PAYING ATTENTION! WITH TOM DUGGAN
1/06/09

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 you’re 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 year’s 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 wasn’t.

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 don’t 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 weren’t responsible enough to take their children and leave.

They didn’t leave when Lady Gaga was shown humping a blow up doll on the wide-screen TV. They didn’t 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: “Let’s 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 Ten’s 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 don’t let children into strip clubs, we don’t 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 girl’s 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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