It seems that just about everything these days comes with a rating. Movies, video games, comic books, computer software, websites, even music. I’m not sure when this particular phenomenon became the norm but these days it seems like you can’t buy a Christmas or birthday gift – or anything else for that matter – for a child or young adult without first checking to see if it’s age-appropriate.

My major problem with this, however, stems from the pitifully inadequate – and personally dreaded – Motion Picture Association of America PG-13 rating.

You see, I was there, and experienced first-hand, the creation of PG-13. By that, I’m saying it had a profound effect on my childhood from the day it was first introduced (we can, in part, thank George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” for that one).

Back then, PG-13 was instituted as a way to protect children from too much violence, nudity and foul language. In recent years, however, it seems more like a marketing tool, less about our youth’s values and more about making as much money as absolutely possible. And while I understand that most everything these days boils down to how much money one can accumulate, it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

My major beef with the entire process revolves around the simple fact that the motion picture industry is so obsessed with making money, it’s willing to sacrifice the creative integrity of a film simply to market it to a larger crowd. To put it simply, as an adult, there are times I’d like to enjoy a good, old-fashioned R-rated flick.

And when you think about it, what once required a PG-13 rating in my younger days can now be found on one of cable television’s thousand-plus channels, at three o’clock in the afternoon, just in time for the kids to get home from school.

But these days, commercialism, materialism, consumerism and capitalism all require the watering-down of the entire entertainment industry, and in many ways our way of life, at least enough so both can be marketed to their utmost. That’s way too many “-isms” for me, yet for some reason or another, “-isms” seem to dominate our society these days (in my case, at least, it’s typically journalism, but that’s not so bad).