I’m going to ignore the fact that there’s a part one to this thing and just take this opinion piece as it stands.
My ten-year-old daughter loves “So You Think You Can Dance.” I suspect most eight to eighteen-year-old girls do. So, my question to the producers of this hit show is: “Why are you pointing my daughter to a web page asking her to work at Planned Parenthood?”
Because Planned Parenthood paid for the ad? They’re allowed to advertise on shows that women who may need them will be watching. Planned Parenthood does more than abortions, by the way. They offer a wide range of services and have good goals in mind that would benefit a lot of people.
Besides, TVs haven’t gotten that smart, have they? They don’t know how old a viewer is. “Look out. 4156 Bork Ave has a 10 year old staring. Put something fluffy on…”
Are they going to send people over to your house now and force your daughter to give up her life for a few hours and stuff envelopes in a stuffy office? No. It’s something we in the normal world call a “suggestion” and it wasn’t specifically aimed at your daughter. She just happened to see it.
Next week the networks will coordinate their shows’ story-lines to promote volunteerism.
Volunteering is a great way to do a great thing and a great way meet people who also want to do great things. (It’s also something I know I should be doing. I just keep putting it off.) I suspect a lot of kids took up smoking after seeing their favourite actors lighting up in movies and TV and so on. If only volunteerism could be a lifelong habit, too. I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re planning.
In the press release announcing the initiative, all four network execs were positively boastful about their ability to inspire their viewers to ask “How high” when told to jump
Back in my university days, I wound up taking a summer job with a crisis support office. I was hired to write articles for their newsletter, but some weeks I’d be given the chore of calling their very small pool of volunteers to see who would fill shifts on the local crisis line. It was like pulling teeth. I wasn’t allowed to cajole or beg people either. Some of them seemed to always say no, and others were wiling to give up most of their week to be available for anyone who’d need them. The No people outnumbered the Yes in a big way and my boss would get pissed off because any unfilled shifts fell to her to take on. Beats the hell out of me why she was in the job if she hated doing it. But whatever. There was nothing really set up to inspire people to donate their time to that service. Hopefully whoever runs it now does a better job.
You know how folks always say: “If you don’t like what you see, just change the channel.” Well, clearly next week that won’t be an option. It’s going to be a full-court press… nowhere to hide.
The plan is to weave volunteerism and service into the plots of their shows and then, ultimately, encourage viewers to get up off their sofas and go to a handful of web pages that are meant to provide opportunities for service. As we saw in the previous stories at Big Hollywood and Big Government, these seemingly benign volunteer search engines often seem to be Trojan Horses for controversial, left-wing causes.
And again, the sites are suggestions and viewers can look at them, or choose not to. Nobody’s forcing you to be a good helpful person toward your fellow men and women. Be a shitface if you want to be. Teach your daughter not to give a damn about others if you think that’s really the best way to raise her.
But, if you really want to encourage the spirit of volunteering but don’t like their selection, check other volunteer websites. If it’s a church thing that’s put a bug up your ass, volunteer there. If you give a damn about hungry homeless people, see about offering your arm as a soup dispenser. I doubt you’d get any choice over serving Democrats instead of Republicans or whatever the hell your political flavour is, though. Hang clothes up at the Salvation Army. Hell, even find a feeble neighbour and offer to mow the grass for free, or clean her house once a week. The point being made by the networks, I’m assuming, is to help somebody, somewhere, somehow. I don’t think they really care how, no matter what companies and groups pay them for the chance to advertise and embed.
If your 12 year-old hears about this volunteer initiative and follows the lead of her favorite TV star, she will go to www.createthegood.com and type in her favorite cause. If she’s been paying attention to the news these days (or listening to the lectures from most public school teachers) she will know that “Health Care” is a big deal these days. All she has to do is type “Health Care” into the search engine with her zip code (let’s say 90210 cause we love those adorable Beverly Hills high school kids) and she’ll get a whole host of opportunities to serve.
Go ahead… open that link and you’ll see twelve opportunities to serve. Look at items “H”, “I” and “L.” All are from Planned Parenthood
Oh, so it’s not the push to volunteer that’s the problem, Planned Parenthood is? I don’t know why he/she didn’t put their own zip code in to get local suggestions, but whatever. A quick copy of the search gets me 10 other letters to look under that include calls for dentists, nurses, psychologists, medical students (or those who are thinking about it), people willing to put time in at hospices, or those who just want to help their loved ones get the best information about what ails them before some crackpot doctor cons them out of their savings.
And he/she got the website wrong – it’s createthegood.org and lists oodles of other options for doing your part to help people and the environment. iparticipate also lists a lot of causes it supports beyond health ones.
I can’t say any good or ill about Obama’s health care reform ideas because I’m Canadian and I haven’t read up on anything health related across the border lately. I have no idea if he’s on the right track. I’ll leave that for others to debate and speculate.
The article goes on whining and complaining about left-wing propaganda and then comes to this sarcastic gem, the writer’s “personal favorite (and remember you are paying for this)” – the Secular Student Alliance.
It’s a support group for atheist kids! I’m so proud to be an American.
Yes, I can tell that was sarcasm, too. Granted, health care and the economy probably should be the biggest issues people deal with right now, not counting wars and gangs and violence and drugs and overfull prisons and the like. But given how ubergodly America seems to think it is compared to the rest of the heathen-filled world, atheists in America (and the world at large) are in dire need of a safety net and a group that can fight against people like this writer who are keen on demonizing us and pushing the ridiculous notion that atheists are the second biggest threat America is facing. The first, of course, would be invasion of the gay.
Let me be clear: I am not claiming that this is the ONLY kind of content you will find on these sites. This is obvious, but I feel compelled to blunt the inevitable attacks from the left who will insist on mis-characterizing this post as claiming something to the contrary. Here is the plain truth: I sat for all of fifteen minutes entering search phrases having to do with health care, the environment, and the war and I chose zip codes from the West, East and Midwest. The results above were ALL either the first result, or found on the first page of results. No cherry-picking and no hunting expedition.
But it’s still Planned Parenthood you pick on. Why? Createthegood only had one page of results when I tried 90201, and Planned Parenthood wasn’t the first, second, or even third option. I had to pass 8 other suggestions before I found them.
If you don’t like their suggestions, why not post some of your own instead of ripping into the shit you don’t like as if your opinion about them should matter more than any others?
Stupid.
Now go help someone. Check these sites I linked. Check other sites. Find something that calls to you and put a call out to them. Go do something useful for a change.
