Half Changed World

media and the election

After an election that was dominated by new media (blogs, youtube, twitter), the end turned out to demand the old media.

We watched the results come in on television, and our guests nearly rioted when at one point T revealed that we were actually ten minutes behind live thanks to TiVo and channel switching.  I had my laptop on, and occasionally looked over to check things like which counties had reported in the states that had only partial results, but the focus was definitely on the big screen. 

And then, yesterday, it seems like everyone wanted a newspaper, the dead tree kind, to hold in their hands and put away in the closet.  Papers all over the country sold out, and people were lined up waiting for the special editions to come out.

When I drained the battery on the car last week, I set off the anti-theft device on the audio system, so I can't listen to the radio until we manage to get to a dealer.  Listening to the previous day's podcast works ok for Planet Money and This American Life, less well for the more newsy shows.*

*It's almost like having a TiVo for the radio.

A Nintendo in your purse?

I understand that A-list bloggers are used to getting all sorts of schwag to review, but I'm far from that, so I was pretty surprised last month to check my inbox and discover that Nintendo was sending me a DS Lite and games to review.  It's part of their campaign to market the DS to women, which also includes a promo where people who rent a high end purse can receive the use of DS at the same time.

I emailed the marketer back to say that I'd give it a try, but that their games would need to knock my socks off to justify the space in my purse.  Given that I can already play a number of games on my iPod touch, why would I want to carry something else around?  And indeed, none of the games they sent with it were as addictive to me as trism.

There's no question that if you're serious about playing games, the DS is still a better machine.  For one thing, its battery life far exceeds the iPod's (which frankly stinks in game playing mode).  And it has two screens, and more than one button, which gives you a lot more options for controlling a game.  And it's cheaper, and less breakable, and has a user-replaceable battery.  But for having something handy when I'm bored on the metro, or get stuck waiting on line somewhere, the iPod does just fine.

It also didn't help their case that the selection of programs they sent was largely based on the assumption that women don't actually want to play video games.*  So, they sent a yoga trainer (confusing controls for selecting programs, and no audio directions), a weight loss coach with a pedometer (great concept, clunky implementation), a crossword program (fine except that you had to solve a bunch of easy ones to get to the ones that were interesting), Brain Age 2 (clever), Carnival Games (a hit with my son), and a puzzle solving game (MillionHeir, which was pretty good).  And none of these shows off the capacity of the system half as well as the Pokemon game that my son has been busily playing since the minute I handed over the system.**

So, I'm dubious about this marketing push, even as I think they've got a pretty good product.  I just don't see a lot of grown ups playing with a DS. Am I missing something?  Any of you play with one of these?

*This article quotes someone from Nintendo as saying that half of the DS systems sold last year belong to women.  Sorry, but I can only believe that if: a) "women" is defined to mean "female, regardless of age" or b) "belong" is defined to mean "purchased by" regardless of the primary user.  I know some women who play computer games,*** but 50 percent just isn't plausible to me.

** D has been asking for a DS for a long time, and we told him that we wouldn't buy him one, but he could save up for one. And he's been dutifully saving his allowance for over a year.  So once I tried the system enough to write a fair review, I let him buy it from me for half price.  He knows that we still retain the right to put the system in time out if he misbehaves.

***For some interesting discussion on gender differences in online games, see Geeky Mom.

tough jobs

I don't know anyone except T and me who are watching America's Toughest Jobs.  It seems to be drawing pretty low audiences.  But I'm enjoying it.  It's a tough competition, without the random luck or bunching that drives me crazy on The Amazing Race, and it's mostly just about the ability to do the job, without a whole lot of relationship drama.  (They've occasionally tried to make a story about why the contestants are doing this, but that's been underwhelming.)

"Tough" jobs, in this context, mostly translates as physically demanding and/or dangerous.  Certainly today's episode, logging, was brutally physical.  Since they're putting untrained people into the jobs, they can't require serious training, so no air traffic control here.  And as much as I'd love to see these folks dealing with a room full of toddlers, it's not going to happen.

Interestingly, two of the final five contestants are women.  They're very tough women, but they're mostly not as strong as the men. Some of the men are complaining that the bosses are grading the women on a curve, but I don't think that's it -- I think it's that they've consistently shown hustle and good attitude, and the bosses give them credit for that.

The grand prize at the end will be the total annual salary of all the jobs they do.  The main thing that's struck me is how *little* most of these jobs pay.  I don't think any of the ones we've seen so far pay more than $45,000, and some of them (prospecting for gold) pay a lot less.  Life lesson: go to college -- you can make a lot more money for a lot less work.  Or get a union job -- although they didn't say so, I'm sure the bridge maintenance work they did last week is unionized.  And it's the best paying job so far -- and probably the least real danger (yes, you're very high, but you're always clipped in).

At the end of the show, they tell you what the contestant who got kicked off that week is doing now. Almost all of them have changed their jobs since being on the show.  One of them did in fact get hired to drive a truck in Alaska.  Another is working in a national park.  So, I guess that's another life lesson:  there's a lot of options out there, and you don't have to do the obvious ones.

Anyone else watching?

idle speculation

So, if McCain doesn't show up for the debate tomorrow night, will they let Obama answer questions on his own for an hour and a half?  That would be awesome.

If I didn't laugh, I'd have to cry

Via Becca at Not Quite Sure, Jon Stewart nailing people with their own words.

And Roger Simon on Why The Media Should Apologize.

I remember that around 9/11, people were saying that irony was going out of style.  But I don't know how else we're supposed to deal with this craziness.

