Freedom of Speech?

There's an interesting article at Promo Magazines site. Basically it's discussing the advertising guidelines that are in place when marketing to kids. Here's the scary part to me:

One consumer advocacy group suggested that restrictions should consider foods' nutritional quality, and ads for junk food should be banned. ANA Executive VP Dan Jaffe shot the idea: "Banning marketing for certain foods would be certainly unconstitutional. There are no bad foods, just bad diets. ... The marketplace is working because [food companies] are responding to consumer demands for healthful products. Restricting advertising would be counter-productive."

Few seem to be able to grasp the danger this implies. When you give away your freedom, even for a good cause, you never get it back. Today we are protecting the children from obesity, how do you respond when ten years down the road someone says we have to ban certain shows because they are mentally unhealthy?

I've always said, tyranny grows best in the soil of fear. IMHO, This is just another example.

Gunsmoke

Lately, I've been watching Gunsmoke on Encore Western. I'm talking about the early ones with Dennis Weaver as Chester and before they were in color. My parents used to watch Gunsmoke every week. I never could stand it. I even became very anti-western over the years. However, I can't believe, how incredible the writing is.

I recently watched an episode that spanned about 20 years. A father found out from his wife on her deathbed that her father was a mass murderer. She told him to be hard on their sons, they had bad blood. What an amazing story, it had a saloon girl marrying for money then manipulating one brother to kill her husband then frame his brother for the murder. Ultimately the father lost his wife and both sons because of greed and fear. The story was Shakespearean in it's scope and emotional tone. I highly recommend checking out these classics. You might be surprised.