Dirty TV is quite healthy

DIRTY TV IS QUITE HEALTHY
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle 8/6, AUTHOR: Greg Beato]
[Commentary] A study conducted by Duke University Professor William Parker compared hygienically pampered lab rats to their filthy cousins who live in urban sewers and earthy barnyard squalor. The results? The wild rats are like, say, Iggy Pop. Vigorous and indestructible, they have highly efficient immune systems that ignore trivial germs while blocking out the more serious ones. The immune systems of their coddled laboratory counterparts grow so sensitive through underuse that even a sneeze from an Olsen twin could potentially take them down. But if we've gotten too sanitary for our own good here in the developed world, well, at least, our pop culture is still as pungent as a Bangalore outhouse, right? It packs such a devastating punch, in fact, that its detractors often accuse it of tangible physical toxicity. Liberal handwringers decry advertising and violent entertainment as airborne pathogens that pollute the minds of our children. Conservative crotch sentries claim that pornography actually has the power to reshape brain structure. If you listen to, say, the concerned citizens at the Parents Television Council, who have made it their life's work to monitor the rates at which Saturday morning cartoons depict "implied defecation" and various other categories of dangerous content, we're just one vulgar joke from cultural Armageddon. And yet, somehow, despite all those objectionable kiddie shows, despite the digital mayhem of Grand Theft Auto and all the other sexy, violent media our nation's youngsters consume, statistics show they're a surprisingly chaste and civil bunch.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/0...