such, it is a censor's tool.
They have much more to say on the matter, so I recommend following the link to the full text.
Generic Man
It might be possible to leverage off the "parental control" issue here. I know more than one family who has ditched the TV because they didn't want their children corrupted by the interminable advertspam. This is a real issue for some parents. It's just as much part of letting parents have a say in what kind of crap gets stuck in their kids' brains as the sex and violence and adult situations bits.
And it's a real issue to some non-parents, as well. I'd rather a Blue Screen of Death than the constant adverts.
When I was a kid the "old folks" had a saying.
God protects children and fools.
This kind of makes a paradox because the fools are trying to protect the children now. The V-Chip will do nothing except force TV prices up.
The kind of morons who use the TV as a babysitter are the ones who will "need" the V-Chip, once you block out programming with sexual or violent content it will cease to keep childrens' interest and then these assholes will have to find another babysitting appliance to bitch about.
How long before M$ takes a hint on this and incorporates violence and sex filtering into Direct X?
Ratings are a bullshit way to inpose censorship.
Movies that get an NC-17 rating are destined to bring in no money because most theaters won't carry them. Just as the X rating was the kiss of death for movies in the 1980's.
I remember seeing the original robocop when the ED-209 fired for what seemed like 5 minutes into some guys chest, then two weeks later I saw it again and it went down to like 2 seconds. Why was the change made? Because the MPAA had threatened to slap the movie with an X rating if they didn't shorten the scene.
HBO, while they'll show damned near anything in their original productsion also will not carry X rated movies.
I'm sick of these fscking egg heads trying to protect us from ourselves. I want to eat a big bloods rare steak. I want to eat REAL butter, not that partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil bullshit!. Sometimes I want a cigar, or a cigarette. I KNOW that they're bad for me, but I WANT to do it anyway. I don't need you to protect me from myself.
Maybe I'll die at 75 instead of 77 because I had one too many bacon cheeseburgers. Or maybe I'll die tomorrow in a car accident.
God protect us when the fools want to protect our children.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Those will mess a kids mind up good. Better she should watch Sailor Moon...
I was never told "You can't read/watch that." I was VERY rarely told "I'd prefer you wait on that one until you're a bit older, but I'm not going to stop you." And I listened because I trusted their judgement. (Well, Mom and I didn't see eye-to-eye on music or movies, because she doesn't like to be depressed by her entertainment, but Dad was no problem.) Heck, my parents were going to take me to Last Temptation of Christ when it came out
Also, I generally had better things to do than watch most TV, whether it was going to the library, swim team practice, drama club and band rehearsals, or (now) SCA practices, meetings and events. I don't watch much television now: a few comedies I like *if* I happen to be home and not busy, the news (sometimes), the occasional PBS special, and a movie here and there if I wanted to see it anyway.
Mindless acceptance of ANYthing, "kid-safe" or not, is unhealthy. A caring parent is going to make that very clear to the kiddies.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Because of this, I have serious doubts as to whether or not I'll ever watch or buy anything by Henson and company ever again.
Censorship is the true obscenity, and this is what it's coming to. I wish things were different, but as it is I'm beginning to consider leaving the country as soon as I get out of college (assuming the government still allows people to leave the country at all by then). In the interests of "protecting chiuldren" they would reduce us to a nation of children. Then again, this is probably what they want, since children are easier to control than adults, especially adults who actually exercise their own minds rather than let the government do their thinking for them.
Intellectuals need a government lobby. We should try and get organized; I know it's the nature of us geeks to work alone but it takes concerted effort to make a difference. That's why the Slashdot Effect works; millions of people all doing the same thing at the same time (sure, it's not really concerted, but you get the same effect). It's how Linux works; imagine where it would be now if only Linus worked on it and no one else. It can work in real life too. I hate to turn Slashdot into a political platform, so this is best done on another site. It's probably a lost cause for our generation; we're all going to live under at least a brief period of totalitarianism at some point within the next fifty years, I'd imagine. But if we want our children to have any freedom whatsoever, we have to organize and get out into the real world.
I resemble that remark! Not all people who's VCRs flash 12:00 are utter morons, you know - some people have good reasons to leave their VCR flashing midnight (or is it noon?)
My VCR flashes 12:00 - well, really it flashes AUTO. Why? Because it's one of those auto-time-sensing VCRs that pick the time off of the datastream running through it to the television. And, for some unknown reason, my current cable company apparently doesn't include the time in the data they feed me.
You say I could set the clock? Sure, but then when the wind blew my power out, I'd be right back to square one. When you loose power an average of 2-3 times a week, resetting the vcr is a low priority.
As for Kermie promoting the V-chip... I'm not sure about that. How many parents are actually going to *enjoy* being talked down to by a stuffed green frog? Even fewer than would enjoy being explained the process by their children, I'm sure. Parents are *not* idiots, in the main. Even those who want to rely on some technological doohicky to babysit what their kids watch on TV rather than actually spending the time one needs to with remote in hand to do it yourself. Or spending the time discussing with children what they see on TV and explaining real versus fantasy vs televison and what is right and wrong.
However, Kermit's career's been rather dead of late. I'm sure he felt that any job was better than *no* job, and maybe he thought if he got his face out there, and got to talk to a more mature audience, he'd actually get a shot at some of the leading man roles in *real* films. Can't you just see Kermit the Frog in Total Recall 2? Or how about in Matrix 2 & 3, as a bad guy, even. Kermit's so typecast as the fun-loving, happy-go-lucky, all-around-nice green guy, I'm sure he's itching to do something more evil.
Be sure to look for Kermit the Frog as Mini Me in Austin Powers III.
