Professor PP at the SD War College as an interesting post about the culture war. In this excerpt he points out that this war includes the children:
The culture wars are the result of two sides trying to find a balance between what is acceptable content for the masses and what infringes upon our freedom to not see certain materials. More importantly, the infringement upon my right as a parent to determine what my child is exposed to is what drives my opposition more than anything. And I'm pretty sure that's the motivation for most people (on either side of the aisle) who rail on about this stuff.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the other side in the culture wars advocates an uninterrupted assault on my ability to act as a parent and mentor. It is a constant drumbeat of pornographic images and themes of a mature nature inflicted upon my progeny without my permission. It's holding forth people practicing materialism, hedonism, irresponsibility and illegality as role models to be emulated to a segment of our society that lacks the tools to effectively know that what these people practice is a bad thing.
I can't refer to it as an "assault on the family", because it's not an assault on the entire family. The parents, dogs, and cats are ignored. It's directed at children.
Marketing executives have looked at children closely for about a decade now - not with an altruistic motive in mind, but purely with an economic motive. They don't have cars, or bills, etc. But they often have disposable income from allowances, after school jobs, babysitting etc.
And as parenting skills have either waned or been replaced with "I don't want to be your parent, I want to be your friend," those marketing efforts have had better market penetration to teens and tweens - thier ideal target market.
Read the whole thing.