Update:  Oh.  My.  God. I think I have to cry anyway.

watching the convention

I'm watching the convention with half an ear.  For some reason, I can't get my local PBS station at the moment, and the CNN coverage is driving me nuts -- I'd rather listen to the speakers than to James Carville.  They're saying that there's not much happening that's of interest to the television audience, but there's no way to tell from their coverage, since they're not actually letting anyone hear the speakers.

I'm enjoying reading the twitters from Bitch PhD, but am not sure they're really adding to my understanding of the convention.

Ted Kennedy looks damn good under the circumstances.  He's far less jowly than my image of him -- don't know if he's lost weight or what.

I read the draft Democratic Party platform earlier today. In some ways platforms are always fairly meaningless documents -- they're written by committee, and include something for everyone, so they don't tell you anything about what the real priorities will be when the rubber hits the road.  But, as laundry lists go, it's a fine one.

I don't have much to say about the choice of Biden as VP.  I don't think he changes the dynamics of the race much.  He's got good foreign policy credentials.  NPR this evening had a long piece about whether his support for the awful bankruptcy bill was because the credit card companies are major constituents or because they're major donors.  I'm not sure the distinction is meaningful.  It's the same problem as Schumer's support of tax loopholes for hedge funds.  Fred at Stone Court says that Biden was particularly disrespectful to Elizabeth Warren during the debate.

The Republican candidate for Congress in this district just ran an ad that says he's the one to support for "real change" in Washington.  Choke.

Michelle did a good job.    T. walked in during the "ice cream" part of the speech and we both went "awww..."  If you've already read Dreams from my Father, there's not that much new in her description of Barack, though.

Gaak.  CNN has been going on about Carville's complaints that there wasn't enough "red meat" in the evening, but they just admitted that they didn't cover Pelosi's speech which did get people in the convention hall rared up.  Why?  Because they were talking with Carville!!

Advertising, PR, reviews and Avatar

Cecily's posts about lousy PR pitches reminded me that I wanted to go over my advertising and review policies.

Advertising: I accept ads through BlogAds.  I accept most ads that are submitted.  I reject them if I can't tell what they're selling, or if I'm offended by either what they're selling, or how they're selling it.  The most common reason I reject ads is that I think they're preying on parental fears.  If I'm really enthusiastic about the cause or the product, I might mention it in a post, but buying an ad doesn't automatically get you a mention.

PR: I can't think of a single case where I've chosen to interview someone based on a PR pitch.  I'm can pretty much guarantee that I'm not going to discuss your product on the basis of a press release.

Reviews: I always disclose if I'm being paid to do a review (e.g. through MotherTalk).  But I won't do a review even for money unless I think it will be of some interest to my audience.  I know I don't want to read reviews of cleaning products, and I assume you don't either.  (Trust me, no one is offering me enough money to pretend that I like housework.)  I'm not going to spend my money on $60 layettes, and I'm not going to waste your time with reviews of them. 

Books are a special case where I worry more about myself than my audience -- I think book reviews are often interesting, even when I have no intention of reading the book -- but I'm not going to take one on unless I think I'm going to enjoy reading the book.  If you send me a book to review other than as part of a blog tour, I'll try to get to it, but I don't make promises.  If the book doesn't interest me enough to finish it, you're probably happier if I don't review it anyway, right?

On that note, here's T's review of the final disk of Avatar:

Avatar, Book 3 Fire, Volume 4, concludes the long-running series. For those (like myself) who have enjoyed it very much, that in itself is a melancholy and somewhat frightening notion.  Sad, because we won't get to watch any more new episodes, and scary because they might well screw up the ending.  It's been done before, with works substantially less ambitious than Avatar.  So if you're intently searching out reviews, you're probably wondering:  Did they pull out a cheesy deus ex machina to resolve everyone's problems and make everything happy sunshine land?

 

Well ... yes and no.

 

They do not change the rules as regards the conflict we've seen coming from day one:  The fight against the Firelord and his armies is HARD.  Everyone pulls their weight, everyone puts their life on the line, everyone makes sacrifices.  You get the matchups you expect and require:  Aang vs. the Firelord, Zuko vs. his sister.  The loose plot threads are tied up so neatly, and with such precision, that toward the end I was able to predict the dialogue word for word on more than one occasion, simply because there were only a few possible things left for people to say to each other.  That's not to say that it's stilted or trite ... the stuff is heart-warming and incredibly powerful ... just that it proceeds with a powerful sense of dramatic and emotional necessity.  As General Iroh puts it:  people are compelled to meet their destinies, and they do so with the tools we've seen them honing throughout the series.

 

But there's another item that's not so well addressed ... because the writers actually tacked on more ambition as the series was coming to a close.  They opened up a can of worms I never thought they'd go near:  the hard reality of fighting leading to violence and death.

 

It's a kids show.  They're allowed a pass on this subject ... they really are!  If they wanted to say "Aang is a wise, peaceful, loving soul who would never hurt anyone, and who uses his avatar powers to kick butt for justice" and leave it at that, they're allowed.  So I was impressed when an episode early in the disc ended with the following dialogue:

 

Zuko:  Violence wasn't the answer.

Aang:  It never is.

Zuko:  Then I have a question for you:  What are you going to do when you face my father?

 

I'd been expecting that the series would end with Aang defeating the Firelord, who would then self-destruct in some fatal last attempt to enact vengeance.  But it becomes clear that's just not in the cards.  If Ozai is defeated, he'll want to live, in order to plan yet more world-stomping mischief ... and letting him live will ensure that nobody ever has peace.  What's a decent, caring person with the weight of the world on their shoulders to do?

