MTV

What’s more embarrassing, hateful, ignorant and racist than a “right-winger”? Not much, according to MTV. The youth oriented network’s reality show “True Life” ran an episode called “I hate the government” last Friday which detailed the lives of three “right-wingers.”

The episode description reads: “Amelia, Caleb and Andrew are three right-wingers who despise the very thing that holds our country together, the U.S. government.”

On Thursday, CNN anchor Carol Costello credited Dan Gainor, the head of the Culture and Media Institute, as a leader in the charge against a new MTV series, which was supposed to follow virgins seeking to lose their virginity. Costello read Gainor’s quote on air: “This is part of the media attempt to mock people who have morals and to treat virginity like a disease that must be cured. She observed that “conservative critics fought back” against the show, forcing its cancellation.

The MTV series, called “My First,” was going to follow virgins preparing to lose their virginity. The casting call for the series read: “We’re looking for adults who are ready to go all the way. Let MTV come along your journey… as you try to lose your virginity!”

Video after the jump.

Once upon a time, women were considered the “fairer sex,” the “better half.” Stewardesses were talented and beautiful. Wives were softer, more gentle. Men fought for their honor. Feminism crushed all of that. It is a testimony to their movement that in today’s post-feminist entertainment media, part of what makes television so corrosive and sour is just how piggish the women have become.

The latest study from the Parents Television Council drives this concept home by going to the ugly center of pop culture: MTV “reality” programming. After studying entire seasons of four MTV shows, the PTC concludes: “Females talked about sex acts more than men, talked about sex more graphically than men, mentioned sexual body parts more than men, and talked about intercourse and preliminaries to intercourse more than men.”

Vice President of Business and Culture Dan Gainor appeared on the January 24 broadcast of Headline News' “The Joy Behar Show" to discuss the raunchy new teen drama from MTV “Skins.” Gainor, who appeared on a panel with Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing Group and Rachel Sklar, editor at large for Mediaite.com, highlighted MTV’s blatant push for ratings and lack of consequences on “Skins.”

Video below fold

The cultural Left would like you to think that children should be free to experiment persistently in the Laboratory of Life without soul-stifling rules. They have limits to libertine behavior, to be sure. No high school bake sales (encourages obesity), no bottled water (destroys the environment), and absolutely no uncivil bullying of people who are different than you (unless they belong to the Tea Party, in which case you can blame them for random shootings.)

Now those secular progressives at MTV have opened a new front. They feel one should enjoy a childhood stuffed with sex, drugs, and alcoholism. That would be the message of their new teen drama “Skins.” Adapted from a British series and filmed in Canada, MTV boasts that the actors are actually under 18 – in another intepretation, we call them “children” – and that the show's writers are barely out of high school, so its libertine escapades are authentic, “the real secret lives” of teenagers.

MTV promotes itself as “the world’s premier youth entertainment brand” and “the cultural home of the millennial generation.” It’s so proud of this show's sleaze that they're even rating it TV-MA (for mature audiences only). It's not a warning. It's an invitation.

MTV's racy new teen drama "Skins" should be investigated by federal authorities for potentially violating child porn laws, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell insisted in the second half of the "Media Mash" segment on the January 20 edition of "Hannity."

MTV "broadcast[s] the fact that it is underage teenagers that they are putting on the air" portraying sexually active teens. "Guess what... it's rated TV-MA. That's the highest rating you can get on television," Bozell noted [video follows after page break; click here for MP3 audio]:

MTV aims to make a profit airing a show about a pregnant teen deciding to abort her baby, and the best media writers can muster is to call it a “sensitive issue.”

An MTV Special to be aired at 11:30pm Dec. 28, “No Easy Decision” is a half-hour program that follows a teen mom’s tragic decision to abort her child. The media coverage leading up to the program’s air date has merely glossed over the murderous reality that is abortion, and used terms like “sensitive issue,” “wrenching decision” and “ostracized party guest” to downplay the severity of infanticide.

The most egregious example of glossing over the impact of abortion comes from Linda Lowen at about.com. Lowen twists the media's lack of interest in abortion into some fantasy victimhood like a socially awkward teen at a party.

So MTV is holding a "townhall" for President Obama on Oct. 14, at 4 p.m. in Washington, D.C.

