Free Speech Gone Wild I remember waiting until my parents went out for the night and my babysitter/sister

securely locked herself if her room, before I snuck into the living room and switched on the TV. My parents were very laid back when it came to our viewing preferences and rarely set boundaries as to what we could and could not watch. In fact I can honestly only remember not being allowed to watch one show, and that night, I was planning on tuning in to it. I was 10 years old when South Park first aired and like everybody else in the world I was intrigued by the fact that the show included such risque topics. It took my parents about 10 minutes of viewing to decide that I was no longer allowed to watch the show, which was about 5 minutes longer than it took most of my peers parents to decide the same. Over the years South Park got more and more popular and other shows started to follow in its foot steps. Although I cant think of any other show that advertises an openly gay coupling of Satan and Sadam Husssien, there still are shows that share similar boundary pushing topics and dialog. Although millions of viewers, including myself, love the humor and un-politically correctness of popular shows, when it comes to ones such South Park, American Dad, and Family Guy, I believe that writers have gone too far. In a country where free speech is thrived upon, I feel that comedy writers have pushed the boundaries too far when it comes to the topics of offensive language, the amount of sex/nudity , as well as all the violence that is inflicted. It wasnt that long ago that comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested during a stand-up performance for using obscene language. Although I dont think it appropriate to arrest comedy writers for their offensive language, I do feel that it must be regulated. Bruce

spent a few months in jail for using the term cocksucker in one of his bits, but years later when South Park used the similar term boner-biting bastard, nothing was done. Many popular and offensive terms have come to the public via South Park and similar shows, common examples are; gingers have no souls (South Park 2009), you are a gay fish (South Park 2010), you're so deep in the closet you're finding Christmas presents (Family Guy 2008). According to Nielsen ratings South Park is the number one most watched show on Wednesday with 3.253 million viewers. That is over 3 million people becoming exposed to the terms used in these shows in a humorous light, making them more likely to remember the terms and use them at a later attempt of humor. In my case, I was exposed to these terms at a young age and am at a point now where not a day goes by where I dont find myself quoting one of these comedy shows. I find this both embarrassing and scary. Chronologically, what is being said is getting worse; we went from Lenny Bruce calling somebody a cocksucker to South Parks more obscene term boner-biting bastard, ten years from now what will be exceptable dialog? Without government regulations I do not see any positive changes. I miss the old re-runs of Happy Days and I love Lucy, where characters slept in separate beds or slept with one foot on the floor so there were no references to fooling around. Instead now children grow up with re-runs of Family Guy where they have episodes specifically dedicated to re-capping the best and worst sex moments. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, now over 64 percent of all shows on television show some type of sexual content.this content may include the act itself, nudity, or just references to it. Sex on television is a little bit more serious than bad or offensive language. The RAND Agency explained in their 2009 report that teens exposed to the

most sexual content on television are twice as likely to get pregnant by the age of 20. With teen pregnancy on the rise, and our tax dollars going to support these young mothers and their children, I find it silly that we are ignoring the obvious solution of regulation sex on television. If sex isnt 64 percent of what teens see everyday on television they will become less familiar and it will drive out the notion that everyone is doing it. The government should reward stations that dont advertise sex through their programming and fine those that do. Even more dangerous than offensive language and rising teen pregnancy rates is violence itself. As a pre-school teacher I have found that the children that watch violence on television like are more likely to be aggressive themselves. In some cases if the violence they see on television is so dramatic or really relates to them, the experience can cause them Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It almost sounds too serious to be realistic, however if you factor in the statistic that an average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on television by age 18, the chances of at least one of them traumatizing a child for life become more likely. With over two-thirds of what children are watching being violent one can assume that the children will act out these learned violent behaviors in their play, no child unknowingly will pick up a stick and imagine that it is a gun or a sword that they can now use to kill the bad guy, this is in fact an expression of what they have seen and become familiar with on television. The sticks they use will soon hold no interest and the maturing child will look for more realistic props for their play, including paint ball and air soft guns, nun-chucks and machetes. The amount of gore and blood shown in the show American Dad alone is enough to capture the innocence of a young boy. Once the writers of the show gave the main character a

loaded gun, they set the stage for many shootouts and deaths-the amount of bloody murders that take place in this show take up more than a quarter of the time and most of funniest dialog come from scenes where characters are burying dead bodies in their back yards. If violence isnt regulated on television soon, them we are gonna have a lot of dead bodies our homes. As an grown adult, I look back on my days of sneaking in the living room to watch South Park and I regret it with all my heart. I was never caught watching the animated show, but I feel like I was still punished. South Park and other similar shows have changed my life forever, the hours of forbidden entertainment they have provided to me during my childhood are over shadowed by the negative thoughts, terms and ideals I have in my head from now until the end of my life. I am proud to live in a country where two men can get together with an idea for a show and make it happen, but not at the expense of their viewers. If the government doesnt take a stand against these shows and do more than put an age guideline at the top of the screen and continues to allow children to be seriously affected by is viewed on television, I will consider this one of the biggest failures in American History.