 

Aang's attempts throughout the remaining episodes to answer this question in a way he can live with create conflict in places I didn't expect it:  Particularly a serious and powerful conflict with the past Avatars.  The series becomes once again, at the end, what it was at the beginning:  A coming of age story.  Aang is torn between himself, the needs of the world, the pressures of his friends, and the well-meaning advice of the past Avatars who are the closest thing he has to parents.

In the end, the answer that he comes to is imperfect, and yeah maybe something of a gimmick.  You can hear a lot of back and forth about it on fansites if you go looking.  But you won't hear it here: The writers asked a question that, in the abstract, has no good answer.  Heroic violence vs. respect for life ... if they had an answer that fit the bill in all times and all places, without resort to gimmicks ... well, that'd be great, but surprising.  As it is, I'm glad just to have seen the question so well addressed. 

What I'm watching, listening to, reading

I gave blood this afternoon and am feeling logy, so you get another bulleted post.

Landismom posted recently about giving up cable.  It made me realize that I haven't watched TV in months, not since the end of The Amazing Race and Heroes.  Here's some of what I am watching, etc:

• Right now, we've got Spiderman 3 playing.  Boy is it lousy.

• This weekend, I finally got a chance to see 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days.   It's painful, austere, brilliant, horrifying.  Watching it wasn't exactly enjoyable, but it's worth watching. 

• I've been listening to the podcasts of This American Life.  This week's episode, Switched at Birth, is truly haunting.  The women in question didn't find out about the switch until they were in their 40s.  But what makes the story absolutely bizarre is that one of the mothers realized the switch right away, but didn't do anything about it.  This could have been just a freakshow, but the interviewer has such empathy for everyone involved that it works.

• Dr Horrible's Sing a Long Blog is pretty funny.  Except when it's not.  Don't try to watch when your kids are anywhere in earshot.

• I just read The Miracle at Speedy Motors.  Fun, nothing profound.

• I started reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, and got about 200 pages into it (it's 600 pages long) when it needed to go back to the library.  One of the problems is that's just too heavy to haul back and forth on the metro every day.  So I bought it in eReader format -- I figure this will be a good test of whether reading books on the Touch is really something I'd do.

Updated: Meant to ask -- what am I missing by not watching TV?  Anything I should be adding to the TiVO?  (I assume I'll watch at least some of the Olympics.)

Avatar

A few weeks ago, I got an email asking if I would be interested in receiving a copy of Avatar, Book 3, Volume 3.  I asked T if that was that show that he and the boys have been watching on netflix, and he said yes.  So I accepted the disk, and asked T to write the review.  As you'll see, he's effusive in his praise.  If you read this blog, you know that I'm not always that nice to folks who send me stuff to review, so this is the real deal.

The boys are now all caught up, so they're eagerly awaiting the last 6 episodes, airing on Nick later this summer.

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Avatar is that greatest of rarities, a show that educates children in such a distracting and entrancing way that they never even begin to suspect that they're being informed.

For those completely disconnected from the series, a brief summary: Avatar takes place in a setting assembled piece-meal from elements of chinese culture and legend, but assembled with quite western sentiments.  It features four nations, each associated with one of the classical four elements, and each gifted with people with the talent to "bend" that element to their will.  As the introduction that rolls before each show explains, all was in harmony until the fire nation attacked.  The Avatar, a figure reincarnated into each new era, can alone learn to control all four elements and bring balance back to the land.  But he disappeared a century ago, right when he was needed most.  The series follows the rediscovered young Avatar and both good comrades and dire enemies.

Simple, yes?  Fantasy at its most formulaic:  A messianic figure with wierd magic mojo, setting forth on a quest to win freedom for a world oppressed by a faceless evil empire.

Yes, all that is there ... but also in the best tradition of fantasy, that's not all there is.  Magic isn't just a gimmick or a tool, and bending isn't just a weapon by another name (though it is associated with various martial arts styles, and the action scenes that are liberally sprinkled through the series are -stellar-).  The elements and the cultures are intimately fused, and bending is both a result of and the cause of those cultures distinctive virtues.  To learn water-bending, you must master the ways of thinking that help make you a good member of the water tribes, and so on.  It's not about power, it's about personality.

The avatar starts the series already trained as an air bender, and his personality is yielding, slippery, free and flighty.  He's a kid ... a sweet, generous, fun-loving, irresponsible kid.  He is, without question, possessed of a type of wisdom.  The thing is, he starts the series possessed of only -one- kind of wisdom.  In order to reach his destiny, face the Fire-Lord and restore peace and justice and all that jazz, he needs to learn that there is more than one way of thinking, more than one set of virtues, more than one path of wisdom.  He needs to learn all four types of bending, which means learning four very different ways of thinking.  When he studies earth-bending, the intense, unyielding mirror of his own set of virtues, his teacher puts it very clearly:  "No, you're thinking like an air-bender!  There is no different angle, no trickety-trick that's going to move that rock.  If you want to move it you have to face it head on!"

The concept that a full person should be able to bring a whole catalog of different viewpoints to a problem is far too rare in children's television.  All too often it is exchanged for an easy "One lesson, hammered home," formula which at best makes characters shallow and unappealing, and at worst actually convinces children that a single moral touchstone will be enough for everything life is going to throw at them.  The messages may be good (in fact, they almost invariably are) but by blanking out the rest of the moral universe in order to fit into twenty-two minutes, such simple shows do children a disservice.

Quite simply, Avatar is the antidote to simple-minded kids action shows.  It uses the conceit of bending to bring a broad range of emotional and moral issues out of the shadows and examine them closely, in terms that kids find understandable and interesting.  The show's characters make mistakes.  They have flaws ... often grievous, world-wrenching flaws, and those flaws cause terrible things to happen.  Every last one of them earns a fair portion of guilt and shame, but also a heaping helping of confidence and strength.  Again, all of this tends to be a marked contrast from less nuanced children's television.

