Adventures in My Mind
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Dec 23, 2004
Merry Christmas!
From the Carroll's
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 9:39 PM
Dec 15, 2004
Much has always been made about morality, it's place in political discourse, and most recently the mass media's contributions to its ruination.
Over and over I hear, concerned modern-day Victorians state, "How do I explain that to my kids?" As in, "the president got head in the Oval Office? How do I explain that to my kids?" Or "Did Justin just expose Miss Janet's nipple? How do I explain that to my kids?" Or "Howard Stern just said penis and vagina! How do I explain that to my kids?" Or ... well, you get the point.
This cheap dimestore morality pretends to pass as concern for the continued existence of our great experiment in Democracy; but as we know, it is simply the inability for the Banana Republic exurbanites and the John Deere rurals to successfully control the behavior of other people (most of them shaded in various hues of blue, purple, and ... gasp! ... pink).
Of course, as we sadly found out on Nov. 3, these ersazt moralizers and philosophers were unable to grok even the vaguest understanding of true morality the previous day when they came out in droves for the greatest bunch of liars, cheats, swindlers, and racketeers since Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall.
I, however - much to my dismay - found myself amongst their number the other night while watching, of all things, a Peanuts Christmas show. Yes, the Peanuts: Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest.
Lucy and Linus's little brother Rerun asked a forlorn girl in his Kindergarten class to runaway to Paris with him in an effort to cheer her up. The next day he was called into the principal's office and told that he was being suspended for harrassment. He, like I'm sure with most 5 year olds, didn't even know what harrassment was or why he should be punished for - in his words, "just trying to cheer her up."
My first reaction? Disbelief mostly. Followed by shock and quickly replaced by anger.
Keep in mind that I'm wathcing this with a 4 and a 2 year old. Keep in mind that the topic of sexual harrassment never comes up between us over our cereal bowls in the morning. Keep in mind, also, that the witch hunt mentality that has seized the overly moral has previously been able to turn this supposed stab at humor into Orwellian reality with children as young as 5 and 6 suspended for the shocking behavior of giving out kisses and hugs.
How do you make humor out of a child, no a baby, being suspended for sexual harrassment? How do you make humor out of punishing children for a concept that they can't even grasp. Aidan thinks that you hold hands to make babies. My 8 year old nephew thinks that you get married every time you want to have a baby, even if you already are married.
And more importantly, how the hell do you explain that to a child?
Sami and I tried as best as we could. In the end, though, we simply told Aidan and Maeve that the show wasn't funny and it talked about stuff that wasn't good for kids. Lame, really. But how do I explain that to my kids?
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 10:49 PM
Dec 9, 2004
The Drive to Discover by James Cameron
Why go to Mars? Why explore the ocean depths? Why do the hard things? To quote JFK:"... Not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."That pretty much says it all.
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 8:49 PM
