Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?

Do you have any idea what your kids are watching on TV? Of course you don't. That TV is way the hell down in the basement in your eight year old's room, and you'll be damned if your going to walk all the way down there just to see what's on when you have a perfectly good widescreen plasma right here in your room, a 21" flat panel in the living room, the new LCD in the den, and the old standby on the end of the dinner table. Anyway, that's really your wife's responsibility, and since she's tied up watching reruns of Sex and the City in the living room, why should you be bothered to turn off the game to go talk to your damn kids?

Damn straight. But what if...wait, don't we get Cinemax? Oh god. The kids could be watching porn, or worse yet, hearing strong language and viewing situations meant for adult audiences, for which viewer discretion might be advised! OK, don't freak out, you're just imagining the worst-case scenario...it's probably not that bad. Yeah, they're probably just surfing the Internet and setting up their Myspace pages so that they can meet some new friends and give their names, ages, address, phone number, and a map of their route to school to strange men with vans and mustaches.

Wait, what? Oh god! How could this have happened? Who let my children get exposed to these awful things, and what can I do to stop this before it's too late? Alright, don't panic. Just turn the volume down on TV and think about this. OK. Should I start with the letter to my congressman to demand censorship, or should I call my lawyer about suing Myspace and the cable company? And Dell and Panasonic, they're at least partially responsible since they provided the equipment. Alright, let's see here...oh, the school, too. How could those bastards not have warned my kids about online predators and inappropriate comedy shows? Who else? I don't think I can sue my wife without getting a divorce, but what about her parents? I could probably take some kind of action against them. After all, they did give us that TV for Christmas. All right, that's a good list to start with, now where's my lawyer's number?

What's that, honey? I can't hear you very well, I'm watching the game. The kids? I don't know, can't you check on them? I know they might be doing something they shouldn't, but I'm working on it, OK? Man, somebody's gonna f*@%ing pay for this.