Which brings me to the character who really shines in Book Three, Volume Three ... a character who, to my mind, is consistently the most intriguing of the series:  Prince Zuko.

Prince Zuko is the much-abused son of that most abusive villain of the series, the Fire-Lord ... heir to the guy behind, well, pretty much everything evil going on in the world.  Zuko is there with us from the very first episode, banished by his father until such time as he returns with the captured Avatar.  He is, it seems very much, the bad guy: a remorseless, driven young man who will stop at *nothing* to regain his honor by hunting, hounding and attacking the heroes of the series.

And yet ....

The series portrays his qualities clearly:  His constant, explosive anger, his unyielding determination, his restless pride, his devilish cunning.  He's got all the tools a good villain needs.  And, bit by bit, we learn that these are virtues too.  He is passionate, driven, clever, brave.  He starts the series trying to be a good boy, to follow the course his father set, and as his life becomes worse and worse (the heroes always slipping from his grasp, his failures accumulating and poisoning his life further) he slowly grows into a desire to be a good man.

In this collection he sloughs off the destiny that his father would shape him into, and sets out on his own path.  It is the turning point that the series has been leading to for years, and it is -magnificent-.  It is only natural that this should lead him to ally with his former enemies ... and only natural that such an alliance should be hard on everyone involved.

The series has my young son asking some big questions:  What does it mean to have done bad things, and want to make it right?  How much can you look to other people for guidance, and how much do you need to do all alone?  Can you offer forgiveness and trust to one who has harmed you deeply, without denying your own hurt?  Can you withhold that chance at redemption, without destroying a piece of yourself?

The trope of bending has a lot to do with getting these questions across to children.  Does my son understand how very hard, how very important the confrontation between Zuko and his abusive father was?  I don't know, though I suspect not.  But he understands that the Fire-Lord levelled a fire-bending attack that would easily have -destroyed- the younger Zuko, and that because of his experiences the young prince was able not only to survive the attack but turn it back against its source.  My son literally screamed in surprise and satisfaction when it happened.  He grabbed me and shook me, saying "Did you see that?  Did you SEE?  He reflected it, just like his uncle showed him!" 

If my son doesn't see through the symbolism to the deeper human drama, I'm not really sure it matters.  That is the power of symbolism, after all ... the lesson that adversity and the support of those you love will strengthen you is the same whether you see that it can help you survive a harsh word, or survive a magic-woo-woo burst of lightning and flame.

And if, as in the case of Avatar, the two lessons are seamlessly paired ... well, maybe that's building a bridge to teach young children to resonate with the symbols in stories all around them.

Or maybe it's just keeping them entertained with spectacular drama, while it subtly acquaints them with some of the hardest questions in life.  I'm fine with that too.

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Television and ads

After some hesitation, I've accepted the blogad that you'll see on the side of this post, from something called the Smart Television Alliance.  According to their website, it's a coalition of nonprofits "united by a shared commitment to improving what our nation's children see on television." That sounds like a decent goal.  So why the hesitation?

Well, the site does have some useful information, although I think they're out of their minds in suggesting that Harry Potter might be appropriate for the 3-6 year old crowd.  But my main concern is that the site is also an ad in disguise, for TiVo, which is sponsoring the alliance.  I generally dislike ads that are pretending to be something else.  But, that said, I do believe that TiVo is a terrific tool for parents who want to control what their kids watch, and have so said so repeatedly on this site in the past.  It lets us zap out commercials, it lets us show kid-friendly fare at times of our choice, and it lets us save the kid-inappropriate stuff for when they're safe in bed.

Coming from our little ad-free world, it was a real shock to be visiting my parents Columbus Day weekend and to encounter all the commercials in the baseball games.  (Although merseydotes says it's better than the football games.)  Since D doesn't see commercials all the time, he was fascinated by them.  I kept on reminding him that they were ads by asking him what they were selling.  (Best answer, in response to a Marine recruiting ad, "uh... war?")

In related news, I just got a copy of Lisa Guernsey's new book on tv and kids, Into the Minds of Babes.  Review coming when I get a chance.

Solicited reviews

I've got a backlog of solicited reviews, so here's a bunch of bullets about various things that I've been sent recently:

• The good folks at PBS Kids sent me a DVD of their new educational show, coming this fall, Word World.  The learning gimmick is that key words are spelled out, and then the letters transform into the thing itself.  The site says it's aimed at 3-5 year olds; I think my 3 1/2 year old has already mastered the idea that letters make words that represent things.  But both N and D watched it eagerly, and thought it was very funny.  I asked them whether they liked it more or less than Between the Lions (which is aimed at 4-7 year olds), and they said they liked it more.  N said "it wasn't scary."
• Yamaha sent me the Konga drum from their new "real rhythm" line.  I rolled my eyes a little at the literature they sent me about how important drumming is to brain development, but it's a nice drum.  (I do think music is important to kids, but they can make it with a jar full of beans as well as with a fancy drum.) I know my parents spent quite a while looking for a solid kid's drum when D was a toddler (without a stick, so he couldn't put anyone's eye out) and this one is nicer than anything that was available at the time.  And it's got a shoulder strap, so you can march around the house with it.
• I got a CD of a new release -- Lullaby Appetite, by Alexa Wilkinson.  If you're wondering what the title means, so did I.  And having listened to the title track a couple of times, I still don't know.  So, I'll send the disk to the reader with the best (as judged by me) explanation.  Overall, I found the lyrics on this album evocative but not quite meaningful.  But the music is catchy and Wilkinson's voice is fine.
• Usually publishers email me and ask if I want a review copy, but Friends and Mothers, by Louise Limerick, just showed up on my doorstep.  It's mommy-lit, Australian style.  I read the first few chapters, and thought they were ok, but put it down in the middle and felt no compulsion to pick it up again.  But Flea read it, and she's pretty positive about it, so I might give it another try.

