Help Save The Youth Of America

Help save the youth of America
Help save them from themselves
Help save the sun-tanned surfer boys
And the Californian girls

----Billy Bragg


One of my wife's friends from her residency days came in from Chicago and stayed with us for the weekend. She brought her daughter, who is twelve. After spending a weekend with a twelve-year old girl I think I have a few less brain cells than before. I'm also much more worried about the future population of this country and I was already concerned about that.

It wasn't talking to a twelve year-old, middle-class white kid that made me feel this way, as you might expect. Though it did make me cringe when she said that you "have to" have a car to be able to live in Chicago. She seemed shocked when I told her I lived there without a car for years. But my argument that automobiles make people lazy and stupid is an argument for another day.

No, what did it was Disney Channel. Her mother doesn't subscribe to cable at home (a choice I applaud any parent for making) so when she was here she asked, every night, if we could watch the Disney Channel. No problem, sure.

Wow. I had no idea. Not having a kid I haven't actually had a reason to even check out the Disney Channel. My family had it for a while when it first came out when I was a kid myself, it was a premium channel back then like HBO, and it was pretty much just Disney movies and old episodes of Wonderful World of Disney. If you had a hankering to watch Old Yeller on any given day you probably could. But after we got caught stealing cable we didn't have it anymore, and after it became a part of basic cable I never turned it on. I had to look around to find it when the girl asked if she could watch it.

Has anybody out there seen this shit? People actually let their kids watch it? It is not just horrible it is mind-numbingly stupid. During the course of the weekend that we were watching it just about every night, there were the same few sitcoms on every night. Yes, sitcoms. The whole Disney Channel thing seems to be modeled after the artistic genius of Saved By The Bell, with the same exact jokes. Seriously.

This is between commercials for High School Musical, full of pretty acne-free cool kids all being nice to each other. These poor kids who watch that are in for a rude awakening when they got to real high school and see what it is actually like.

There were three main shows I saw while having to endure this torture. First there is a show called Life With Derek, which is just a modern day rip-off of The Brady Bunch. Then there is this silly show The Suite Life With Zack & Cody, about twin brothers with (as my wife pointed out) hair that for some reason is styled after Nicholas from the 70s/80s sitcom Eight Is Enough. They for some reason live in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel in Boston. Supposedly they aren't rich, their mother works as a singer at the hotel. I hate to break it to you kids, but if they've been given the penthouse suite singing is not the only service mom is providing, wink wink nudge nudge.

Then there is Hannah Montana. Now I had heard of this show, how could you not. I heard her talked about as a good role model by my sister-in-law, at least when compared to Britney Spears, because she apparently dresses "wholesome." I wonder if she actually watches the shows she lets her kids watch on Disney Channel. Because if that little idiot girl is supposed to be a role model for young people we are all doomed.

I sometimes think that parents like my brother and his wife see something that is full of white people and doesn't have rap music in it so then assume that it must be OK for their kids to watch.

The fact that these shows are full of really bad, very dumb lowbrow jokes with bad laugh track sound effects straight out of 70s sitcoms isn't even the worst thing about them. The lead characters in these shows, including Hannah Montana, are assholes. These kids are shallow, petty, vengeful, vain, materialistic, disrespectful, impudent little fuckheads. These are supposed to be the "good role models" to the parents of three of my nieces and one nephew?

Perhaps it is because they are as clueless as the way parents are portrayed on these shows. Really, just one example of the brilliant parenting skills on Hannah Montana is when her father punishes the son by pretending he doesn't exist and not speaking to him. Send that suggestion to Dr. Spock!

I swear, why parents let their kids watch this shit I'll never know. Why is it that we think that entertainment for children has to be stupid? Why does the alternative to a Britney Spears have to be an annoying little twit like Hannah Montana? There are brilliant singer-songwriter women out there like Jill Sobule, Tegan and Sarah, Bjork, Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) and the list goes on and on.

Heck, there is even a group called Smoosh, a couple of sisters aged 15 and 13, that make brilliant indie-rock music that they actually write and perform themselves.

Can't we introduce our kids to real stuff made by real people instead of shoving media conglomerate manufactured nonsense down their throat?

Treat them stupid and they will be stupid.