Blogging A – Z Challenge 2021: G is for G Rated Content

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22343 – 809:

Here’s the haps:

First, I will confess that by definition there are times when my content is PG, even, possibly PG-13. And yes, someone is going to point out that I do my best to withhold support for hollyweird and the entertainment industry so why would I use their system for ratings? Because these definitions work as a solid base that everyone understands equally. And it’s easy to find information about it. There should be little room for confusion but there often is. For my purposes, I mean these definitions as a jumping-off point for this post:

Rated G: General audiences – All ages admitted.
Rated PG: Parental guidance suggested – Some material may not be suitable for children.
Rated PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned – Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Actually, the lion’s share of my posts are G rated. Anyone can read them. There are some topics that are best left to parents to discuss and I have written about them before as well as topics that parents need to undertake with their children when they feel they are old enough. Things like abortion and politics are things that should be taught to children by you, the Parent. That’s what Parental Guidance means and our world is woefully lacking in.

I think for the vast majority of my material, I can, with good conscience say that I have a G-Rated blog. I definitely do not use or believe in profanity as some of you will remember from my post, “Profanity Is Not A Sign Of Intelligence.” It’s a sad state of affairs our world is in that very few people can wear my tenth-grade English teacher’s pin:

Some people have said to me that she probably cussed like a sailor when the kids weren’t around and perhaps that’s true although she had ways of expressing herself that were far more effective.

I got to thinking about this again as I was thinking about you, my extraordinarily intelligent readers. I think I may be different from a lot of bloggers because I know, live and in person, many of the people in my audience and I like them and want them to be proud of me. It makes me happy when I hear a conversation that goes, “Oh, yes. I read about that on his blog. Do you read his blog? Oh, you really should.” I couldn’t find the post where I shared this originally (but I didn’t search diligently, either) but at my grandchildren’s Christian school, one of the teachers had mistakenly or absent-mindedly displayed my blog post she was reading instead of the instructional material. “Whoa, teacher! You read my Grandpa’s blog? Cool!”

My point is that I really try hard to maintain a G average. There are a number of you that would defend hollyweird and the entertainment industry and even Mad Ave. Try this challenge, if you feel up to it. This is especially intended for those who claim to have Judeo-Christian beliefs. It may work with other belief systems as well, I don’t know, but if you wanted to try it you could do a similar test. Take a notepad and write down the Ten Commandments. Keep it handy while you are doing your average viewing for a week and make a checkmark or tick mark beside every one as it’s broken. See how many times in your week each commandment is broken. Then ask yourself if a person came into my home and did these things, would I welcome them and their behavior? Would I want my kids to emulate their behavior? I have had conversations with parents that went something like, “Little Herkimer has been saying a bad word at school. Where could he have possibly picked it up? I tell him all the time not to talk like that.” Well, you use it yourself, sometimes in anger toward little Herky, you watched 3 “comedy” shows that used it and laughed your head off at it and then repeated some of your favorite lines to your friends when they visited and everybody laughed. Hmmm…I wonder if we can figure this out.

Whatever you do and allow, your children will do ten times more, good or bad.