Dora and Mickey

The NY Times had an article this week (written by a friend of mine, as it happens) on how young children learn from television.  In particular, the article discusses a study that found that the more that children interacted with the television characters -- Blue's Clues is cited as particularly well-designed -- the more they learned.

On vacation last week, I heard N shouting as he tried to open the heavy sliding door on our rental house.  It took me a minute to figure out that he was saying "Abre!" just like on Dora the Explorer.  He also loves to make a gate across the entry to our kitchen with his body, and make us do knock knock jokes before he'll open.  So, yes, I'm sure he's learning from television.  But I still cringe when we go to the bookstore and he shouts with his enthusiasm about finding books with Dora and Boots.  Why don't you paint a scarlet "TV" on me while you're at it, kid?

In spite of the bad rap that TV gets, I'm not convinced it's bad for small children as long as it doesn't replace reading.  A report came across my desk today about mother-toddler bookreading in low-income families which confirmed that reading to kids promotes language development.  As the abstract of the study says, "Path analyses show reciprocal and snowballing relations between maternal bookreading and children's vocabulary."

One minor finding of the study is that moms are more likely to read to their first-born children than to later ones.  That should not come as a surprise to anyone who has more than one child.  I'm sure that younger children are also exposed to more television, and in particular, more non-educational television (e.g. D sure wasn't watching KimPossible when he was 2).  I wonder if there's a way to use that fact to improve research on the effects of TV on child development -- most current research is flawed because it can't distinguish between the effects of TV on children and the effects of having parents who allow or don't allow lots of TV watching.

I'm not worried about N in any case.  We've been reading a lot of In the Night Kitchen lately, and he's been walking around reciting long passages from it.  He particularly likes "I'm not the milk, and the milk's not me.  I'm Mickey!"  Except that sometimes he says it as "I'm not the milk, and the milk's not me.  I'm N---!"   or "I'm not the milk, and the milk's not me.  I'm D---!"  and then he sneaks a peek over at D to wait for his reaction. 

Turn on the power!

I'm tired, fighting off a cold, and depressed by the passage of the so-called "Deficit Reduction Act" (somehow I don't think they're going to call the tax cut bill the Deficit Expansion Act).  I suppose we could claim a moral victory that it only passed by a single vote, and that with a fair amount of arm twisting, but that doesn't strike me as much comfort for the families getting kicked off of Medicaid.

So, here's a bit of total fluff:

I got an email last week letting me know that a 4-DVD set of the Electric Company is being released next week, and offering me a review copy.  I accepted with enthusiasm, having fond, but vague, memories of it from my childhood.  As far as I can tell, it hasn't been available until now, so I'm looking forward to seeing whether it stands up to the test of time -- and whether my kids like it.  I'll post a review when I get it, but if you know you want it, you can preorder it from Amazon.  (And yes, my husband and I are totally in the target demographic for this -- we already have the complete Schoolhouse Rock.)

Update:

1) Dawn at this woman's work has a much more thought out post about the Electric Company. 

2)  My review copy came today and we watched the first two episodes this evening.  D watched with enthusiasm, and asked for more when the first episode ended.  I'm surprised at how little my memory was jogged.  I don't know if they ran reruns -- if not, it's quite likely that I only saw the later episodes.  (Without giving away my exact age, I will say that the compilation includes the episode that was run on the day I was born.)

3)  It's quite fascinating comparing The Electric Company with its modern counterpart, Between the Lions.  Some parts of BtL (Sam Spud, Cliff Hanger) seem to be direct riffs off of ideas from TEC.  The big difference is that each episode of BtL is organized around a story as well as as a phonic element.  It seems that TEC was more of a true variety show, with no real plot. 

Presidents, television and real life

So, I finally got the chance to watch the premiere of Commander in Chief that I recorded last week.  (And yes, I am inordinately proud of having finally figured out how to program a recording using the tv-input card in my computer, since it was scheduled against the new Amazing Race.)  Not planning on watching it again.

Overall the show mostly served as an excellent illustration of Anna Fels' point about how societally unacceptable it is for women to admit to ambition.  The scenario they spin is that Allen was invited to be VP out of pure tokenism, and everyone knows this, and expects her to step down when the President is incapacitated because her politics and the President's don't match.  Well, Kennedy and Johnson didn't exactly see eye to eye on many issues, but no one ever suggested to LBJ that he not take up the post.  But Allen isn't even offended that everyone sees her as a token, because she knows she is one.  Not exactly the role model I'm looking for.

Back in the real world, I wish I could summon up more enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.  I do think she's running, even though she's not saying so yet.  After eight years of Bill's triangulation strategy, and her (appropriate) focus on NY-specific concerns as a Senator, I don't know what she stands for anymore.  And I've never heard her take any ownership of the fiasco that was her health care reform plan, or to discuss what lessons she learned from that experience.

I read last month that Gov. Mark Warner has officially said that he's not going to run against George Allen for Senate, which leads some people to conclude that he's running for President.  I think that's a mistake.  I think he's been a decent Governor, but he doesn't have any signature accomplishments to point to, and no one outside of Virginia has ever heard of him.  And Allen is an awful Senator, but the Democratic party doesn't seem to have anyone else to run against him.  (Yes, it's an election year in Viriginia this year.  I haven't been writing much about the race because it doesn't really excite me that much.  I wish I could summon the enthusiasm about any of the Virginia candidates that my friend Kevin has for Mfume and O'Malley in Maryland.)

