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• Heh (Score:1)

  by pudge (1)

  Yeah, I've often thought about that while watching a TV show and thinking it would be mostly harmless for ,y children, and then seeing the horrible commercials that my children might see.
  
  But OTOH that usually happens while watching children's TV, Saturday morning cartoons, etc. Those commercials are aimed right at kids and telling them to not respect parents, to want crap, etc. ad nauseam. That kind of thing they'll understand. At a young age, they won't be influenced much by Smirnoff and Victoria's Se
  • Re:Heh (Score:2)

    by gnat (29)

    William watches mostly PBS shows with no ads :-) And when he watches Disney, it's weekday morning Disney with no product ads, not Saturday morning Disney with "MURDERTRON 2000! IT SHOOTS! IT MAIMS! EET KEELS!" and "SUGARPOPS! NOW WITH EXTRA SUGAR!" commercials all over the place. Every day we say a quiet thanks to PBS.

    Nat
• *ahem* (Score:2)

  by hfb (74)

  JJ doesn't have a TV

  And it's a little unfair to attack some of us who continually see the US becoming the Cult of the Victim where everything is someone elses fault. TV has lots of messages besides the commercials so much that my sister, much to her credit, allows her children to only watch 5 hours of TV each week that she helps them choose and only after they have read a book or two.

  The point of the reason I mentioned it was that banning alcohol ads seems absurdly inconsistent with the rest of the prog
  • Re:*ahem* (Score:2)

    by gnat (29)

    it's a little unfair to attack some of us who continually see the US becoming the Cult of the Victim where everything is someone elses fault

    Hey, I'm all against the cult of the victim. I think fat people suing food manufacturers is the stupidest thing I've heard. I'm all for personal responsibility, but I don't think I'm playing the victim here. I'm simply saying that keeping booze ads off TV would hurt nobody and make my life as a parent a lot easier.

    That ad for Cocoa Puffs at 8am on Saturday is a
    • Re:*ahem* (Score:2)

      by hfb (74)

      Well..what I meant was that given the choice the kid is probably gonna go for the sugar rush and isn't going to add guinness to his Super Sugar Crisp anytime soon :)

      I don't really like TV though I own one and hopefully not buy one when we move to .fi since it's a great way to put your EEG to a flat line...even with the history channel and such it's coma inducing. Have you ever noticed when you go to a pub that has TVs, whether you are alone or with friends, how people tend to stare at them? I try to go to
      • Re:*ahem* (Score:2)

        by gnat (29)

        Re: tvs in pubs. There's a great book, "Dublin Pub Lore", that talks about the rise and decline of pubs in Dublin. The pox of the TV is addressed there. I agree--televisions anywhere there's supposed to be socializing are a curse. I hate it when people throw a party but leave the TV on. That kills half or more of a room for meaningful social interaction.

        I'm such a curmudgeon :-)

        -Nat
        • Re:*ahem* (Score:1)

          by pudge (1)

          I agree--televisions anywhere there's supposed to be socializing are a curse. I hate it when people throw a party but leave the TV on. That kills half or more of a room for meaningful social interaction.
          
          That's fine and all, except for where sports on TV is concerned, such as Super Bowl parties, and the time I first met hfb and we were at a Boston.pm social thing at a bar, and it was the night Mark McGwire broke the long-standing home run record. Such things supercede normal socializing. :-)
• A considered response (Score:1)

  by jjohn (22)

  First, I'm delighted to know that anyone reads my comments and even more so to see they provoke a response. I find use.perl.org helps me kill time effectively and it appears I'm not alone.

  Second, like some of my favorite essays on Suck [suck.com], gnat's entry sent me scurrying to the dictionary -- in this case to look up bolshy. Bolshy, for those in my boat, is British slang for obstreperous. Not being up my Jane Austin, I had to find the definition of obstreperous which turns out to be a synonym for "clamorous; noi
  • Re:A considered response (Score:2)

    by gnat (29)

    Bolshy comes from the Bolsheviks, who presumably were obstreperous :-)

    I wholeheartedly second your call for critical evaluation of ads. I regularly clutch my head like a stunned monkey and mentally plan to launch an asteroid at Madison Ave. My favourite technique is to say one thing in the smooth voiceover and totally contradict it in the fine point at the bottom of the screen. Target audience: illiterates :-)

    In 5th form English we did a unit on the language of advertising. It was basically the rhet
    • Re:A considered response (Score:1)

      by pudge (1)

      No, there is no American curriculum, and for this I am mostly glad. However, there probably isn't much incidence of such discourse in the various American curricula, either.