In this case, a town hall is short-hand for "an event where annoying questions are asked by unemployed hipsters with vintage t-shirts and edgy eyewear."

But a casting call has surfaced, and this is what it says:

Seeking-Audience Members: males & females, 18+. To ensure that the audience represents diverse interests and political views, include your name...and what issues, if any, you are interested in or passionate about. Also, provide a recent photo and short description of your political views.

So what's the point of this pre-screening process? Well, it serves three purposes:

Unless you've been asleep for the past 24 hours, you've heard or read about Sunday's MTV Movie Awards in which producers and presenters seemed to go out of their way to say "f--k" whenever possible.

Figures released by various ratings house are giving conflicting reports about how many people actually watched this vulgar display.

Some say viewership was up; others say it dropped.

For instance, Entertainment Weekly reported Monday evening:

Updated below: Bob Parks has video.
Updated below: MTV apologizes.

"Ready to make the censors' ears bleed?"

That's how Anna Kendrick summed up MTV's attitude toward decency June 6 during the network's annual Movie Awards broadcast.

It wasn't just the censors who endured a two-hour swear-fest. The television audience had the pleasure of hearing 30 percent of the vulgarities uttered throughout the night. A Culture and Media Institute review found the 122-minute show littered with at least 100 bleep-worthy words - that's more than one per minute not including commercials.

The network's censors caught 70 curses. They included 47 variations of "f---," 11 uses of "s---," two of "a------," one slang for breasts, and nine that were unidentifiable.

At least 30 made it past the censors, including...

Pop sensation Lady Gaga recently made news when she announced that she is going to be celibate. Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, cited the rise of women infected with HIV as part of the reason she has chosen to remain celibate. While the pop star’s announcement was certainly a positive message to young fans, the lyrics in her hit songs promote anything but celibacy.

MTV.com reported Lady Gaga stated, “I can't believe I'm saying this — don't have sex. I'm single right now and I've chosen to be single because I don't have the time to get to know anybody.” She continued, “So it's OK not to have sex, it's OK to get to know people. I'm celibate, celibacy's fine.”

But she didn’t just stop there. “You don't have to have sex to feel good about yourself, and if you're not ready, don't do it. And if you are ready, there are free condoms given away at my concerts when you're leaving! ... I remember the cool girls when I was growing up. Everyone started to have sex. But it's not really cool anymore to have sex all the time. It's cooler to be strong and independent.”

The programming gurus at MTV are basing their profit-making strategy on the viewer demographic of 12 to 34 – as if there’s no difference in maturity level between 12 and 34. MTV’s brand of sensationalistic "reality TV" was easily demonstrated on the night of October 5, when they aired a prime-time marathon (from 7 pm Eastern to 1 am) of their hour-long documentary series called "True Life." Just the episode titles were jaw-dropping.

1. "I’m Out."

2. "I’m Polyamorous."

3. "I’m Bisexual."

4. "I’m Changing My Sex." (This ran twice in a row.)

5. "I Work In The Sex Industry."

The MTV Awards once again earned its reputation for tawdry entertainment by broadcasting Jack Black praying to the devil. The comedian, who was hawking a heavy metal video game called Brütal Legend, asked the "Dear Dark Lord Satan" to bless the rock star nominees with "continued success in the music industry."

Black appeared sporting a mullet, wearing a muscle suit, and carrying a larger-than-life battleaxe. While the Satan worshiping was obviously a gag, Black has previously made a point of offending Christians - going so far as to appear as Jesus in a video protesting Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Cable television is a minefield of unspeakable raunch for children, who, like it or not, freely roam the hallways of this medium at night. The Parents Television Council has issued its list of the Top 10 Worst Cable TV Shows for Kids. One hopes that someone out there is shocked.

Leading the list is Comedy Central and its vile celebrity roasts. These mean-spirited and vile knockoffs are nothing like the side-splitting, kid-because-we-love Dean Martin roasts of the Seventies.

August’s roast of Joan Rivers was the ugliest yet. Rivers came out on stage holding hands with six little kids of different nationalities and joked that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were having a yard sale. She shoved the kids and snapped: "All right, kids, go make jewelry!" Behind the kids' backs, she flipped a middle finger and said: "I hate children."

