The TV told me the other day that I shouldn't be afraid to talk to my kids about drugs or sex or alcohol. I'm not. I have two teen aged children. Every day, since they started school, I've said the following to them:
Don't Drink
Don't smoke
Don't do drugs
Keep your clothes ON
And then I send them out into the world, confident that they will manage to stay out of major trouble if they follow these simple guidelines. And, while their lives certainly haven't been perfect, we have managed to avoid being guests on the Maury Povich show.
Yes, we do watch Maury Povich. It comes on about the time I get home from work. The kids are just home from school, and the three of us sit down, watch, and have very frank discussions about the problems folks could avoid if they follow my four step program. (Hubby does not watch with us...the human waste that makes up Maury's guest list sort of sickens him.)
If you haven't seen Maury, here's a short summary of about 95% of his shows:
He introduces a woman. The woman tells us a tall tale of woe, generally involving "her man." Sometimes her man is cheating on her. Sometimes her man is denying the baby she has. Sometimes it's both.
Maury gives the man either a paternity test or a lie detector test. Then, in front of a crowd not unlike the ancient Romans watching Christians being used as chew toys in the Coliseum, he reads the results.
"You ARE the father."
This will result in howls, cheers, the woman will almost always jump up and shout some sort of Shakespearean poetry at him.
"You ARE NOT the father."
Again, this results in howls and cheers, only this time it's the MAN who jumps up and shouts forth great poetry at the woman, who has run off the stage and is now in the back, sobbing and howling on her own. (this is especially fun when, moments earlier the woman says she's 1050% (not a misprint) certain the man is the father. Not only is that a shocking lack of understanding about percents, it's really, really funny when she's proven wrong.)
In the case of cheating, it goes like this:
The woman, always a Mensa member, explains to Maury how she's found proof that her man is cheating. The proof is always something icky, like "sex stains" on his underwear...or my favorite...his private bits always smell clean when he comes home from work. (Seriously...a woman actually said that!) Then the man swears he's 150% in love with her.
Then Maury reads the results of the lie detector test. In watching his show for about 5 years, the cheaters are about 400 to 1 against the non cheaters. Basically, if you get hooked up to a lie detector test on Maury Povich, you are a big old sack of lies and you're about to get outed in front of a very vocal audience.
But back to the Paternity results. I love the shows that involve paternity because these are the shows that really high light the knowledge the average Maury guest has about science and basic biology. Here are some actual bits of wisdom from men denying the children:
"That baby can't be mine because I can only have boys, and that baby is a girl."
"That baby looks white. I'm black." (The mother is white.)
"That baby isn't mine because I already have 7 babies."
"That baby isn't mine because I'm only 17."
"That baby isn't mine because I only had sex with her one time."
"That baby isn't mine because she has kids from two other guys."
Folks, you might be shocked that I watch something so completely devoid of morality. You might be shocked that I watch it with my kids. But ponder this, my friends. The above statements prove one thing very, very clearly to me:
Sex ed in our schools is NOT working.
Which brings me to the point of today's rant: If sex ed is so obviously not effective in our schools, (given the vast lack of knowledge people seem to have about sex and the results of sex) and if schools are struggling with budget cuts, how about we cut sex ed classes out of the school and instead offer episodes of Maury Povich?
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| TV entertainer or the best sex ed teacher EVER? You be the judge. |
Think about it: You could have rooms full of students, turn on the TV, and for 44 minutes you've got a great life lesson in what stupid (and skanky) looks like. For no extra charge, since most schools already have a cable subscription, you can have lessons on basic genetics, on why drinking affects your common sense, on how the use of birth control might just slow the conception of babies (this for the guys who have multiple babies from multiple women...there was a guy on Maury last week who was taking paternity tests on his 29th child.) and how, if you already have two kids from two different guys and you can't remember which two guys, you might want to cut down on the orgy weekends, at least until you pinpoint the fathers of the two kids you already have. (This for the woman who was on the show for the 5th time with her third kid...and she hadn't found a father for any of her kids yet.)
No actual teaching would be necessary.
I don't have raw numbers on how much this idea would save school districts, but I'm betting we could SAVE THE MUSIC, and then that would streamline the Grammy shows and maybe they'd go back to actually playing music on the music TV stations.
So it's a win/win situation all the way around!
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