John Edwards is clearly running, and he's saying a lot of things that I agree with.  But the potential candidate who makes my heart beat faster is Barack Obama.  But is he running?   He was just elected to the Senate last year, and after the election, seemed to close that door pretty strongly, saying:

"So look, I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I'm the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois."

But, as Eric Zorn argued back in January, political windows like Obama's don't stay open forever, and he might want to move while everyone still remembers his convention speech.  And getting down and dirty on Daily Kos strikes me as the actions of someone who is thinking larger than re-election.  (He has podcasts on his website too.)

I know, the election is still over 3 years away.  But it's fun to speculate.

Three-Toed Sloths

D is on a big three-toed sloth kick lately.  Whenever we go to the playground, he has to hang upside down on one of the curved ladders, just like a three-toed sloth.  For a while he was saying he wanted to be a three-toed sloth for Halloween, but I think we've talked him out of it.  (T is officially in charge of costuming in this household, so it's not my problem in any case.)  And we've consumed the full extent of the library's juvenile sloth section (Carle's Slowly Slowly Slowly Said the Sloth and Robinson's The Upside Down Sloth).

Those of you who don't have preschoolers (or whose preschoolers don't watch TV) are probably scratching your heads wondering where on earth D got a thing for three-toed sloths.   Those of you with munchkins probably know that Dora's cousin Diego is responsible.  D thinks Diego is "awesome."

The ability to pursue enthusiasms like this, rather than staying doggedly on a fixed curriculum, racing against time to cover all the material that will be on a standardized test, is the strongest argument I've heard for homeschooling.  But, for a variety of reasons, we're not really considering going that route any time soon.  I'm hopeful that there will be enough non-school time to provide the boys with the opportunities to follow their interests.

Last month, the Center for American Progress and the Institute for America's Future issued a report on how to improve public schools.  Their first recommendation is to increase the length of both the school day and the school year, as well as to make better use of in-school time.  I have extremely mixed reactions to such a proposal.  I'm afraid my basic response is that it's a good idea -- for other people's kids.  In particular, it's clear that one of the reasons that KIPP and similar schools have had such success with disadvantaged populations is that the students spend so much more time in school than their counterparts.

But for my own kids, I think I'd be reluctant to give over even more of their lives to formal schooling.  I think they need time to run around the playground like lunatics, time to read books with no literary merit, time to bake cookies, and yes, time to learn about three-toed sloths.

30 days to a better you

So last night, I watched FX's new reality show 30 Days.  It's produced by Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, and the idea is that each show is about someone immersing themself in a different way of life for, you guessed it, 30 days.  In the opening episode Morgan and his girlfriend, Alex, try to live for a month on what they can earn in low-wage jobs (the show says minimum wage, but Morgan at least earns a bit more).

The show wasn't profound but I think it did a decent job of showing some of the hardships that low-income families face, the tradeoffs they have to make, and the ways that even a small splurge (like going out to dinner) or setback (needing to take a taxi because the buses stopped running) could make a big difference to the bottom line.  And the comments on the US health care system -- how you can walk into an ER and be treated if you're sick, but preventive care is hard to get -- were totally on line.  The only thing that I think was unrealistic was that they both went to the doctor when they felt sick; most low-wage workers wouldn't go to the ER for a sore wrist unless the bone was sticking out through their skin, and I'd guess that most would have let the UTI Alex got run its course for a few days to see if it would go away on its own before seeking medical treatment. 

And then at the very end, in wapping up, Morgan said something like "this experience has made me a better person."  I was curious as to what he meant by that.  I'm not in the school of thought that holds that poverty and suffering are inherently ennobling.  And while he certainly knows more than he did before about what it's like to be poor, I don't think that necessarily makes him a better person.  (I don't think that I'm a better person than I was before I did my own one month experiment of living under the Thrifty Food Plan; less ignorant, but not a better human being.)

Turns out Spurlock has a blog, and he amplifies the comment a bit there:

Meeting people who are struggling everyday just to survive made me see that I myself didn't do enough to help those around me. Since then, I have done more to volunteer, to reach out, to give a "hand up."

I don't think that's quite accurate.  I think it was the combination of meeting the people in great need and meeting the people at the Free Store, who gave him and Alex furniture, and made doing more feel possible.

Pop culture, family values, and politics

Via 11d, I found this interesting debate between Amy Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias about whether it's appropriate for politicians -- especially liberal politicians -- to speak out about the ways that pop culture coarsens our society and presents constant challenges to those of us trying to raise children.

The posts are worth reading in full, but the key statement of Yglesias' position is "liberals are characterized by the belief that the state shouldn't have substantive views about these things."  Given that, he believes that it is pure pandering for politicians who oppose censorship to use their position to criticize movies and television.  He writes:

"If Dan Gerstein wants to write op-eds decrying Friends then let's have at it. Friends is not above criticism. But Joe Lieberman shouldn't be doing this. If he wants to be a movie critic, or a rabbi, or whatever he should leave the Senate and let someone else write the laws."

As several of the commenters on his post point out, however, citizens look for politicians to do much more than pass laws.  We vote for candidates who seem to understand us and our problems, who invoke the aspects of America that we care about.  As much as Clinton's "I feel your pain" has become a cliche, it worked.  And he was the master of proposing microprograms that didn't cost a whole lot of money, didn't do very much good, but sent the message that the government cared.

As Sullivan responds:

"I think that acknowledging the concerns of many Americans--even if you can't fix them with a policy--is sometimes just the obvious and right thing to do, and shouldn't always be given the perjorative label of pandering....sometimes it's not about policies. It's about proving that you're not hopelessly out of touch with the real anxieties and concerns of many Americans."