The Los Angeles Times Calendar section on Thursday accidentally listed MTV's hit series "Jackass" as airing on MSNBC at 7 and 10PM.

7 and 10PM just so happen to be when "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" replays on the West Coast.

Innocent mistake or Freudian slip?

You decide as you read what Andrew Malcolm deliciously reported Friday:

MTV specializes in the kind of "reality show" that would have you believe all young Americans are spoiled, profane, and crazed about alcohol and sex. From its raunchy spring-break coverage to its "Real World" and "Tila Tequila" reality shows, MTV is constantly sending a message to young people that absolutely everyone is enjoying or seeking casual sex, and never are there negative consequences beyond the occasional break-up.

So it was shocking this summer for MTV to air a reality show called "16 and Pregnant." MTV, airing a show on the very real-world consequences of the hook-up culture? Jaws dropped across the spectrum of MTV critics, from the moralists who decry the promotion of premarital sex to the health experts and "safe sex" promoters who want every sex scene to come with a contraceptive message.

The six-part "16 and Pregnant" series examined the hardships undergone by six impregnated teenage girls. It illustrated how childbirth and motherhood radically changes a young girl’s life, and explained what Barack Obama meant when he clumsily said he wouldn’t want his daughters to be "punished with a baby."

Some statistics: According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 86 percent of mothers who give birth out-of-wedlock are teenagers. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 40 percent of teenage mothers ever graduate high school; two-thirds of families begun by an unmarried teen mother are poor; and “Virtually all of the increase in child poverty between 1980 and 1996 was related to the increase in nonmarital childbearing.” So what does MTV do? It shows how cool teen pregnancy is with a new reality series called “16 and Pregnant.”

Airing this summer, the show normalizes teenage pregnancy, following  pregnant sixteen year old girls throughout their pregnancies and after they give birth.

MTV really knows how to stage the stunts that generate big publicity for their major events. In 2004, MTV produced the CBS Super Bowl halftime show where Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast. In the fall of 2003, Britney Spears kissed Madonna suggestively at their Video Music Awards program. They’ve done it again with the 2009 MTV Movie Awards show. Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s dressed like an angel and his flying over the audience during the live show went badly awry. He crash-landed in the audience and ended up upside down with his bare buttocks exposed right in the face of the rapper Eminem.

The seeming perfection of this gross-out embarrassment, complete with Eminem wearing a microphone, having a swearing fit, and walking out of the theater, caused some to smell a calculated stunt. Cohen seemed to be wearing a thong so the gross-out didn’t include an upside-down whole-crotch hangout. So was it a fake? Scott Aukerman, head writer of this sorry program, admitted they staged this disaster. "That's all anyone wants to talk about, so let’s get it out of the way. They rehearsed it at dress and yes, it went as far as it did on the live show then."

Rock stars are rarely controversial for acting like rock stars. A decadent lifestyle of sex, drugs, and alcohol abuse are the expected menu. In our upside-down popular culture, rock stars create controversy only when they advocate an alternative lifestyle – when they wear purity rings and abstain from sex until marriage.

Some dream of being rock stars just for the selfish fantasy of organizing an assembly line of casual sex partners. In the minds of those with no moral brake on their sex drive, rock stars favoring abstinence are wasting a national resource, akin to monks pledging a vow of poverty while living inside a gold mine.

Last September, the Disney-boosted teen rockers known as the Jonas Brothers were a rich target for mockery at the MTV Video Music Awards for their purity rings. The emcee, a British comedian named Russell Brand, sneered that the Jonas Brothers were "a little bit ungrateful because they could have sex with any woman they want. That is like Superman deciding not to fly and go everywhere on a bus." Tee-hee, and all that.

The pagans blogging at The Wild Hunt report that the MTV program True Life is looking for a few good teenaged Wiccans. They’re concerned that "Far too often naive (or greedy) Pagans have been exploited in this sensationalist and bottom-feeding genre, providing snarky laughs to a growingly cynical audience." But MTV is hardly a convention of religious broadcasters who would scorn the pagans. It’s more likely they’d enjoy watching a few Christian parents blow a gasket while they film it. Here's a snippet of the request for subjects: 

…we are casting for an upcoming episode of the award-winning series True Life. For this episode, we are looking for people who are in the process of converting to Wicca, or who have recently converted. We are focusing on how parents deal with these changes, and how it affects relationships. People should email their situations to Parents@mtvnmix.com with their name, age, location, phone number, and recent photo of themselves I would really appreciate it.

