What has happened? We used to be the delinquents who needed guidance in our TV choices. But now the Sesame Street/A-Team group as well as teens and young adults have two new models, MTV’s “Beavis and Butthead.”

What makes this so horrifying is that our young people are mocking and idolizing two acid-tripping, pot-smoking, heavy-metal-junkie teenagers who who get their kicks from committing illegal acts such as arson and animal cruelty to name just a few. These evil characters must in some way be stopped.

We applaud the efforts of the parents, who have teamed up against both MTV and the creators of the vile show to try and get it off the air.

However, as perpetual cynics, we keep wondering that if these people have enough time to write letter after letter to MTV Networks, why they don’t spend that time with their children. After all, as the age old saying goes, “The best thing to spend on your children is time.” We can’t help but thinking that if these parents actually did their jobs right that their children would assume them as positive role models instead of accepting the negative role models of an MTV cartoon.

Ignoring the real problem, they feel that their time is better spent writing letters to try to convince MTV to lose an audience four times the size of its other programs. Instead of beating around the bush with letters that are getting them nowhere, we suggest that these jump-on-the-wagon-censor-happy parents go all out.

Instead of forming useless hotlines and writing millions of unread letters to MTV Networks, we propose that all of the anti-“Beavis and Butthead” citizens refrain from their annual Halloween night activities such as preaching at those Satan-worshiping party-goers and meet in front of MTV studios. From there, they can all ambush the board room and commit some of those famous torture methods “Beavis and Butthead” have made famous on the MTV board directors until they promise to take the show off the air and give us the names and addresses of the show’s creators so we can torture them into remission also.

This problem is not limited to one cartoon on MTV. In our society today no one is willing to take responsibility for their own actions. It is much easier for us to turn around and blame an object such as a television or another person rather than admitting a fault of our own. Only after we start taking responsibility for our own actions can we concentrate on what really counts, such as the education of our children.

This article was published in The Shield on Nov. 5, 1993.