Word: rakolta
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...trend perhaps started in the late '80s, when Michigan housewife Terry Rakolta crusaded against Married...with Children, elevating the Bundy-family saga from crapola to cause celebre. Now the job of shocking an increasingly unshockable bourgeoisie falls ever more to commercials, ratings stunts like Ally McBeal's--you'll be stunned to see these hot women kissing!--or worse. No one will rank Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? with Roots, yet what good TV program has lately stirred such debate about feminism, money and a holy sacrament...
...show that did for TV comedy what Velveeta did for cheese, is ending its long and profound run. Having hung its dirty laundry in public for 11 seasons, the Bundy family will bicker no more after May 5. Married, which got an early publicity break when housewife Terry Rakolta launched a national boycott against it for being "antifamily," drew more than 18 million viewers in its heyday but garners less than half that now. And for those who crave dysfunction, there's always The Honeymooners reruns...
Initial reaction to the networks' labeling plan was predictably skeptical. Critics, from conservative watchdog Terry Rakolta to earnest newspaper columnists, complained that the warning label was a cop-out, a Band-Aid solution that would not reduce violence but would simply point out more clearly where to find it. But as production for the new season gets under way, the impact of the new label is shaping up as substantial, maybe even crippling. The Clean Up Your Network campaign may help make TV safer for kids, but it will almost certainly make network programming even blander than it already...
...emergence of a new sort of TV family: the grungy, dysfunctional clans of Married with Children, The Simpsons and (to a lesser degree) Roseanne. All have, at one time or another, been attacked by the family-values police. Married with Children was the chief target of Michigan housewife Terry Rakolta's 1989 campaign to clean up television. Roseanne Arnold has drawn fire for her crude behavior both on and off camera. President Bush told a group of religious broadcasters in January, "We need a nation closer to The Waltons than The Simpsons...
...others like to think their shows are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable on TV by tackling serious issues such as teen drug addiction, "responsible" sex and menstruation. Some critics think they have pushed too far. Says Terry Rakolta, a Michigan mother of four who founded Americans for Responsible Television: "I don't know if it's 'Californian' as such, but the entertainment community there knows sex and violence sell. They know it's low cost per thousand -- cheap, fast and dirty...