TMZ (Blog post #3)

As the mother of daughters, and maybe even more pertinent the mother of a son, I have finally hit morality critical mass. It happened about 6:30 PM yesterday evening while I was blankly staring at TMZ.

Maybe I should preface my critique before launching into a complete tirade...My husband is a devout follower of TMZ and if I do not choose to leave the room every night at 6:30 I am riddled with boobs, butts, debauchery and general I.Q. demolishment. I admit that I occasionally laugh, am sometimes amused but in general spend the time squirming uncomfortably and eventually vacate the room. My husband accuses me constantly of being "high brow" but the truth is I like lots of stuff that does not constitute "high brow". I love the entire Fast and the Furious series (I happen to appreciate fine looking men and fast cars...girls look too!), nearly pee myself every time I listen to Daniel Tosh's "Cargo Pant Day" skit & wholly appreciate Dave Chappelle's take on the seedier side of Sesame Street and the list goes on. My moral compass is not at a squeaky clean north 24/7.

Where TMZ completely lost me last night was their lecherous segment on the new Miley Cyrus video, which is pretty much obscene all on its own without the added explicit commentary and verbiage. (I now know what "tweaking" is - it happens A LOT in this video, have watched Hannah Montana grab some girls breast, make out with women and dolls etc...) Their show, much like their website, is devoted to about as much soft core pornography as is allowable by law. (Here is a link to their site, guys, Kate Upton is riding a horse topless on the front page.) True, there are many other stories on their site than just highly sexualized ones but the blatant objectification of women perpetrated by this organization and accepted by millions of people (women included) makes me, well, sad. Before I knew much about TMZ I let my oldest daughter visit the site, my bad! (I now ALWAYS visit a site first if I know nothing about it.)

I guess at the very core of my critique of this site is my disappointment with the direction of our culture that is encouraged by sites like TMZ. We are supposed to be this educated and socially aware group of people and yet we cannot seem to rise above our trog nature. And to give credit to our Cro-Magnon brothers and sisters, their lack of social finesse was due to a small brain and focus on survival. What exactly is our excuse? We chide other cultures for their treatment of women while marketing our bad behavior as entertainment. I know I will probably be perceived as bitter, old, past my expiration date and generally humorless for being so critical with TMZ and perhaps I am. I can live with the backlash and feel safe in the knowledge that the entire TMZ staff is busy digging up pictures of Rhianna tweeting her own bare butt and re-posting video of Kate Upton bouncing down the runway and could care less about my opinions.