The Secret Life of ABC's Family Network

The Los Angeles Times reports that Disney's ABC Family cable channel is offering sexually mature material to a core audience that includes a third of viewers who are 12 to 17 years-old.

Is it just me, or is something terribly wrong with that picture? According to the article:

"The best way to resonate with your audience is to be authentic," said Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group. "And you're only authentic if you are holding up a mirror to your audience and saying, 'I see you.'"

Being "authentic" apparently includes programs featuring "sex, underage drinking, absentee parents and the challenges of growing up today."

A look at the article suggest that American family life is so disfunctional that the premiere network for "wholesome" kids' programming is now and outlet for the hits-and-misses of 15 year-old home pregnancy testing. Here's more:

I'd love for these shows to be 'Little House on the Prairie,' but that isn't going to happen. Family programming is all about bringing families together to watch shows so that they can dialogue about these sensitive topics," said Pat Gentile, a top ad buyer for P&G and co-chairman of the Alliance for Family Entertainment, a coalition of major advertisers that advocates for family programming.

I was just finishing up my undergraduate training in 1992 when Vice President Dan Quayle attacked the portrayal of Murphy Brown, of the comedy series starring Candace Bergen, as "a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice'."

Quayle is often said to be one of history's worst vice presidents, but few in high public office have been as clear and morally right on the heaviest social questions facing the country. And that was almost 20 years ago. It's even worse today. Where perhaps then society had accepted that women's independence, including single-parenting by successful career women, was a natural outgrowth of civil-rights advances and sociodemographic change at the family level, it can't be that we've moved to a social equilibria in which kids who cannot legally drive a car are getting knocked-up and mainstream family channels on cable television portray this as "credible" programming for today's children's television markets.

It makes all-too-much sense though, unfortunately, in today's upside-down world where "progressive" values include the glorification of teenagers chugging-back cold ones like Friday afternoon construction workers on payday.

As I noted the other day in the "Deceptions of Democratic Family Planning," the Democratic-left wants us to think that the "family planning" provisions in the Obama administration's gargantuan spending spree are about expanding Medicaid coverage to more families. Perhaps. But a close look at the expansion of eligibility shows that family planning coverage will extend to unpregnant minors receiving services without the knowledge of their parents. The bill, in other words, not only accepts teenage behavior that in the past would have been seen not only as socially inappropriate, but destructive to the life chances of teenage girls and facilitative to the whimsical evisceration of traditional parental model of moral teaching of children.

If there's a bright lining to the Times piece is that some parents are outraged at the Family Channel's fare:

"I thought it was going to be more like Disney Channel, a little more grown-up but less provocative," said Mary Alden, a Pasadena mother of 14-year-old twins. She became alarmed when she heard dialogue from characters in "Secret Life" who were discussing whether one of them should end her pregnancy. "I didn't think that would be on a Disney channel," she said.

Michele MacNeal, a mother of three who lives in La Crescenta and heads a local branch of the powerful watchdog group Parents Television Council, agreed.

"It's kind of a misnomer to call ABC Family a family channel," she said. "When you call something 'family,' it gives the impression that it's safe for all members of the family, even young children."

Another possible upside to all of this is President Barack Obama's presidency. The president's daughters, Malia and Sasha are 10 and 7, respectively. If President Obama really doesn't want his daugthers "punished" with an unexpected pregnancy, then perhaps he might use the tremendous power of the presidential bully pulpit to help restore a little more sanity to the direction of social norms by lobbying Hollywood for the same kind of appropriate social behavior that he'd expect from his own kids.

Of course, considering that Hollywood is one of the Democratic Party's main financial benefactors, I'm not holding my breath.