I'd also like to see more people -- politicians, sure, but also clergy, athletes, bloggers -- helping people come together to develop ways to resist the onslaught.  Because there really is an onslaught.  I've written about the impact of advertising on my kids, and it's only going to get much much worse as they get older.

NewDonkey writes:

"It's not just about sex and violence; it's also about consumerism, fashion-and brand-consciousness, and a generally superficial approach to life.... Matt is simply wrong to assume this is all about some "New Prudishness." As a parent of a teenager, I am not that worried that the ever-present marketers will turn him into a sex-addict or a sociopath; I'm more worried that he will turn into a total greedhead whose idea of the good life is stuff, and whose idea of citizenship is to demand a better personal cost-benefit ratio on his tax dollars."

It's not enough to just say "turn off the TV."  It's everywhere.  My son watches very little television at home, and we TiVo out the commercials.  But when we go to the doctor's office, there are TVs in the waiting room, and when we go to the bookstore, the Dora books have ads for video games in the back.  And then there's the matter of the other kids at school, as well as in the neighborhood.

As Jen commented on 11d, we're seeing more and more parents -- secular liberals as well as religous conservatives -- feeling like the media is contrary to their values, and pulling the plug.   We're also seeing more homeschooling for much the same reasons.  But the culture is pervasive and -- unless we decide to become Amish -- our children will eventually be exposed to it.  We can't raise them in a bubble, even if we wanted to.

When I posted this week about D's case of the "I wants,"  Parke commented:

"We also spend a lot of time in a church community with lots of other parents who are raising children in a similar way, so our children have many friends who also don't get all the toys they want."

I don't feel like I have such a community -- and I think many people don't believe that such a community is possible.  I think that there's a power to talking about these issues in a way that makes people feel like they do have some control, rather than making them feel helpless and cynical.  The only people talking about this are the religious conservatives, and I don't want to live in their community either.

I like what Anne wrote about this topic, although I'm not sure I entirely understand what she means:

"I became enamored with [the idea] a couple years ago, that to raise a family effectively today you must act counterculturally. That never fit quite right because I am too much a creature of our culture to turn my back on it entirely.... Instead, I can put myself and my family not against the culture, as 'counterculture' demands, but orthogonal (perpendicular in every dimension) to culture."

Advertising

Yesterday's Washington Post had an article on the front page of the business section about advertising aimed at children, and the not terribly effective group that monitors it.  It's an interesting article, and made me once again grateful that we have TiVo and can fast-forward through all the commercials.

Unfortunately, the article was illustrated with big color pictures of several products that have children's tv and movie characters prominently featured on them. 

So D took one look at the paper, pointed at the box of poptarts with Mr. Incredible on them, and said "I'd like those."

"Do you know what they are?"

"No.  What are they?"

"Why do you think you'd like them?"

"I just do."

"If I put a sticker of Mr. Incredible on these" -- point at the bottle of children's vitamins that I've been trying to convince him to eat -- " would you eat them?"

"No."

"So why do you think you'd like those?  Just because they have Mr. Incredible on them doesn't mean they're good."

"I would like them."

I go into the kitchen and pull out a box of macaroni and cheese with Blue on it from the cupboard.  "Do you remember this?  You really wanted us to get this, because it had Blue on it?  When we made it, did you like it?"

"No."

He returns to the table and the newspaper.  "But I'd like this.  We can go to the store and buy some."

I sigh.  My husband says to me: "This is going right into your blog, isn't it?"

D's a very bright 4-year old.  But he's simply not able to make the logical leaps that I was leading him towards.

Reality TV roundup

I confess, I watched the "liberal lesbian v. conservative Christian" Wife Swap this week.  It was about as painful as I expected it to be.  Shannon at Waiting for Nat sums up everything that was wrong with it in her terrific post "you can't pray a lie" and also notes that Kris Gillespie is running for Texas State Senate.  Yikes. (The idea that being on reality tv is good publicity for running for office is a pretty scary notion in itself.)

That said, I do think the two families actually learned something from eachother, which wasn't the case on the other couple of episodes of the show I'd seen before.  The Gillespies did seem to be more encouraging of their daughter's interest in art, and  Nicki Boone did say she was going to spend more one-on-one time with Lizzie (her version of the "Princess day").

***

I'm bummed that Kris and Jon didn't win The Amazing Race.  But I'd rather have their relationship and no money, than Freddy and Kendra's and the million dollars. 

Supposedly Jonathan and Victoria are going to be on Dr. Phil's primetime special on Tuesday.  I've picked it on the TiVo, but am not sure I'll watch it.  I'm confident that Dr. Phil will give Jonathon the dressing down he so richly deserves.  But I'm not sure I want to spend another minute more of my life paying attention to that creep.

CBS has opened its casting call for Amazing Race 8, which is going to feature teams of four, who have to be "family" (broadly defined).   T. and I have been joking for months about what it would be like to do this with our kids, but they're limiting it to 12 and older.

Max and Ruby jump the shark

The other day I noticed that someone had found my blog by googling for Max and Ruby jump the shark.  I thought this was pretty funny, so I mentioned it to my husband.

Without missing a beat, he said "it's the Easter bunny episode."

Domestic violence

Today the Washington Post has the first in a three-part series about pregnant or newly post-partum mothers who are murdered.  It builds off of the interest in the Laci Peterson murders, and refers to the findings from a study a year or so back that found that homicide was the leading cause of death for pregnant women in Maryland, accounting for more than 20 percent of the deaths of pregnant or recently postpartum women over a six year period.  That's a mindboggling statistic.

