SpeakSpeak News

4/2/2005

Desperate Housewives Put the Hurt on Moses; Bozell Weeps

Filed under by Amanda Toering — 04/02/2005 @ 10:58 am

PTC prez Brent Bozell has a few things to say to Nielsen families. Most of those things are variations on a theme involving the phrases “you’re going” and “to hell.”

In his latest commentary, Bozell points out that for the first time in a while, ABC decided not to air the dusty 1956 film “The Ten Commandments” on Easter Sunday. Instead, it chose to run a new episode of its #1 rated blockbuster smash hit, “Desperate Housewives” (in its normal time slot). The nerve!

Sadly, the Moses-shoving gambit didn’t cause any headaches for Team Disney. Among the 18- to 49-year-olds ABC ravenously desires, the new Easter episode of “Desperate Housewives” beat CBS, NBC, Fox and WB combined and was the most watched program in the country on Easter – more than 24 million Americans – and none of the troubled yet saucy suburbanites was swallowed up by the Red Sea as a sign of God’s displeasure. Hollywood programmers no doubt would prefer to suggest that people watch middle-aged vixens with their plastic-surgery alterations dancing before the golden calf of hedonism over stuffy, lecturing old Moses.

There’s an interesting ironic twist to this story. Bozell, as he’s wont to do, laments the hard-sell tactics of ABC – pressuring wholesome Americans into watching “middle-aged vixens with their plastic-surgery alterations dancing before the golden calf of hedonism” instead of enduring “lecturing old Moses.” He ignores religious ethicists’ favorite topic: Free will.

It doesn’t seem to occur to Bozell that TV is a medium of entertainment, and “Desperate Housewives” is, to most people, a tad more entertaining than Charlton Heston in a fake beard.

Maybe the evidence escapes him. But [here’s the ironic part] for additional, in-your-face evidence, he needs to look no further than one of the animated ads displayed next to his column on the National Ledger’s site.

The ad exhorts Bozell’s readers to “Click on your favorite screensavers!” Their choices: fluffy kittens or a buxom woman in a bikini.

We’re still waiting for the Nielsen numbers on that one, but an educated guess says the kittens may be out of a job.

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