I was reading msn today, and I saw an article about some woman who thinks the media is inflicting itself on her kids. Selected quotes are in italics. This article was amazing. First, she describes going to McDonald's to get her toddler a Happy Meal and being asked if she wanted a Hello Kitty or Beast Machines toy. Of course, this caused her to get all offended. They didn't give her the toy, they just asked her if she wanted it. I mean, it's a simple solution, just go "uh, no, I don't want the Beast Machines toy." But it gets better. The exact line is When I ordered a Happy Meal for my son Austin, the voice from the speaker asked, "Do you want the toy to be Hello Kitty or Beast Machines?" That's right, this was over a drive thru, and she's upset because some kid at McDonald's didn't know that the kid sitting in the car, on the other side of the wall, was a toddler who might be too young to appreciate Beast Machines. Well! I can only hope that the slackers at McDonald's start using their X-Ray vision to make sure there aren't toddlers in the car the next time they offer them a toy.
By the way,t he kid is scared by an Elmo movie (and it wasn't even A Nightmare on Elmo Street, hehe), so maybe the kid behind the McDonald's counter should ask parents if their kids are little wusses too.
We think little boys are cute in their Spider-Man and Batman capes. OK, first off, since when did Spider-Man have a frickin' cape? Secondly, I can see why you wouldn't want a young kid to get into Batman, what with evil disfiigured psychotic clown serial killers (but she has no problem taking him to McDonald's, which has that evil Ronald, so she's obviously a hypocrite), but describing Spider-Man as an "incredibly violent show" seems a bit overboard. I mean, Spidey rarely kills anyone in the comic books (and then it's usually by accident), but I don't recall anyone dying in the cartoon (I assume she's talking about the Spider-Man cartoon, because if she got this worked up over the old reruns of that dorky live action show, then she's got serious mental problems).
But it's not just transforming robot animals and four-color superheroes who are a threat, according to this article. Even Fisher Price freaks the author out! The Great Adventures playset for example, is described as coming with accompanying figures holding weapons that looked straight out of the bloody movie "Braveheart." Yeah, I gotta say, that scene where Mel Gibson had half his face painted blue, and he and the other Scotsmen charged the British with their large blunted plastic axes. And their rescue heroes dolls each held some evil-looking "tool" that looked suspiciously like a G-U-N. Just a little note here, but I have yet to hear a coherent argument from someone who uses that stupid "this word is so upsetting, I'm just gonna spell it out instead of saying it" schtick. She then pointed out that her kid used the fireman doll's firehose as a toy gun. And that's the toy's fault? Gee, I hope she doesn't give her kid a toy wrench set, a protracter, a coathanger, a flashlight, a drink bottle, or a stick, becuase all of those can be used as toy guns too. I guess her son should be thankful that she didn't think to cut his fingers off (which are the number one object used to pretend one has a gun).
And if the toys don't come with stuff that maybe in bad light could look sorta like a gun, they're just being too moody. She goes on about how this one silver fast food meal action figure had a scowl on it's face. This is apparently a bad influence because it promotes aggression, but if all the toys had smiles on their faces, that would promote overt perkiness, and I for one don't think that would be a good thing. Besides, I don't recall ever hearing of anyone getting scowled to death.
And the kids aren't wearing their Spider-Man capes (and Batman webshooters, too!) or having their paramedic use his MediGun Death Syringe Ray to smite the evil Silver Scowler, they're watchign Disney movies and emulating effeminate British tigers. Now, I do think that Disney is evil (not the movies, they're just stupid. But the corporation itself is evil), but if your kid is emulating Scar at school, you shouldn't be worried about him growing up to be evil. You should be worried about the fact that you'll never have grandchildren.
But his line here is the best one from the whole article: Austin can’t handle villains or any tense moments at all. He went into hysterics when Shadow on "Bear in the Big Blue House" told the tale of the monkeys jumping on the bed, the ones who fell off and bumped their heads. It took us hours to get him calmed down.
Think about that for a second. This kid got so freaked out by a monkey falling off a bed, that he was screaming and crying in total fear for hours. I think I see his problem. You know how when Europeans came to the New World, the diseases which were so casual to them killed so many Native Americans because they never developed an immunity to them? Well, there's a similar principle at work here. If you whine about the media and try to make the media totally kidsafe and totally insulate your kid, he becomes a total wuss who goes nuts when he hears about a monkey getting a concussion (don't feel too bad, it was just Peter Tork). Of course, the kid may have reason to be afraid. I mean, if the monkey had ebola, and his blood splattered on you after he fell off the bed, then you'd have ebola too. And Dustin Hoffman isn't going to save you in real life, because Dustin Hoffman doesn't give a rat's ass about you. In fact, he hates you, and is planning on killing you with the giant plastic axe he borrowed from Mel Gibson, so watch out.

Well, that article gave me a good laugh. Sure, it wasn't as funny as South park, but then, maybe this woman will put some fart jokes in her next article. Well, probably not, but one can hope. As a little bonus, so I checked out the website of those tireless champions of prigishness, the PTC.
The shows they suggest we watch are listed below. I compared their picks with my own tastes. I'm giving every show I like a point, so each list will be measured on a scale of 0 to 10. Before you support censorship, see how they match up to your tastes. I'm sure if you're on the Net, looking at my site, you like at least 3 of the shows on their "bad list"