Fine, that is your right. You can set rules about what your son can and can't watch and I won't complain at all. I will complain when the government forces all TV manufacturers to include a censorware chip and thus forces all consumers to pay for it whether or not they want it (You can buy a standard transmission. Very soon I will be unable to buy a non-vchip-crippled TV). I will also complain when the government intimidates the networks into establishing a ratings system that would be illegal if done through a law.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
jhoffmann wrote:
some day all those quarters will be worth something.
Yeah, after a while they might even be worth twenty-five whole cents!
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Open mind, insert foot.
I recently bought a new Philips TV, which, as per law, has the V-Chip in it. This all seemed rather silly to me, but I really liked the picture quality, so I bought the thing anyway.
So as soon as I got home, I decided to check it out. First off, it seemed very flakey who was sending the tagging as who wasn't. I set it to block TV-Y7-FV just to see what would happen, and found that if I was on Fox, and the power rangers came on, sometime it would blank, but other times I would have to switch channels, then switch back to get it to blank.
I was also immensly ammused that it did not block South Park, no matter what I tried. And, although you can set the TV to block specific channels, many people have DirectTV (including me), which seems to foil it rather well most of them time.
All in all it seems like a very under tested technology. I really question the idea of the V-Chip, but if you are going to do it, you had better to it right, or else no one will be happy.
The v-chip blocking commercials, infommercials, and the often repeated station id ego might do more than protect little children. It would prevent my mind from rotting having to watch the senseless crap after already paying good money by the month for programming in the first place. Seems like they would have advertisements to support the advertisements if they could get away with it. Cable and satellite television is a big scam. Just wait until television will have interactive v-chips and require you to click on the ads to see the next scene. Its only a matter of time...
^^ Moderate him up.
:( But maby it isn't we ought to put our resources together first to hack the current one (this will force a new one to come out.. cause we arn't getting rid of it.. and on development of a new one we can jump up and offer to "help")
This is a great idea.. Its probably too late though
ideally, we could just censor all the ads on our tv's and life would be nice.
There is a way this can be done. I remember an old Zenith television that would mysteriously blank the screen when the advertisements would start. The only way to get the picture back was to cycle the power switch.
I later found out why the television was doing this. It was the "fade to black" video editing when they would switch to the advertisements that would trigger this event. There was something wrong with the blanking circuit on the television that would latch the whole picture for good when the darkness levels reached that threshold. Very few times during a movie would this happen. I would have to say it was quite a great misfeature in that old television; unfortunately, it worked for the video, not the audio that is the most annoying attribute of advertisements.
Its been a while since I worked on televisions, but if they still do fade to black editing at the levels like they used to, a simple circuit could be made to squelch the audio until a reset button or the next edit occurred. It would be a level detector connected to one of the video test pins usually found on the main board, connected to either a latch or a flip flop. Have a pushbutton to reset the state.
Kermit also will be annoucing the following:
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Oscar the grouch will no longer be visible unless you have your V-chip set to a rating of Y7+ because parents feel he is too much like a homeless person and thus too scary.
Snuffalupagus will also no longer be visible without a TV-14 setting because of the phallic nature of his nasal appendage.
Elmo will not be visible without a setting of TV-MA due to the perverse nature of his tickle fetish.
Today was brought you by the letter V...
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
You say that restricting the channels my television will display violates my childrens rights. Isn't not owning a television restricting their rights even further?
The owners of my cable system get to decide exactly what does and doesn't get broadcast. Why are their rights more important than mine?
I think that the biggest problem in most of modern culture is not that we have too much violence on tv but that our parents don't spend enough time with their children. That being said, is the V-Chip so bad? Sixteen-year-olds are able to get their parents to give them the password, or are able to get their own T.V. So their rights aren't infringed. Three-year- olds aren't able to watch blood and gore on TV. Is that so bad? Shows that are designed for Adults but which appeal to kids for the wrong reason (Southpark comes to mind) are at least a little harder for kids to get into. And all of you who are old enough still get to watch it. What's so bad about it again?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
More's the pity, too. From a business perspective, they shouldn't be biting the hand that feeds them, but from a helping-the-kids perspective
But because TV stations and most politicians can't afford to bite the hands that feed them, kids are being indoctrinated with the keeping-up-with-the-Jonses mentality at younger and younger ages. I'm surprised advertisers aren't trying to set up ad-screens a fetus can watch in vitro.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
That would be true only if the government had no hand in the matter. In reality, or course, the government drove the whole process, subsidizing it by making it mandatory (to drive down the unit cost at the expense of people who have no use for it) and determining which categories of content would be rated.
(Don't bother to dispute the latter point unless you are prepared to state with a straight face that Congress would have voted for a mandatory chip that could be set to add a LIAR LIAR LIAR crawl every time a politician appeared on the screen.)
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The TV is a brilliant invention for removing a persons mind through their eyes.
Now, if they could just make one with a button that would allow yolu to turn it off...
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
In and of itself, it seems pretty harmless. The concerns are things like:
Speaking for myself, I'd like to see nudity and sex treated in a realistic manner, rather than having it glamorized and reviled at the same time. As for violence, let's make things more realistic (i.e. f you get shot in the shoulder, you aren't going to be walking around any time soon). Others out there have different ideas about what they want television to be. The fear is that a rating system and V-chip combo will influence programmers to produce, well, pablum. They will strive to not offend anyone, so we are left with the lowest common denominator (even more than now). The ratings system could result in TV being even more afraid to challenge, to question, to take chances.
Here's one scenario: people set their V-chips to some level suitable for their children -> not wanting to be bothered, they leave it there -> programs that don't meet this criteria don't get watched -> programmers stop making programs that don't satisfy the thresholds most people use -> everyone, whether they have kids or not, whether they have a V-chip or not, has to watch the same programming, because that's all that's being made. Unlikely? Perhaps, but that gives you some idea of what people are concerned about.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith