Although I don’t want to compare the challenges of having a child to the disappointment of being rejected from a singing competition, the feeling I had as a viewer watching the rejected singer on “American Idol” and the entirety of  “16 and Pregnant” was the same. These are personal moments and stories that should be kept that way and not aired for an audience to enjoy. 

I’ve watched a few of the new episodes of “16 and Pregnant,” which is now in its second season on MTV. Each one focused on a unique girl dealing with teen pregnancy.  The “16” website noted that every “episode follows a 5-7 month period in the life of a teenager as she navigates the bumpy terrain of adolescence, growing pains, rebellion, and coming of age; all while dealing with being pregnant.”

The first episode focused on Jenelle, a pregnant teenager from North Carolina. After getting pregnant, Jennelle still loved to hang out at the beach and go to parties. At the beginning she was trying to deal with the tension between her boyfriend and mother. The mother disliked her daughter’s jobless boyfriend, who, after the baby was born, got arrested for drunk driving. After that and an argument between Jenelle and her irresponsible boyfriend, Jenelle continued her partying ways noting in voice-over that the baby “doesn’t need me. He’s got my mom.” The show followed Janelle’s life until she eventually realized how hard being a parent is and reached an understanding with her mother about them working together to raise the child.

One of the main problems is the subject matter. The decisions involving having a new baby are often extremely personal. On the show, some of the mothers have to decide whether or not to choose adoption – and if they keep the child, they have to decide how to raise the child. Firstly, one wonders why these people would invite cameras into their homes to chronicle some of the toughest decisions of their lives. Secondly, who would want to watch teenagers struggling with potential parenthood and the hard decisions involved in that? I watched it to review it but I did not see anything entertaining or interesting enough to motivate me to watch the show in the future.

Additionally, one could argue that the show often incentivizes teenage mothers. Some of the friends of these pregnant girls seem excited about the possibility of their friends having a baby. However, the show does showcase some of the difficulties related to motherhood. The teen mothers and their boyfriends have to confront reality and some could argue that the show provides a public service in showing how difficult being a teenage mother is.

However, the show also provides a forum for often irresponsible and disrespectful young parents to get publicity for getting pregnant. So I think that overrules any educational value that the show might have for teens who are having unprotected sex.

Throughout the show, I did feel bad for some of the new grandparents. They’re trying to help their own children understand the responsibilities that come with being a parent. However, I do not understand why they would allow cameras into their personal lives to publicize their children’s pregnancies. Teenage pregnancies are a very personal thing and future grandparents should teach their pregnant children lessons about the responsibilities that come with being pregnant but without the glaring lights of a camera crew.

If only MTV had stepped out of the way and not offered an incentive for such a thing.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: NewsBusted’s Laugh Track, Groundhog Day, D.C. Blizzard, Nancy Pelosi, Osama Bin Laden, Rahm Emanuel, Joe Biden, President Obama Bows Again, Obama Girl, John Edwards, Teen Pregnancy, and R. Kelly.

The show, which follows the (mis)adventures of a high schooler Amy who hooked up with a classmate at band camp and got preggers as a result, was a mini-hit last year and a mini-scandal. It’s most horrifying depredation to contemporary mores? The memento mori that is a puffy and still-largely talentless Molly “Sixteen Candles” Ringwald, who plays the lead character’s divorced mom. Like a boob-tube Ozymandias, look upon her visage and despair.

Last season revolved around Amy realizing she was in the family way and then having to tell her folks, friends, etc. The father of the still-unborn child was a cad, scamming on several gals, and Amy ended up falling in with Ben, a loveable nerd who promises to raise the bastard as his own. Although abortion was raised as a possibility, it was dispatched more quickly than the theme song from Maude, which may well have been the last prime-time show to feature a lead character who actually went the Planned Parenthood route. What was stressed again and again throughout The Secret Life to the point of tedium was that Amy did not have sex on a regular basis. Or even more than that one unfortunate moment in band camp. Nor did virtually any of the other kids (and apparently, Molly Ringwald’s character either).

In Season Two’s opener, Ben and Amy plan a secret wedding and they actually get hitched. During the course of the show, the bride and groom and their best man and bridesmaid need to get fake I.D.s so the ceremony can take place absent any parental input. Various classmates also get fake I.D.s so they can attend the reception, which was as dry as a Methodist’s liquor cabinet. Indeed, a running theme throughout the episode is how no one will drink alcohol at all, but especially if they have to drive anywhere. By the time the credits ran, I was looking to see if Carrie A. Nation was the script consultant.

Which is to say that apart from the vaguely titallating premise and promise of the show’s title, the thing is safe as milk. Skim milk. Soy milk. Possibly powdered milk. The Secret Life, arguably Hollywood’s most naked bid at the jailbait market since Saved By The Bell went into permanent summer recess sometime before Dustin Diamond entered a long-delayed puberty, thus exemplifies the worst tradition of after-school special.

It’s preachy beyond belief and, for all the bad stuff that’s supposed to happen to the characters, it plays out in a world that is about as menacing and gritty as the dancing gangs in West Side Story. Give me Rock and Roll High School any day, the 1979 flick that ends with the blowing up of Vince Lombardi High, as great a Sophoclean catharsis as has been recorded in a movie featuring Clint Howard.

The Secret Life also represents a ubiquitous Hollywood tendency that all libertarians and even conservatives should reject out of hand: That television and other forms need to be instructive to youth and other idiot members of society who apparently take their moral cues from the small and large screens.

In a telling and all-too-common moment of Hollywood hubris, director Rob Reiner (who has made some good movies, I think) said, “Hollywood should not be making exploitive violent and exploitive sex films. I think we have a responsibility [to viewers] not to poison their souls.” Thanks, Meathead, but you don’t have access to my soul in the first place. Or those of my kids.

We may be what we eat (which explains the puddles of foie gras that form whenever I stand up), but we’re not what we watch, and creative expression needn’t be the ethical equivalent of a Cross Your Heart Bra, designed to uplift and separate us from our base instincts. And certainly the viewer, whether 15 years old or 45 (alas!), doesn’t need to watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager to know to use condoms or not drink and drive.

One of the great disconnects in American life over the past 30 years is that even as popular culture has been getting more graphic in its depictions of sex and violence, sexual behavior and violent crime among youth have been declining. Folks on the left like Reiner and many on the right often assume a connection between what we watch and how we act. That’s just not the way it works. Which is actually cause for relief.