Wingnut Group Denounces Bully Makers For "End Run" Around Rating System

After the MPAA gave Bully an R rating, its filmmakers decided to release the film today without a rating at all. In response, AMC Theatres announced that it would allow children under 17 to see the movie with a parental permission slip. All this has infuriated the Christian "watchdogs" of the entertainment industry, the Parents Television Council.

"They're doing an end-run essentially around the MPAA by encouraging theaters to show unrated movies. And I think they're setting a dangerous precedent that in the future, anytime a studio gets a rating on a movie that they don't like, they can just go ahead and release an unrated version," warns PTC's Melissa Henson. "They [will] have precedent for theaters now showing unrated films." He could have made the necessary edits to the film to secure the lower PG-13 rating so that it would be available to more teens, but he refused to do that," the PTC spokesperson notes. So she concludes this effort is more about the profits than it is about the children.

Wingnuts Outraged That Millions Saw The Most Famous Hand Gesture In The World

The Parents Television Council is outraged that nobody will take responsibility for M.I.A.'s flipping the bird during the Super Bowl. Because children saw it.

Explanations and apologies by both the league and the network ring hollow, says Dan Isett of the Parents Television Council, seeing that both are essentially blaming each other. "NBC is blaming the NFL for having hired the performer in the first place; the NFL says that it's not really their fault because they didn't know it was coming," he summarizes. "What that really means is that nobody is taking responsibility for it -- [and] that's pathetic." Isett says inappropriate material showing up at the big game is tiring.

Another outraged group has posted a recap of M.I.A.'s "history of radicalism."

Christianist Group Threatens America's Got Talent Boycott Over Hiring Howard Stern

The Parents Television Council says it will demand that advertisers refuse to sponsor America's Got Talent due to last week's hiring of Howard Stern as a judge.

"It's an act of desperation on behalf of the NBC network," suggests Dan Isett, director for public policy at the watchdog group. "[The show] trails badly in the ratings across the board, and this reeks of nothing short of a PR stunt to try to draw some attention to a show that's been relatively successful and relatively family-friendly. It's going to be quite a shock to viewers that have become fans of the show to tune into next season and find a guy like Howard Stern on there every night." "We're going to serve notice to advertisers that by sponsoring this show, they are complicit and responsible for bringing Howard Stern and his name and his brand into every living room in the country," the public policy director details.

CORRECTION: In the first draft of this post, I misstated the show as being American Idol. Gawd, that moon is bright.

Christian Media Watchers Issue Best And Worst List Of Television Advertisers

If your company advertises on naughty shows like Glee, which depict the lives and loves of gay teens, you'll make the Parents Television Council's annual list of "worst advertisers."

Quote Of The Day - Tim Winter

"I cannot imagine what would possibly lead the ABC television network to air a profanity-laced, S&M sex show on primetime broadcast television. The overtly sexualized performance by Rihanna and Britney Spears was no accident or mishap, but a deliberate effort to target teens with images and lyrics that that glamorize whips, chains and other sexual fetishes." - Parents Television Council head Tim Winter, who's really upset that Britney and Rihanna kissed during their performance on the Billboard Awards. Lesbianism, the OTHER sexual fetish!

Quote Of The Day - Melissa Henson

"It seems to us that this panel of three judges walked into the courtroom with their minds already made up and with kind of a chip on their shoulder about the whole enforcement regime of the Federal Communications Commission and that they did not look at the facts of the case objectively.

"The judges basically overturned the will of the American people, the laws of the land, and even a decision of the Supreme Court. If this ruling is allowed to stand, it will basically open the floodgate for non-stop 'f-words' and 's-words,' nudity, profanity [and] graphic violence throughout the day -- regardless of venue, regardless of whether or not there are children in the viewing audience." - Melissa Henson, spokesnudge for the Christianist-run Parents Television Council, responding to yesterday's overturning of the FCC's rules on potty language.

FCC Complaint Filed Over Family Guy

Predictably, fundies are filing an FCC complaint over Sunday's "Peter Goes Gay" episode of Family Guy and are calling on the show's sponsors to suspend advertising. (Feel free to stretch and yawn.) From the fundie-run Parents Television Council:

Our organization is taking its concerns directly to every parent, every Fox affiliate and every advertiser -- as well as to those whom the Congress has instructed to uphold the law: the FCC. We encourage our members and concerned citizens to contact their local broadcasters and their public servants with their complaints. Each and every advertiser who paid for this show to air will also be personally contacted by the PTC and asked if bringing orgies and bestiality into American living rooms resonates with their corporate image.

I don't disagree that this episode of Family Guy was one of the most crude things ever seen on television. But so what? The show was preceded by a stern warning to parents and I believe there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million other channels.

The PTC files complaints on almost every show on TV, including fluff like Friends (likely because of the lesbian wedding episode). Meanwhile the rest of us get served dumbed and watered down nonsense because fundie parents don't know how to use the blocking services provided on every cable box in America. Hell, I had to enter a PIN just to watch CNN at my (relatively) liberal sister's house. There's a reason why almost every memorable series in the last ten years has been on pay cable. It's spelled P-T-C.