God help the sports fan

Maggie says:
Today’s newspaper had me laughing at the earnestness of conservatives hoping for “family-friendly” cable TV packages – as long as it doesn’t interfere with their sports. After being urged to create packages of channels geared toward “family” viewers, Comcast Corp. – the nation’s largest cable company – presented their family package to senators yesterday. Comcast decided not to include ESPN because of “some really disturbing non-family-appropriate programming,” so the family package was left sports-less.

Well this just wouldn’t do for Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia, son of a football coach, who was outraged – but in proper family tones, of course – by its exclusion. “To have a family tier and not have sports on it, in our family, would not be proper family programming. You’re going to have to come up with a family tier plus sports.”

In other words, let Sen. Allen feel like a true family man sitting down with his kids to watch some old-fashioned TV programming, but you are sure as hell not going to take away sports, the only escape from claustrophobic family life and a window into the heaven of guy-time, beer, and underdressed cheerleaders!

And it's not really a family package if it's not exactly what Republicans in the Senate would choose, after all. Because they just are family values, right? Let's just let Republicans design TV schedules. Actually, let's just let them design our entire lives! Because if it's not good enough for Sen. Allen, it's not good enough for me.