The Federal Communications Commission is not fooling anyone by overreacting to the hyperventilated public outcry over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Feb. 1 Super Bowl.
The FCC is reportedly poised to impose a record $550,000 fine against the CBS-owned stations ($27,500 per station) that broadcast Jackson’s split-second breast-baring episode. This oddball punishment hardly seems to fit the crime, if there is a crime. If the FCC has evidence of a CBS conspiracy to expose Jackson’s anatomy to the world, I’d like to hear it.
More likely, this decision has less to do with cleaning up the airwaves than with targeting CBS as the scapegoat for mounting public frustration over what appears to be runaway sexuality on the public airwaves where it can be viewed by children.
I understand this frustration. Monitoring kids’ viewing habits is a full-time job, as I have discovered, which makes me wonder what happens to those children whose parents are unwilling or simply too overwhelmed to monitor their children’s viewing habits.
Such are the compelling questions that led Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to convene a fact-finding panel Thursday on Capitol Hill as part of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual leadership weekend. In the year of the Super Bowl episode and Bill Cosby’s well-known rants against self-destructive behavior by some low-income black youths, it is significant that various CBC members convened four panels to examine various hazards that hip-hop music may pose, Conyers told me.
But what do they do about it? As one panelist, radio talk-show host Joe Madison, asked, “Is this something Congress wants to get involved with?”
Indeed, congressmen have held hearings on rap music before and quietly backed away for lack of a clear connection between indecent images and indecent behavior.
Those days may be changing in light of new research such as that described to the panel by public health professor Ralph J. DiClemente, of Emory University. His three-year study of 522 sexually active black teen girls in Birmingham, Ala., health clinics found that those who spent the most time watching music videos that depicted sex, violence and stylized depravity tend to be the most likely to practice those behaviors in real life.
About half of the girls watched more than 21 hours of music videos per week, according to the study published in the March 2003 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Those heavy viewers were three times more likely than less-frequent viewers to hit a teacher, 2.6 times more likely to be arrested, twice as likely to have multiple sex partners and 1 1/2 times more likely to use drugs, drink alcohol and catch a sexually transmitted disease.
Those statistics seemed to stun the room, but DiClemente was quick to admit that much more study is needed. I agree. After all, was it the rap videos that caused the girls to misbehave more? Or did their misbehavior stem from deeper problems that also led them to watch more rap videos?
Besides, my first reaction to DiClemente’s findings was pretty basic: What kind of parent allows their kid to watch 21 hours of videos per week?
Government can’t regulate such behavior. I think parents, educators and everyone else who cares need to find ways to help youngsters whose parents have dropped the ball or simply need help.
A good example was offered by panelist Edison Jackson, president of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Faced like many colleges with a growing enrollment gap between black males and black females (his own predominantly black 4,700-student campus has a 78 percent female enrollment), he has helped reverse the trend with a 2-year-old peer-mentoring program in which older male students mentor younger ones.
A similar and older peer-mentoring program for African-American students at Shaker Heights High School in suburban Cleveland has gained national attention for similar successes in narrowing a racial gap in achievement scores.
The beauty of such peer-mentoring programs, in my view, is that they offer us parents a chance to turn peer pressure, our worst rival for our kids’ attention, to our advantage. Our big parental problem is not depraved rap, but the world of depravity that many rap tunes and videos reflect. We will not solve the complex problems that have grown out of the legacy of slavery by censoring rap any more than we can stop time by stopping a clock. We need broader, deeper remedies. Government can help, but parents matter more.
Step one: Turn off the TV and make sure the homework gets done.
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E-mail: cptime@aol.com