While some of these homicides are apparently unrelated to the pregnancy, the majority of them are committed by the soon-to-be-fathers.  The article quote Pat Brown, a criminal profiler, as saying:

"If the woman doesn't want the baby, she can get an abortion. If the guy doesn't want it, he can't do a damn thing about it. He is stuck with a child for the rest of his life, he is stuck with child support for the rest of his life, and he's stuck with that woman for the rest of his life. If she goes away, the problem goes away."

That quote comes across as perhaps more sympathetic to the murderers than Brown intended, but I think the general point is right.  I have no suggestions for solutions.  Giving the fathers the right to force an abortion seems deeply wrong to me.  Allowing them to opt out of paternal rights and child support just screws over the kids.

***

I'm embarassingly addicted to The Amazing Race, but am increasingly disturbed by the abusive relationship being displayed by Jonathan and Victoria.  It's painful to watch.  Maybe I'm giving CBS too much credit, but I assume that the producers didn't see the signs of this when selecting them to participate.  If that's true, I'm not sure what's the right thing to do.  Does showing this behavior on a "reality" show make it seem normal?  Would editing the coverage to de-emphasize it be abetting after the fact?  Should CBS be including links to support groups on the show's website?

What kind of TV show are we?

This month's Blogging for Book's assignment is to "describe in 2,000 words or less why your life would make perfect sitcom."

Ok, here's the pitch:  "It's about a family -- with two boys -- a toddler and a preschooler -- but the twist is that the DAD stays home with them, while the mom works.  And he drives a minivan!"

Are you doubled over with laughter yet?  No?  Oh, I'm not either.  Gee, I guess that unless you find the concept of a father changing a diaper inherently hysterical, my life probably won't make a good sitcom.  Oh well.

So, I've been trying to figure out what sort of TV show my life is:

Blessedly, it's not a soap opera.  No life-threatening illnesses, no affairs, no mistaken identities. Thank you, G-d; if possible, I'd like to keep it that way.

In spite of my sons' best efforts, it's not an opera.  While there's lots of singing, and occasionally bursts of passion (otherwise known as tantrums), there's no build-up to a dramatic peak with the tension resolved in the final act.

It is definitely not a decorating, or house repair show.  All our walls are off-white and when something leaks, we call a plumber.

My husband suggested that it's an old-time serial adventure, with the hero getting into a scrape each week, but always pulling off a daring escape by the end of the episode.  And it's true, our dialogue often sounds like a bad melodrama:

"You must go to sleep."

"But I can't go to sleep."

"But you must go to sleep."

"But I can't go to sleep"

"But you must go to sleep."

"I'll go to sleep."

"My hero!"

However, I've decided that it's really a science show, something that might run on the Discovery Channel late at night.  One day we learn what happens to milk that has been left at room temperature in a sippy cup for two week, the next day we discuss where pee-pee comes from.  We learn some biology, some physics (our youngest cast member is engaged in an extensive exploration of gravity and its effects on everything from his breakfast to Daddy's keyboard), a little meteorology. The budget may be low, the effects cheesy, but we're all learning together and having a good time.

On the lighter side

Taking a break from the heavy-duty election-related posts, I have to ask: what's up with ER?  In particular, what's their issue with reverse traditional (working mom/SAHD) families?

First, in the season premier, they have a baby suffering from botulism, having been fed honey by his clueless SAH father.  When the bitchy working mom learns this, she screams at him for not having read the book.  He responds something like "which book, you gave me 10."

Two weeks later, Susan is asking for the promotion to chief of emergency medicine (which she had previously turned down), because she needs the raise in order to make up for the lost income from her husband, who is going to be a stay-at-home dad.  Within five minutes, she's asking whether some of her troubles are "punishment for being a bad mother."  What-the-*&^(?  Not loving being home full-time and returning to work makes her a "bad mother"?  Good grief.  Plus, as the fine folks at Television Without Pity point out, we've previously seen Susan being a darn fine mother -- not to her baby, but to her niece, little Suzie, the one she parented when sis was a druggie, and moved to Arizona to be closer to.

I don't know why I care -- this show has clearly jumped the shark -- if not years ago, certainly at the start of the season when they actually had a shark in the show.  The main problem with it is what my husband refers to as "Chris Claremont Syndrome" -- when you run out of plot ideas, inflict something horrible on one of your characters.  But I'm still not quite willing to give up on it.

(In case anyone's wondering why I'm just posting this now, I'm just getting around to catching up on everything that's piled up on my TiVo.  As far as I'm concerned, TiVo is up there on my list of the top 10 best things ever invented for busy parents.  You never have to watch anything that's inappropriate for kids when they're up; you can watch Blue's Clues and Max and Ruby at any time of day; you can fast-forward through all the commercials; you don't miss any of your show when you're interrupted; and you never watch dreck just because there's nothing else on.)

Bad Joke Day

On an email list I used to be on, the rule was that you could only forward jokes to the list on Fridays -- "bad joke day." This email I received from a parenting list qualifies in my book:

Are your kids OUT OF CONTROL?
If so, GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK and contact NANNY 911!

FOX and Granada USA are looking for families that have a child or children who are out of control for the upcoming new unscripted series NANNY 911. Our "Nanny Specialists" will come to your home, assess the situation, and work their incredible "Mary Poppins"-like magic to transform your terrible tykes into perfect angels. To take part in this fun, family TV show, applicants must be legal residents of the U.S. with children between 2 and 9 years of age.

Oh fer cripes sake. That's just what your messed up kids need -- to be on a reality TV show.

*************

My weekend plans include installing XP SP2 onto my computer. If I don't post again for a while, you'll know why.