Dear reader... (Just thought I'd clarify/edit my previous post for you)

"Kle", as I was reading your comment I must say I did agree with some of what you said. Other parts I just didn't clarify enough, but some I completely disagree with. Anyways, here's your very own post. This is tailor made just for you, and I'm glad I have a responsive reader.

You mentioned that you can't watch pornograpy at 17. This is true, but when I was refering to the magic number '17' it was for my example of rated 'R' movies. Not to mention those who look at porn generally don't follow necessarily legal sites when looking at it, and it's easy to find whether you're 18 or younger.

*Tangent*

As for being 18 to view porn. Porn wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if it wasn't advertised to those younger than the legal age. You can't tell me it's not. Every day I have to flick to another site because of the ads on the side of the page that have a lady with next to nothing on. It says stuff like "Women who want to get naughty... tonight.", and such. It may be argued that this isn't porn, but it leads to porn. I mean it only takes a quick image search on google with a couple choice words, and Bingo! The jackpot! Other sites will ask you if you're 18, and ask you for your date of birth to check. It doesn't take much intelligence to set your birthdate back a couple of years, and you're in.

*End of Tangent*

I'll agree with your statement that watching a rated R movie pales in the comparison of such things as drinking, smoking, and other such things. Problem is this is a blog, not a book. I'll get to those when I feel inspired to write about them.

~Maybe watching the Matrix once won't do anything to you, but the problem is the effect is cumulative. It's like a slow poison: the more you add (of bad movies and such) the faster the ailment progresses. Also you say that people don't decide to kill people over the media they consume. Look at the kids from Columbine high school. What did they listen to? Marilyn Manson. It was their fault for choosing that media. (and by the way, as I was doing a google search to figure out how to spell 'Marilyn Manson' I got some pretty explicit results)

~Violence is a bad example of what media does to people though. It's easier to watch violent movies and walk away unscathed. But here's one to chew on. What of all the teenage girls who get into eating disorders. You can't tell me they thought of the idea all on their own. They see it all around them, in magazines, advertisements, on television, and other prevalent media forms. You can't tell me that the media doesn't effect these girls. As I've been writing this rebutal I was talking to my friend who previously suffered from an eating disorder, and during recovery had to isolate herself from all of the media that said,"She wasn't perfect enough."

~As for attacking the rating system, I'll agree that I started the article intending to do that, but by the end I simply mentioned that the ratings are there for a reason. They tell us that there is bad content in the movies we watch. From the PG movies to the NC-17 movies, it lists all the reasons why we shouldn't watch it.

~To end on an up note I completely agree that our culture has made us numb to such things in our media. The anchor man will say,"A teen died in a drive by shooting", and we'll flip the channel. It's nothing new, now maybe if he'd been hacked to pieces with a chainsaw we might keep watching, but otherwise we flip to another channel.

~I propose that we try to change our culture if our culture is the issue then. We should start to raise our kids in a more innocent culture. Maybe if enough people listen, maybe, just maybe, we may yet again watch the news and cry for the little boy who just lost his mother and father in a car crash.