The Spoils of War

“What fresh hell is this?” quoth Dorothy Parker when the telephone rang.  The same can be said about television.

 

 Rainbow skittles kidz , title of song is ‘First Time’ . Gawd. Many of the songs they do are not kid-appropriate- see further down the link to the one “party like a rock star’ with the rapper and dancing white girls.

Say you have laryngitis and are running a fever,coughing up yuk. You’ve done your asthma inhaler/codeine syrup speedball , taken the aspirin/motrin/throat lozenges/whatever  and are even starting to resent old people for making diapers uncool, because in this vaguely hallucinotory state you really don’t want to think about having to even walk to the loo after imbibing the volunimous amounts of liquids you were told to drink. You can’t talk on the phone, you can’t even yell at your kids- one brings a cool towel for your head. You realize you must look and sound really bad for your kids to be this nice and. There’s no relief  from the gross, sweaty-fever feeling from opening the door or window as it is 80+ outside. You become fascinated with checking out the far reaches of the only 1.00 a month extra low-rent cable system, and just when you think you may have ascended just one stair above you were previously, you come crashing down into the furrowed metal escalator, your hair about to be pulled down into the machine….

You have entered the Evil Realm of KidZ Bop.

This kidz bop crap is usually advertised on TV during kid’s shows, buy the record type stuff featuring hand-picked multi-culti quilts of kids cavorting through the landscape whilst some premade mix of kid version of Laurence Welk  chorus chants along . OK, bad enough, right? Uh, no. Check out what this little wannabe broadway singer does to Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’. 

http://www.kidzbop.com./video/player/4122

Someone should video capture this next one- I looked for it on You Tube and couldn’t find this particular version, which features these three young teenish white girls as back up dancers AKA ‘flygirls’ to this little ghetto-thug in training. After looking on you tube, I found out there that the KB version ‘cleaned up” the words, but kids watching this type of video will pick up messages that are visual and have nothing to do with dirty lyrics that people are oh-so-worried about, which makes me think the messages conveyed and the subtexts conatined therein, like “oh look, there’s a black rapper teenager with some cheerleadery blonde teenage chicks dancing. Well, that must be diversity, right?  And diversity is always mentioned in a good context – so this must be a good thing too” -that is one message. Maybe another is “hey if you are a happenin rap star, you can get young hot white girls!”- Still another might be “if you are an in-shape white teen girl who isn’t all uptight, you might get picked to be involved in some way with some black rapper dude. Wowwww..”  These are just some of the ideas being put across in this KB nonsense- unless of course you are an EvilNaziRacistHater- who is anyone who doesn’t see this scene of the ghetto-thuggish black kid with the 3 prancing 14 white girls absolutely wonderful and healthy entertainment.

‘Party like a Rock Star’  The ‘clean’ version. No real kids will ever look up the real song if they watch this.Not that they’d need to, everything that needs to get across to them is evident in the video, available on cable TV in the ‘kids’ section.

http://www.kidzbop.com./video/player/11395

There are many creepy things about this kidz bop made-up TV kid-culture, where I have yet to see any parents or even teachers- no authority figures, only more and more buddies and pals- no on in charge, no one to watch out for them- but it is portrayed as a No-Parent Paradise or Parents-as-Peripheral-Accessories- as do many of the shows on TV on the kid channels. See the ads for this stuff and people think, “OK, annoying , possibly grating, but harmless fun, right?” Wrong. POINT this out to your kids. Tell them “do you see what they are trying to promote here?” “What  do you see in this show? Do you see parents? What do you think about the way those kids are dancing? Do you think that is normal? If you had a daughter, would you want her to do that? ”  Ask them questions that will make them think and lead them to their own conclusions abotu the utter worthlessness of much electronic ‘entertainment’ for children.

Do not let the television subvert what you try to teach them. Yes, keeping them away from it is good, but it is so prevalent they are bound to come upon some part of it- therefore it may be good to approach it head-on, rather than just say “Oh, we don’t let them watch TV.” It is better to put your own ‘chip’ in their brain so they can heuristically recognize it when they see it, and reject it, like an anti-virus program does. Teach them about the ways language is used to make dangerous, bad stuff look noble and fun. Teach them to stop and think and not be afraid to be the person who speaks up and says “this is garbage, give us real books.”  No one wants to be the dissenter, no one wants to be the one not enjoying the party in general, but you can teach them to take pride, not shame in rejecting inaccurate memes perpetrated upon them by the Hydra that is media, education, etc. The little light of recognition will come on within them, as their eyes become more and more clear. Yes, they will be able to confront this  poison and even if at first they look at it neutrally, they will quickly  come to see it for what it is, a manipulation , a twisting of what is real and good.