As a kid, I envied my friends who had the opportunity to be corrupted by MTV...

Even though my cousin was a month older than me, her mother allowed her to watch MTV, whereas my mother believed it to be "inappropriate." She was virtually the same age as me, but may as well have been ten years older than me for all the privileges I thought her to have. Most importantly, though, she knew Michael Jackson was not a girl.

I remember watching Free Willy with my cousin and aunt when it first came out on video, and naively asking in regards to the effeminate musician that I saw singing on-screen before the movie began, "Who is she?" I'm sure it greatly amused my aunt and cousin, as evidenced by my aunt's laughter-choked response, "That's a he, honey." At that moment, I think my scorn for my family's television regulations was at an all-time high. Now that I'm an adult, though, I look back and believe I could have been perfectly content with the world without knowing that such disturbing people existed.

In later years, while visiting my cousin, I recall her flipping around stations and pausing on MTV. A rather boring, quite tame music video was playing. Cue the confusion. Why did my mother have such an aversion to MTV? Obviously, not all music videos were as tame as the one we happened to land on. However, after reading I Screen, You Screen: The New Age of the Music Video, I can begin to understand why MTV was so off-limits in my mother's mind when I was a child. It was around the time that I was starting to become old enough to watch shows other than Sesame Street and the Polka-Dot Door that MTV began phasing in such mindless shows as Beavis and Butthead. My mother wouldn't have needed to see much of shows like that before deeming MTV at the very least a waste of time.

Looking at some of the old music videos that aired when I was a kid and comparing them to some of today's television music videos, the old videos don't really seem all that bad. That isn't to say that my mother should have let me watch them. That is saying that it's a scary thought that when my little brother finishes saving up for his long-desired PSP, such garbage will be at his fingertips. My little brother is a virtuous kid (way better than his big sis here), but not all kids are so good at listening to their conscience.

We need to get more good stuff out there. Let's make the choice easier for them. It's so impressive how wired society has become. If you want a song, it's on your iPod in a snap (assuming you use a Mac, but let's not go there). Want a movie? Order it on your television and there you go. Now with the advancement in wireless and handheld technology actually allowing such devices as the PSP and the iPod to become legitimate players in more than one aspect of media, and forcing old standbys like MTV to regroup, this is our chance to change the industry.