Racy TV fare leads to teen pregnancy. It’s true. Researchers say so. Research, "groundbreaking" in the words of the Associated Press, found that teenage girls who watch sexually suggestive programs have a higher rate of pregnancy than those whose viewing tastes tend to tamer fare. Shows that highlight positive aspects of sexual activity induce impressionable girls to have unprotected sex before they are ready to make responsible decisions.
The study, conducted by "behavioral scientists," relied upon junk science questionnaires conducted by telephone. The sampling group was barely 2,000. This story is silent on how the researchers extracted the truth from a subject group that is notorious for exaggeration, confusion and deception. The end result, curiously, finds that the number of girls who became pregnant and boys who caused a pregnancy is quite small. So small that it would appear that the conclusion of the study is completely at odds with the tone of this news report, which verges on the hysterical. But, as we know, coherence does not matter, today. The cozy "under siege" feeling is all that it takes to set busybodies in search of a crusade into motion.
The comment by a flack with a nonprofit teen pregnancy prevention outfit provides a clue. Praising the study he notes that the study "catches up with common sense." When common sense, as defined by a behavioral engineer, is validated by the conclusion of an epidemiological study, be prepared for more studies followed by recommendations then by regulations. Such has been the result of the raft of shoddy studies that "proved" cigarette smoking on the screen leads young people to take up the habit.
Television and movie producers weakly argued that audiences don’t mimic on screen behavior — how many ax murderers, amoral villains or flamboyant drag queens were created by film or TV entertainment — but the anti-tobacco gang (and their studies) have pretty much cowed the entertainment crowd into submission. In some European nations it is forbidden by law to show smoking on television. Now file and television producers will tone down the sleaze and even the romance lest they be accused of contributing to an epidemic of teen pregnancy that doesn’t really exist.
The modern world, the product of thousands of years of progress, creativity and hard work, is now run by mindless "experts" who produce not one product or service that anyone would use, buy or admire. The value of their work is strictly negative, useful only to those whose ardent desire is to eliminate all freedom, bit by bit.
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