• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 28, 2004

A recent press report revealed that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (and other fine representatives of The People) want to spend 90 million tax dollars over the next five years to study "the role of digital, analog and print media on 'cognitive, social, emotional, physical and behavioral' development of children from infants through adolescents."

While society in general, and Mrs. Clinton in particular, might better benefit from a study of oral sex on the 'cognitive, social, emotional, physical and behavioral' development of White House interns, I have to figure Chelsea Clinton got hold of some 50¢ CDs and has been threatening to "bitch-slap my wanksta haps if she doan stop axing me to clean up my crib."

Since I have kids, I can compress what can be learned in a five year study into the next five minutes, and I will save the country $90 million. Enough to build a couple of elementary schools, a tailfin for an F-18, or perhaps cover most of your gas costs when you drive to San Francisco and back this summer.

Media exposure starts early. A number of prospective parents play classical music so that developing fetuses can prepare for their GMATs, but new evidence suggests this only contributes to the adolescent perspective that anything not featuring Hillary Duff is "church music."

While television was clearly invented as a platform to sell cars, toilet paper and cough medicine, it in fact has evolved into the perfect baby sitter, because like viewers of the WB have shown, kids will watch anything on TV no matter how mindless. And until they are old enough to argue over whose turn it is to pick the channel, kids will sit stonefaced affixed to the front of a TV like Children of the Damned about to brain freeze another adult with those relentless blue stares.

You will know your child has been fully compromised by TV when he 1) starts singing the happy family song 2) starts asking for overly-sugared cereals by brand name 3) and tells you how much toys cost and if they need batteries.

Little kids are perfectly happy listen to salsa music on the car radio, but only because they are biding their time for when they can reach the preset buttons, after which you- even thought you paid for the car- no longer have a say in what music it features.

Parents who figure to jumpstart the education process with computer-based games where saccharinely cute animals teach phonics and basic math, will soon discover that it is more fun to randomly bang on the keyboard than it is to figure out which hole the bunny is hiding it. It all ends badly with Grand Theft Auto.

Young children learn to fear the newspaper because it has too many words and they are afraid they will catch the disease that causes their father to slam down the paper bellowing, "Those goddamned Red Sox..."

There are lots of magazines just for young kids, but since they come into the house as a by-product of elementary-school-fund-raising extortion, children strongly prefer to sell them rather than read them. You'll find though, that many of the 200-word, large type features are just perfect for your trips to the bathroom, especially since your preteen has removed the SI swimsuit issue to his room, permanently.

Now that cable brings 200 or so channels into your home, you will in live in constant state of conviction that your kids have easily overridden the parental controls and are in fact not watching Sponge Bob as declared, but rather are focused on the "Splitting of a bamboo" Kama Sutra position featured in an NC-17 film on the Independent Film Channel. Paranoia is fed when channels suddenly change every time you enter the room.

In one of the earliest demonstrations of a potential career in law, your child will convince you that the Internet is essential to completing their homework. That it only takes four minutes for their IM buddy list to grow to 256 names means simply that other kids have likewise logged-on to complete their homework. The distance from the first plaintive, "How do I turn this on?" to search/pictures/Elisha Cuthbert can be measured in nano-seconds. Be prepared to explain that if downloading is against the law, how you got the music for the CD you play at the gym.

Under duress from your wife, who thinks that it will make the long trips more endurable, you will install some sort of video in the car. You will soon discover that buying each child his or her own video player will keep your driving life from being one long 8-hour argument over whose turn it is to watch which movie. Flying, though $1500 more expensive, begins to look worth every nickel.

The net effect of exposure to music on the radio and MTV is that your blond haired, freckled faced, white bread kids will greet you with "'Sup dog?" and aspire to dress like the children you send money to so they can spend a summer week in the country. With any luck, someone will steal their Air Force Ones or label them a "poser." At which point, you resign yourself to Ashton Kutcher haircuts being a reasonable compromise.

The worst aspects of video games are: 1) you will be invited to play them and will never grasp the functional difference between the X button and the O button; 2) watching your kid's ego deflate when he realizes just because he can score touchdowns in NFL 2003, doesn't mean he can in Pop Warner football; and 3) they will want to tell you which weapons they picked to eliminate which enemy. And you will have to smile and pretend to be interested all the while wondering is this is another Columbine in the making. It will be some of the hardest 12 minutes in all of parenting.

Somehow your child will escape being that one in ten million who decides he can pull off the JackAss trick or drops out to become the next Eminem or remains stuck in a South Park frame of mind. He will grow up, get a BS from a good school, join the media department of an interactive agency, marry a sweet girl from Ohio and then worry about how the media will affect HIS kids.