Shaping and breaking family values are exaggerated phenomena. No one group can decide on a list of things that constitute — or don’t constitute — these values. Also ‘family values’ are not edicts set in stone to be followed like Mosaic or statutory laws.
Which is why the extreme enthusiasm with which the Supreme Court entertained a public interest litigation against the fuzziness of television media regulations, as described in the Broadcasting Bill, leaves us surprised. Not only did the apex court hear the complaint, but it also wagged its finger at the government for “increasing obscenity and violence” on television. The judges played out their sermons on the mount by asking the government whether there can be “even one single day in the 365 days of a year when a family can sit together and watch TV without an assault on their basic values”. One would think we are living in porno-paradise.
Perhaps the honourable gentlemen should remember that there are two tools already available to vanquish anti-family values: the remote control and the eyelids.