Hi Folks,

Sorry for not posting in a while, but I've been writing a blog for the Glendale News Press three times a week called "Crosby Chronicles."

Here's an updated take on coarse Hollywood movie titles that have gone further off the deep end of bad taste with the new film "Bad Teacher."
 

            Just when you think you’ve seen the most tasteless movie ad or billboard ever, a more obscene one comes along.

            Case in point:  the new Cameron Diaz film titled “Bad Teacher.”

            The ad for this latest raunchy comedy to come out of Hollywood shows Diaz leaning back at her desk in a classroom, her feet propped upon the desk with her legs uncovered, the words “eat me” on an apple, and the tagline, “She doesn’t give an ‘F’.”

            I don’t understand how such pornographic innuendo gets approval to be splattered all over town on public transportation.  Isn’t there any one with good taste saying “no” to this smut?

            What makes it worse is that the subject matter is a teacher.  The real world is crammed with enough true horror stories about inappropriate student-teacher relationships, so is it smart or responsible for a major motion picture studio to make a movie like this and distribute in theatres as entertainment across the country?

            You know, not every movie-going patron is an oversexed sophomoric male whose sexual habits get satiated with Internet porn sites.

            Why does the Motion Picture Association of America even bother with ratings when the titles of recent movies evidently have no scrutiny?  It all started a few years back when the raunchy “South Park” cable cartoon series released the feature “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” and the producers admitted they got a kick out of having the MPAA allow such a gross title.  However, that seems tame compared to “Meet the Fockers”, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”, and “Kick-Ass.”

            If you are watching TV with your mother or children, do you not blush when ads for these movies appear?

            The old argument about turning off the TV if you don’t like what’s on it doesn’t work when billboards all over town are emblazoned with “KICK-ASS”; you can’t easily swerve the car in the opposite direction.

            It is practically impossible to shield young children from being bombarded by images and sounds that at the very least makes it quite difficult to explain to young people, at the worst makes life around them coarse and vulgar.

In the past, double entendres were employed as a way to get around a censor.  Nowadays, there is no shading of what the true meaning of something is.  In fact, often the magnified message is quite clear, slammed in your face super-sized style, leaving no doubt what is intended.

              If your reaction to these examples is “big deal,”  then my point is made:  people have become blinded to good taste.

              Clearly, things have gotten out of control.  This is not about censorship.  It’s about boundaries.

              No standards seem to exist anywhere anymore.  Are people asleep out there? 

              Yet how many of us are sick and tired of the “Holy Shift” ads for Showtime’s“Nurse Jackie”?  Last year’s slogan was “Life is full of little pricks.”  How raunchy will next year’s ad campaign be?  You can imagine those writing these lines snickering to themselves.  You have to wonder about those who are paid big bucks to come up with this tripe:  don’t any of them have kids?  Aren’t any of them ashamed of their work?

               It’s akin to a person drawing genitals in a public restroom.  Only now all of us can see the work of the infantile minds in magazines, newspapers, and on television, buses, and the Internet.

              We all should feel embarrassed when we see and hear these images.  Evidently shame is on the endangered species list of human traits.

               People can be very good at trumpeting certain causes, such as outlawing cigarette smoking in public places, making sure animals have rights, cleaning up the environment.  But when it comes to the pollution of the eyes and ears, protests are nonexistent.

            We don’t know the possible harm that is being done on young people’s psyches.  All of us need to remember that there are children soaking in all these words and images, and as adults we need our guardianship role seriously.  Who’s to say if children growing up today with a coarser culture will turn out courser themselves? 

             There was a time when adults would refrain from using obscenities whenever women or children entered a room.  Now those obscenities are tattooed on the parents’ arms.

            Freedom is not about doing or saying anything you want.  If so, there would be no civilized society.

            There is plenty of room in the marketplace for garbage, but the public should have the choice whether or not to be forced to look at it and smell it.

We all could use a little civility nowadays.

            Hollywood, enough is enough.  Stop making garbage.