WASHINGTON (AP) -- Advocacy groups and parents are suing the Nickelodeon TV network and cereal maker Kellogg Co. in an effort to stop junk food marketing to kids. The plaintiffs are citing a recent report documenting the influence of marketing on what children eat. Ads aimed at kids are mostly for high-calorie, low-nutrition food and drinks, according to the government-chartered Institute of Medicine. Wakefield, Massachusetts, mother Sherri Carlson said she tries her best to get her three kids to eat healthy foods. "But then they turn on Nickelodeon and see all those enticing junk-food ads," Carlson said. "Adding insult to injury, we enter the grocery store and see our beloved Nick characters plastered on all those junky snacks and cereals." So, what, they're suing a company because they're too lazy to tell their kids "NO"? Humm, makes sense I guess, I mean, who wants to raise kids anymore? Screw that! Thats what the TV is for! How could you say no to a kid that wants some "junky cereal" ?
To paraphrase Bill Hicks "By the way if you're in advertising or marketing...kill yourself. There is no rationalisation for what you do you are filling the world with bile and garbage. Kill yourselves."
But as Malf pointed out...there's always this little thing called PARENTING, which has been greatly lacking in society nowadays. NPR did a segment on this, talking about that a 5 year old is unable to tell the difference between a cartoon and a commercial that stars the cartoon character. Of course they are. That's why you have parents. Now, I don't really believe in advertising on cable channels to begin with. That's something that's crept in over the years. Anyone remember back when you PAID for cable because it WASN'T paid for by advertising?! That was the difference between free-view channels and cable. Now you pay for cable and still have just as much, if not more, advertising than you would have with your free-view stations. And you pay much more for cable now than you did in the 80's and early 90's. With that rant out of the way, it does suck that advertising is being targeted at children. But honestly, it always has been. Even back before there was TV, and radio was popular, there were still 'kids's shows' and those shows had advertisers like Ovaltine and BB guns and comics. The difference was, there were parents who were willing to say no to their kids, not no to the rest of the world.
I seem to be quoting you a lot, Dego. The truest test of a man's intelligence... I don't think theis phenomon is restricted to children. The line between reality and fantasy has become very blurred in our society in recent years, all in the name of entertainment. It used to be that there was no question what was true and what was not. Look at what's populat on TV now. Is Survivor reality or fantasy? What about Fear Factor? What about the Daily show? Is it news, or is it entertainment? how many times is the lead item on the nighlty news a story about an entertainer? The line has gotten very blurry and I think many people have lost the ability to tell one from the other if it doesn't directly affect them. That said, I think the lawsuit misses the point. Kids eat what their parents eat. There may have been a time in history when people had time to cook a healthy meal, but those days are long past for most of the people I know. Finally, what irks me about this is the parents complaining about what's on the television. Simple solution, if you don't like what's advertised, don't let your kids watch the idiot box. but if you do that, they you have to actually supervise and entertain your kids and that takes almost as much effort as cooking a healthy meal for them. It seems to me that a majority of parents have delegated the care of their children to the television and are now complaining about the quality of care their kids are recieving.
I think people today have just as much time to cook as they did back in "the good ol' days." But, like you said, Survivor is on and we just can't miss that, can we? I think the world as a whole has become a touch lazier. It's so much easier to get home, throw a t.v. dinner in the microwave and sit the kids down in front of the television. I think people still have the time to cook, but they just choose not to, as it takes time out of watching t.v., surfing the web (insert activity here). Someone said it above...parents are allowed to tell their children "no." Yeah, but you can't have that BB gun...you'll shoot your eye out. -monkey
Nobody takes responsibility for their actions. But I guess their precious feelings or self image might get hurt if they did. Socialism run amok, indeed. Note to cry baby idiots: You aren't entitled to happiness. You do have the opportunity, so use it. You're only wasting your time by blaming others.
Always has been the case. Seeing is interpreting is believing. Soap opera actors have been personally acosted by members of the public because they played a nasty character on TV. People unconditionally believe what they read in the tabloids. People believe urban myths... Critical thinking is a faculty rare in the average human. We engage in a lot of cognitive distortion, self-serving attribution biases, reasoning errors, emotional reasoning, all in context of pre-existing subjective and irrational beliefs. I don't agree. People may have less time to cook (now that both parents often need to work), but it is also a lot easier to cook. We have microwaves, high-speed electric kettles, pressure cookers, steamers, nice, gleaming hobs and ovens with dinky little timers and such... However, people are naturally lazy. As supermonkey says: As such, people have lost the skill of cooking (I've seen people nearly take off their finger in an attempt to cut a carrot or peel a potato), along with several other important life skills such as handling a limited amount of money responsibly (leading to spiralling debt) and social and communication skills such as getting on with your local community (leading to antisocial behaviour, neighbour feuds and very poor conflict resolution). These things should have been taught in the course of parenting, but parenting skills are pretty poor also... And a child can only transfer to its own children what it has learned from the parents. Yeah, but these days parents are also delegating the parenting of their children to schools... Just as they make the goverment (NHS, Social Services) responsible for nannying them through their lives. Worse thing is, the government actually colludes with that. As .308AR says:
