Solomon Jones: It's showtime!
IWANT TO LET my kids watch TV, but it's just too nasty. I know what you're thinking. I should get a V chip and make sure they don't watch the "bad" shows. There's just one problem. It's hard to tell the bad shows from the good these days.
IWANT TO LET my kids watch TV, but it's just too nasty.
I know what you're thinking. I should get a V chip and make sure they don't watch the "bad" shows. There's just one problem. It's hard to tell the bad shows from the good these days.
Sure, Maury's going to do 30 paternity tests for the 19-year-old stripper who runs backstage crying after every failed attempt to find her baby's daddy. The bespectacled host on "Cheaters" will jump out of a black van with a production crew to instigate a fight after the jilted lover's videotape review. The guards on "Jerry Springer" will grab the cross-dressing sumo wrestler just as he wallops the iced-down leprechaun who's been dating his wife on the low.
I get it. That stuff is bad. That's why we don't let Eve and Little Solomon watch it.
Unfortunately, we can't let them watch detective shows, either. Gone are the days of "Dragnet," when crime was bloodless and Sgt. Friday stuck to the facts. Nowadays, cop shows are so gory that they look like war games.
I'll never forget stumbling across a recent episode of "CSI: Miami." Just minutes into the show, David Caruso found a girl's severed arm (the victims always seem to be female, don't they?).
He secured the scene, pulled a crocodile tooth from the arm, then got in an airboat, searched the Everglades and, with the help of a fake Crocodile Dundee, found the offending crocodile and pulled the girl's chewed-up foot from its mouth.
As I watched the coroner swab dangling arm and foot arteries, I kept wondering, "How come they never showed that on 'Quincy'?"
Call me crazy, but I like my television with all the body parts intact.
That's why I gather up the kids and watch family shows like "American Idol." Sure, there might be weirdos. There might even be an insult or two. But there's never any violence or profanity (unless you count the scariest woman in Philadelphia). And there's never any sex. At least that's what I thought before I sat down with Eve and Little Solomon to watch the Miami tryouts.
Everything was fine at first. They started with a girl who "handled meat" for a living. A bit risqué, but you had to be sharp to know that their description of her job in the family butcher shop was a slick double entendre.
They moved on to a girl who was a bit of a phony, and Simon told her as much, advising her to find work as an actress.
Two big girls made the cut - a victory for women everywhere who have the nerve to eat on a regular basis.
Things were going great. Eve danced and sang happily, while I judged her performance with an occasional grunt of approval. Solomon pretended to watch the show while consuming lots of marshmallows. We were all half-listening to the inane babblings of Ryan Seacrest.
Then it all came tumbling down. Some clown in a white suit bounded through the audition-room doors. He made a few comedic moves, then turned to Paula Abdul and said, "I'll make love to you."
PAULA AND I had the same reaction: "What?"
Sensing my confusion, Eve, who is always listening whenever someone says something she's not supposed to hear, cleared it up for me. "He said, 'I'll make love to you.' "
"Oh," I said, grabbing the remote and switching the channel.
After that harrowing experience, I understand why LaVeta entertains our little ones with Don Knotts DVDs. They're corny, but they're clean. Same with the Bette Davis flicks that Eve calls "gray movies."
Now LaVeta's talking about ordering some old Jerry Lewis. But I think I've got a better solution. I'll do my own show. Call it "Weekend Warrior." That way I'll know it's suitable for kids.
Stay tuned. It's coming to a screen near you. *
Solomon Jones appears every Saturday.
He can be reached at