Wow. Way to place responsibility.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge advocate of both parental responsibility and being able to watch what I want on TV. Recent attempts to limit what is shown on television, coupled with legislation adding fines for 'indecency', may have a chilling effect on both creativity and risk-taking.
Then I come across this news item on IMDB.

Robert Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, has suggested that current efforts by Congress to enact legislation aimed at preventing television stations from airing indecent material would be unnecessary if parents used the V-chip. "People are screaming bloody murder that there's bad stuff on TV," Thompson told the Providence Journal. "But the little things they can do, they're not doing." With great fanfare, Congress required the V-chip to be installed in all television sets beginning in 2000, but, Thompson observed, "only a tiny percentage is learning how to use the V-chip ... and it's not hard to do." He also noted that most cable systems offer a "parental control" feature that few parents actually use. He said that he had talked to sixth-graders who could quote chapter and verse from HBO's raunchy Sex and the City.

Hmm, so if parents took responsibility for controlling what their children viewed through 2 CURRENTLY AVAILABLE METHODS, then maybe a big part of this problem would go away? Interesting.