( 9:49 AM )
I have quite the extensive video (and burgeoning DVD) collection, including a lot of animation, which comes in handy on occassion while trying to entertain my son while I'm trying to get something done. Sure, for the most part, he just wants to watch the same things over and over again -- currently, we must watch "Monsters, Inc." at least once a day -- but sometimes you can slip in some variety. Well, the other day I plopped in a non-politically correct tape that has caused me to wonder about my parenting.
The offending video? One of my older Warner Bros. titles featuring a group of Speedy Gonzales cartoons. When I was a kid, outside of the best Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck shorts -- which let's face it are some of the best cartoons ever produced -- one of my favorite Looney Tunes characters was Speedy Gonzales. Not for any other reason than the shorts were funny ("I can get Speedy Gonzales...he's friends with my sister." "Speedy Gonzales is friends with everybody's sister.").
Now, I've had Hispanic friends that find Speedy Gonzales offensive, with his poor, sometimes drunken friends, always with Mel Blanc's goofy Mexican accent. That's in large part why my former company, Warner Bros., now downplays the character. On my Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs there's exactly one Speedy cartoon.
Of course, I've had other Hispanic friends that liked Speedy when they were kids and didn't see what the big deal was.
So, there's the dilemma...by showing my young son cartoons from a different era that might potentially be offensive to someone now, am I failing him as a father? Or am I simply teaching him that cartoons about fictional Mexican mice are funny? It's always hard to know these things in this day and age.
I did notice some things while watching the cartoons. One, whoever was in charge of Speedy Gonzales at Warner Bros. was apparently a big fan of John Steinbeck. There's title references -- "Cannery Woe" & "Tortilla Flaps" -- as well as appearances in the first Speedy short by characters based on Lenny and George from "Of Mice and Men."
It also made me wonder how many drunken trips to Tijuana were embarked upon by denizens of the renowned Termite Terrace, home of the Warner animators, and which one actually inspired the Speedy Gonzales character.
Lastly, I was left wondering who decided to coin the phrase "Holy frijoles!" It seems like the sort of thing Blanc might have come up with while doing the voices. In any case, you've got to admit that it's a pretty good exclamation. I don't know if I could actually get away with using it in my daily life, but still it's pretty snappy.
In any case, I'm going to put on some Droopy cartoons for my son now. I think it's about time he saw the one with Droopy as a deputy fighting off two would-be robbers who are afraid to wake up the sheriff by trying to force them to make noise...and of course they keep running up onto a hill to scream in pain, burp, laugh, etc. Now that's comedy. Hopefully, I won't run into any moral dilemmas.
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( 10:44 AM )
This is the most chilling story that I've read in a long time. What it says about our educational system and the general public's indifference to the personal freedoms that we enjoy in this country is frightening. The below was taken from the release by the John S. and James L. Knight foundation:
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new national study, the largest of its kind, says America’s high schools are leaving the First Amendment behind.
In particular, educators are failing to give high school students an appreciation of the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and a free press, say researchers from the University of Connecticut, who questioned more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers, and more than 500 administrators and principals.
The two-year, $1 million research project, titled “The Future of the First Amendment,” was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The survey suggests that First Amendment rights – freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances – would be universally known if they were classroom staples.
“High school attitudes about the First Amendment are important because each generation of citizens helps define what freedom means in our society,” the report reads.
Among its findings:
* Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted.
* Seventy-five percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal.
* Half believe the government can censor the Internet.
* More than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.
“These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous,” said Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter III. “Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.”
In addition, the more students are exposed to the First Amendment and use the news media in the classroom, and the more involved they are in student journalism, the greater their appreciation of First Amendment rights.
Among those students who have taken courses dealing with the media or the First Amendment, for example, 87 percent believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. Among students who have not taken such courses, however, the number fell to 68 percent.
Though student journalists are the savviest among all high school students on the First Amendment, a quarter of U.S. schools do not even offer media programs to students.
