FCC and Personal Responsibility

I'm not going to mention Janet Jackson. I promise.

Suffice it to say, there are no shortage of people seeking to save us from ourselves. The next great danger: cell phone smut.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050215/3/3qly9.html

I wish I was kidding. Apparently, parents are so teriffied that their children may access "adult content" that the FCC has stepped up to the plate.

That seems to be the trend. Too irresponsible to be a parent? Call Uncle Sam. He'll do the job. Here's a novel idea: if you don't want your kids to view "adult content" tell them so. If you can't trust your kids to stay away from cell phone smut, take away the phone. Yes, you're a parent, you can do that. It's called discipline, and you won't end up in a bad nursing home, probably.

Here's another question. Why do five year-olds need cell phones? That's right, five year-olds. According to the article, just over a third of five to nineteen year-olds own cell phones. Who could you possibly need to call at the ripe old age of five? A five year old's existence is pretty simple. You wake up, go to school, come home and play. Maybe you squeeze in baseball and soccer practice in there, but ultimately you have no responsibility. That's a good thing.

Five year olds don't need responsibility. They need to be left alone to live their lives before they find out Santa Claus isn't real and the world is no longer a wonderful place. How terribly ironic that while the FCC is busy protecting us from cell phone smut, the parents aren't protecting their children from the real danger: missing childhood.

Apparently, since we can no longer expect people to think for themselves, the government must do it for us.

Have we really fallen that far?