Recapturing a childhood for my children

OK, so I recently purchased a DVD collection that makes me quite excited: Sesame Street Old School. This is the Sesame Street I grew up with and the SS that most Gen-Xers can relate to and remember with such friendly faces as Grover, Cookie monster, Mr. Hooper and the eternally grumpy Oscar the Grouch. Apparently these DVDs come with a warning that these shows are no longer suitable for younger audiences and are intended for adult viewing only. This article from the New York Times outlines some of the many terrible things we were exposed to as youngsters such as Cookie Monster eating a fake pipe as well as eating…. Well… cookies which apparently represents a bad diet.

The thing that really sticks in my craw about this is that I have been seeing these stupid warnings all over the place on DVDs I grew up with. Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes are a big example, even Mickey Mouse and the Disney Treasures force me to sit through Leonard Maltin pontificating about how these views were wrong then as they are now. The Latest Tom and Jerry set, the final set, had 2 cartoons outright omitted (supremely annoying for a completist like myself) because of "racial issues" presumably never to be released. Why does the studio get to tell me what I can and cannot watch, furthermore where does anyone get off telling me what is appropriate for my children? I may not have any yet but this bugs me considering some of the big problems I have with TV in today's market.

Personally I like how I grew up, with the ability to watch children's programming and ask questions if issues came up that were a little "messy". Am I supposed to feel bad for watching Mr. Rogers because according to today's sensitivities being his neighbor would like mean having to look out for a man in a cardigan who spoke softly and slowly so I would understand, who had a penchant for putting his had up puppets bums, and had a rather disturbing mailman named Mr. McPheely. Disturbing simply because he was polite and just a little too nice if you know what I mean, taking the time to talk and actually share about himself with one of his customers… the nerve! Today's children's program is an exercise in sanitized, politically correct claptrap that presumes to tell children how they should learn!

When I was a child and watching these shows I believe that my parents felt they had one purpose, to encourage my brain to learn numbers and my ABCs with occasional moral lessons about how to be nice to people. When did children's programming become about well… programming our kids with a specific agenda. I was thinking about this last night (there was a bit of a gap between when I started this post and when it came was done) some more and I feel that there is a lot of stuff on shows today that I feel should have a warning on it because it is presuming to teach my children things that I believe are my job to teach. I want my kids to be engaged with learning about lots of things but I don't want the mainstream media to be the teachers of their moral code. Call me paranoid if you want but letting the world decide what is right and wrong for my kid is a recipe for disaster. Cookie monster ate cookies because it was funny, not because he wanted children to have an unbalanced diet. It is my job to get the kids to eat their veggies. Bert and Ernie living in the same living space as two "men" for a long time was and is innocent because they are…. Believe it or not…. MUPPETS! Never once when I was a kid did I wonder who was the pitcher and who was the catcher in that relationship. Bert and Ernie were all about teaching kids how to be friends with people who aren't the same as us. Bert was an organized, pigeonloving, uptight grump. Ernie was a crazy, rubberduckylovin, odd-laughing goof. And Bert and Ernie are best friends and the show taught us how to do that with our friends.

My point is basically this, television studios, production companies, etc. have not got the right to tell us what is good and correct for anybody of any age and the reality behind why they include these disclaimers is to protect their own butts. They don't want some uncritically thinking parent to throw a fit when they buy these DVDs and see a blue furry monster with a stogie in his mouth. That said I do feel insulted that there is an insinuation built into those warnings that people are basically too dumb to make good evaluations of content on their own. I fully plan on watching some of this stuff with my parents and when I cant I fully plan on *gasp* communicating with my children and teaching them to watch what they watch, to ask questions, to be critical thinkers, to the point that when they read those warnings that they too will be offended by them at how stupid and nitpicky we have become.