Lowell officials should put age
limit on Kiss108FM's Jingle Ball Concert
When
recording artist Lady Gaga
took the stage at the Tsongas Arena in
Lowell last month, as part of the Kiss
108FM Jingle Ball concert, the audience
went wild!
Dressed in what could only be described
as underwear, she crawled out on stage on
all fours as if she was about to do a
strip tease right then and there.
And when singing sensation Katie Perry
came out and announced to the crowd that
she kissed a girl and
she was f*ing hot! the fans
jumped from their seats and cheered
ecstatically as if they had just been
invited back stage.
The band Hinder, among others, welcomed
the crowd with a spate of four letter
words and closed their set with a song
that ended with: Go home and get
stoned, We could end up making love
instead of misery, Go home and get
stoned, Cause the sex is so much better
when youre mad at me, You wear me
out...lets go home and get stoned.
What was remarkable about this concert
was that, as I looked around at the
thousands of people in the audience more
than 80% of them were between the ages of
ten and sixteen years-old, some younger.
Some of them with their mothers, a few
with their fathers, but most of the kids
attending this years Jingle Ball
concert had no parental supervision at
all.
Now, if this had been a show for adults
at a night club in Boston or even in
Lowell where children under the age of 18
were not allowed in; these kinds of
public displays by major recording
artists would be no big deal.
But it wasnt.
This was an all-ages show run by a radio
station that promoted and marketed the
event directly to children and teenagers.
A radio station that has been sponsoring
this holiday concert for years and whose
demographic is primarily young teenage
girls.
Children and teenagers who already
idolize these artists (and obviously
obsessed with emulating their every move)
were in a frenzy when Katie Perry took
the stage. As the house lights went up
for a moment, a sea of teen and pre-teen
girls could be seen throughout the
Tsongas Arena wearing shirts that read
(in big capital letters): I KISSED
A GIRL. The back of the T-shirts
read: AND I LIKED IT.
You could see the look of horror on the
faces of some of the unsuspecting fathers
in the arena when the their daughters
began singing; I kissed a
girl and I liked it, the taste of her
cherry chapstick, I kissed a girl just to
try it, I hope my boyfriend dont
mind it
What was even worse was that the few
parents who were responsible enough to
accompany their minor children to this
porn-fest, just werent responsible
enough to take their children and leave.
They didnt leave when Lady Gaga was
shown humping a blow up doll on the
wide-screen TV. They didnt leave
when Hinder uttered their tenth
F word or when they
encouraged the children in the audience
to sing along with them as they sang:
Lets go home and get
stoned.
Make no mistake about it. While many
naive parents had no clue as to what was
going to occur when they dropped off
their kids at the Tsongas Arena, the
people who run Kiss 108FM and the concert
promoters who put on this show knew
exactly what was going to happen.
They knew exactly who their target
audience was going to be (teen and
pre-teen girls) and they purposely
marketed this smut to them.
As the concert raged on I had to wonder,
when they looked out at the crowd of
impressionable 10-16 year-old girls, did
they feel at all responsible for
promoting adult material to children?
And, what about the artists themselves?
Surely they bear some responsibility for
coming out on stage, seeing very young,
very impressionable children in the
audience and then choosing to engage in
adult language and behavior as if they
were performing at Tens Show Club
in Salisbury or some raunchy night club
in Boston.
And where was the City of Lowell in all
this?
Surely, city officials in charge of
running the Tsongas arena are aware of
the adult (and sometimes pornographic)
nature of these performances?
They had to know that this smut was being
marketed to children at an all ages show.
Why is this allowed to continue right in
the heart of downtown Lowell every single
year?
And why is there no outrage at all?
There was no outrage by the people at
KISS 108FM, no outrage by the parents who
attended the event and refused to leave.
And most surprisingly, no outrage at all
from the city officials who run the arena
with your tax money.
And, while I am not advocating that the
City of Lowell ban the annual Kiss108FM
Jingle Ball Concert, I am calling for
Lowell city officials to act responsibly
and put an age limit on future events if
grown-ups in the music industry cannot
behave appropriately at an all-ages show.
We dont let children into strip
clubs, we dont let them in to see
R rated movies, and when
cigarette companies are caught marketing
their product to children they face
millions if not billions of dollars in
fines.
Yet, for some reason, when a 12 year old
little girls hero gets up on a
public stage in downtown Lowell and
encourages her to go home and get
stoned, or experiment with
lesbianism, nobody seems to have a
problem with it.
Well I do. And so should you.
Tom
Duggan is the president of Valley
Patriot, Inc., a former Lawrence School
Committeeman, and hosts the Paying
Attention! Radio Program on WCAP, 980AM,
every Saturday afternoon from 10am-noon.
You can email your comments to Tdugjr@aol.com .
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