Child neglect
and abuse is happening every day, right under our nose, and we’re doing nothing
to stop it. In fact, we’re bankrolling it. Been doing it for years.
I’m talking about kids appearing in
what were once considered X-rated movies, but worse. Kids doing and saying and outrageous things,
things that would strip the chrome off a bumper. Things that used to make adults blush, when
blushing was in style.
It’s child exploitation under the
guise of freedom of speech. Hollywood
sells and we buy. We Cinemark, we Netflix,
we Amazon Prime; we buy, rent and stream.
But most of all we silently accept.
We may flinch with each new encroachment on the bounds of decency, but
we shrug and go on. Every year more
graphic, more flagrant. Like frogs in
heating water we’ve become desensitized and we stew in the caldron as our soul
slowly melts.
I’ve silently vowed to do something
for years. But now it’s time to act. The last straw is the new movie, Fist Fight. Let me ask you, how many times is it
acceptable for a little 10-year-old girl to say the f-word? If you said more than zero you’d be
considered a bad parent.
And that would be in the privacy of
your own home. How much worse would it
be in public. And how many times worse
than that if it were captured on film and repeated on thousands of movie
screens across the world, and eventually on millions of pads, tablets, tv’s for
all time? If one time is too many what
about 5? What about 10? Try 25!
25 TIMES this 10-year-old child “actress”
raps out the f-word, along with equal numbers of the s and b word, in front of
a roomful of other young kids during a grade school talent show, with her
on-screen dad coaching her and pregnant mom wildly cheering her every
evisceration of whatever childhood innocence that we once used to cherish in
children.
And her real-life parents? They’ve sold her for big bucks. These parents would be subject to child
neglect and/or abuse charges in Kentucky.
Minors lack the capacity to make a contract. Children do not have the life experience or
wisdom to make decisions for their long and short term best interests. That is why parents or legal guardians bear
responsibility for them until they turn 18.
It is a relationship that demands actions that are always in the child’s
best interest.
Fist
Fight is an R-rated movie. It promotes
high-school teachers having sex with students, teacher and student drug use,
violence, bad—check—horrible manners and attitudes. Children should never be allowed to even
appear in R-rated movies, much less be active participants in the lurid
action.
And PG-13 films are just as
bad. In fact, this film is just the latest
tip of the child-exploitation iceberg Hollywood has built on societal
indifference over the decades.
Free speech comes with
responsibility. Those that violate this
duty must be held to account. We used to
have standards and boundaries. But as
the line of acceptability has gotten increasingly extreme so have the bad
statistics. Higher rates of child abuse
and neglect, child sexploitation, marital discord, drug addiction and
deaths: it’s all related to the descent
of decent society.
I’m no goody two-shoes, and
certainly not one to be preaching. But
providence has placed me in a position of awareness through my experience as a
child advocate in DNA (Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse) Court. Beyond that I act as a concerned
citizen.
Contact your lawmakers. Write the studios. Boycott all movies by studios who produce
such offending movies. Boycott all other
movies from the same director, production company and actors.
It has gone too far. It is unacceptable and we must stand for
positive change. We CAN do it! And for the sake of our children, ourselves,
and our future, we must do it.