"If U Seek Amy." If you repeat that phrase a few times, it will sound like an all-too familiar reference to sex. This clever little phrase is the title of Britney Spears' new hit, and it's stirring up some controversy.

In case you're still a little lost, it clearly sounds like she is saying, "F**K me," and in the event you still think the song is about a girl named Amy, observe how the phrase makes no sense in the context:

Chorus:

Love me hate me
Say what you want about me
But all of the boys and all of the girls are beggin’ to, If U Seek Amy

Love me hate me
But can’t you see what I see
All of the boys and all of the girls are beggin’ to, If U Seek Amy

Hip Hop R&B artist Ne-Yo joined MTV VJ Lyndsey Rodrigues on TRL to co-host today.  Prior to performing, Ne-Yo was interviewed about a song on his new album titled "When You're Mad." Rodrigues asked the singer/song-writer the last time he was mad himself.

RODRIGUES: When's the last time you got fired up?

NE-YO: Last time I got fired up?...you know what got me mad? When I watched McCain's speech.  That got me mad.

RODRIGUES: I'm not going to get into it.

Rodrigues quickly steered away from politics and moved the show back to the music.  Perhaps after Russell Brand made his views known to the MTV audience, another onslaught of complaints was the last thing MTV wanted.

However, Brand gained more notoriety than ever since the Video Music Awards and has apparently been asked to return next year. Up and coming entertainers are not necessarily looking for friends but the bottom line.  It should be no surprise entertainers are  looking to throw political bombs now.

Ne-Yo may be looking to season his new album release with some political controversy, but after Brand's reprehensible behavior at the VMA's, Ne-Yo was not going to top that.  At least MTV was not going to let him.

Associated Press writer Jake Coyle offered a TV reviewer's take on MTV host Russell Brand's Bush-bashing on Sunday night. He called it "candor" and mocked the idea that a host should steer clear of suggesting the president's retarded. He thought the "import was a welcome change." Is he really a change? Brand seems to epitomize MTV, which glorifies every excess:

After all, Brand has built his image on his candor and edginess. He's well-known across the pond as a standup comic, TV show host and radio DJ — but more so as an outlandish and hedonistic figure who speaks unabashedly about his prior drug and sex addictions.

Brand was especially "unabashed" about mocking teen stars who've taken a stand for abstinence before marriage:

Again and again, Brand — a confessed former sex addict — poked fun at young sex and abstinence. Speaking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter's boyfriend and would-be father, Levi Johnston, Brand sympathized with him: "That is the safe sex message of all time. Use a condom or become a Republican!"

The MTV Video Music Awards show was as predictable as watching Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews do their broadcast. Other than celebrating its 25th anniversary and giving Britney Spears a possible opportunity for a comeback, the program was chock full of insults towards conservatives by the show’s emcee, U.K. comedian Russell Brand.  As a former MTV staffer, I was surprised by the selection of such an obscure individual to emcee the program.

By the audience reaction, Brand knew he was considered a “nobody” here in the United States, so his immediate course of action was to go political to try and endear himself to the MTV audience:

“OMFG” is text-speak for the unspeakable. It's also the tag line for a new ad campaign aimed at teens and featuring a jumble of sexual situations, including teens undressing each other and two girls kissing. The campaign blitz is appearing in print and television, all aimed at drumming up eyeballs for the CW network's teen-themed soap "Gossip Girl."

For the uninitiated, “OMG” translates to “Oh My God” in the language of email and text messaging. The addition of the “F” means … well, it’s the word that can cost broadcasters a hefty government fine if someone actually says it on TV.

Now, of course, executives at the CW could never admit that they were actively targeting teens with such a "provocative" ad. Nor would they ever admit they were intentionally dodging an FCC fine by using the letter "F" instead of the unspeakable word. Nor would they ever consider that "F" used next to "G," which stands for "God" would be blasphemous. In fact they've gone out of their way on these subjects. But reality has a way of well, keeping it real.