“The last 15 years have not been a golden era for student media,” said Warren Watson, director of the J-Ideas project at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. “Programs are under siege or dying from neglect. Many students do not get the opportunity to practice our basic freedoms.”
Nearly all principals surveyed agreed students should learn about journalism, but said financial constraints block the expansion of media programs.
The Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut was commissioned by Knight Foundation to conduct this study of students, faculty and administrators at 544 high schools across the country. Dr. David Yalof and Dr. Kenneth Dautrich of the University of Connecticut conducted the research.
“Civic education is crucial to developing well-informed and responsible citizens,” said Dautrich, chairman of the university’s Department of Public Policy. “By surveying students across the country as to their awareness and appreciation of First Amendment rights, Knight Foundation has provided a timely window into this important and often overlooked aspect of the educational process.”
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If that doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, well, then frankly you scare me as well. It makes you wonder just how inept our teachers are at conveying the far reaching impact of the Consititution and how poorly run our schools are. (Don't come back to me with the underfunding issue. Sure there could be money spent on education that's being spent on chum and brother-in-law contracts in government budgets, but most school systems are also horribly mismanaged.)
It also makes you wonder about school's English Lit. classes. Doesn't anyone read "1984" or "Farenheit 451" anymore?
There's little in the Constitution that I, personally, find more vital than the First Amendment. It goes to the heart of what our founding fathers were fighting for, freedom from government intervention in personal issues like religion and speech. Many of the people that settled this country -- the ones not looking for their fortune -- came because they were being censured by their home government on one of those issues. It's that freedom that set the United States apart and gave rise to the independent American spirit.
Before too long -- and we're already seeing it in some ways -- the complacency of this country's citizenry is going to allow the government to retract some of the rights that we've always considered our birthright. From this study and others like it, the likelihood seems to be that no one will notice until it's too late.
If it happens, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. How many people, particularly after 9/11/01, said that they would trade freedoms for security? How many of us stood up to shout down that completely un-American idea? After all, it was one of this country's founders, Benjamin Franklin, that said, "Those who would trade certain freedoms for an uncertain security, deserve neither freedom nor security."
While I retain my belief that everyone can make a difference, some days it's hard not to feel like we're all going to hell in a handbasket.
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( 9:49 AM )
So, a week and a half ago, on Sunday, my two-year-old son Dean fractured his arm, apparently falling off of our bed while playing and watching a video. Of course, I had left the room to talk to Annette so neither of us saw it happen.
Then when we went to Urgent Care to have his arm looked at, they told us that the type of fracture it was wasn't consistent with falling off of a bed but is consistent with child abuse and that they had to call Child Services. So they kept us there an extra two hours -- pregnant woman and 2-year-old in pain -- until a social worker could come interview us. Even though there were no other marks on Dean, no doctor looked at him -- it was a physician's assistant -- and the 25-year-old social worker couldn't come up with a reason not to believe us, he still felt that he needed to do an in-home visit because the "doctors" there were still saying it could be child abuse. He did let us take Dean home with us though.
Needless to say we were more than a little upset.
The next day we went to see the orthopedist that they had called for a consult -- and who had been told of the likelihood that this was child abuse. He took fresh x-rays, took one look at them and called the social worker while we were sitting there to tell the guy that the Urgent Care people had misdiagnosed the kind of fracture it was and that what he was looking at was completely consistent with a kid falling off a bed and landing on his arm. There was a momentary pause while he listened to the social worker and then he said, "Yeah, well I'm the head of trauma at this hospital and there's no way in hell that this happened from child abuse."
So, while we still have a sad looking toddler going around trying to figure out how to climb up on things with only one arm, we at least don't have to deal with people intimating that we hurt our child...which is good.
Unfortunately, thanks to my son's impeccable timing, I missed almost all of the NFC Championship game featuring my beloved Philadelphia Eagles. At least they won the game and made it to the Super Bowl, meaning that I've gotten to read 20 or so articles a day for the last two weeks on them.
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