The culture war

I walk into the kitchen just in time to hear my 11-year-old daughter summarize for her father the destiny of anyone cast as a celebrity apprentice for Donald Trump: "It's the sign that you're just another clump of dried seaweed washed up on the beach of pop culture."

There's no time for a lecture on cynicism before school, and besides, she has a point.

The cast of NBC's upcoming "The Celebrity Apprentice" series has somehow managed to offer gainful - if short-term - employment to country singer Clint Black, former NBA star (and tattoo canvas) Dennis Rodman and the perennially Botoxed Joan Rivers.

Times are tough. People need work, and as gigs go, even a short-lived career with "The Donald" can be lucrative. Remember Omarosa? And besides, these celebrities work for charity.

But I digress.

This is what people always say when they learn that I'm the mother of three teenagers and a tween - "Whoa ... I guess you spend a lot of time hearing how stupid you are."

Usually the people who say this also are the parents of teens, and the comment comes as an attempt to bond over our presumed mutual suffering from the ill effects of our adolescent's bad attitudes.

I heard a comment like this recently at the doctor's office, when I mentioned that I have a 14-year-old son. "Oh, my kid is 15," came the reply. "I never knew how dumb I was until now. But that's just a teenager for ya. Right?"

Decision time: Do I say, "It is a dumb adult, indeed, who lets a teenager speak to him as though he is a potted plant," or do I smile and nod in deference to the needle he holds in his hand?

"Mom," Amy said in her most serious tone, "I have to get dad to run for president. That's the only way I'm going to meet the Jonas Brothers."

Amy and I had been watching Monday night's televised "Kids' Inaugural: We Are the Future," a live concert hosted by Michelle Obama, Jill Biden and the Obama Inaugural Committee at Washington's Verizon Center. Working with the folks from the Disney Channel, they put on a tween extravaganza and somehow in the process managed to connect the dots between the presidency and the nation's most popular teenage idols - Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the Disney franchise managed to insert itself into this week's historic presidential inauguration. Disney is a lot of things, but dumb isn't one of them.

I never thought I'd miss Mr. Whipple. You remember him - the character played by Dick Wilson whose famous admonition, "Please don't squeeze the Charmin," was meant to embarrass hundreds of sufferers of a secret toilet paper obsession who staked out the aisles of grocery stores to grope rolls of irresistibly soft paper products.

Back in his heyday, I thought Mr. Whipple was hokey and the people who created the character cornier, still. Who sits around thinking of an imaginary grocer who catches housewives midsqueeze with a package of TP?

It turns out the people who thought of the Mr. Whipple ads for Charmin are a whole lot more genteel than the folks who now produce the company's advertising. At least the old team knew when to use euphemisms to describe the benefits of their product.

Quite simply, the current ads, featuring two annoying and overly graphic cartoon bears demonstrating the coarser points of personal hygiene, offer us consumers too much information. To wit: Last night, while drifting off to sleep in front of the television, I awoke to a voice assuring me that Charmin leaves less paper behind on the ... er ... well ... behind.

Let's all respond together: Yuck.

I don't make New Year's resolutions. First, when it comes to resolutions, I'm a pathetic cliche. I start out with determination and commitment and end, roughly a week later, in a pool of chocolate.

My problem is that making resolutions for the New Year feels like entering a perpetual state of Lent, which is sometimes doable for 40 days, but for a lifetime is the definition of hell. Or failure. Or both.

Second, I don't make resolutions because doing so strikes me as shallow and self-serving. Most resolutions tend to have at their core a benefit only for the one who is resolved. As such, these promises are easily broken, and thus, the probable cause of a spike in chip consumption only a month after the annual rise in sales of exercise apparel.

If the problem with New Year's resolutions is that they are punishing promises meant to serve only the one who is resolved, then it might follow that resolutions could be more successfully maintained and more useful to society if they were the opposite. They should be easy to do and meant to improve the lot in life of others, not just ourselves.

Sometimes you don't even have to read the story. Just the headline can drive home the realization that our culture is in trouble.

Case in point: Sunday's Detroit News story entitled, "School autopsy tours canceled; Oakland County stops trips to medical examiner's office after kids see exam of girl from their district."

Let's read that aloud, shall we? All together now: "School autopsy tours canceled." [Emphasis added for obvious reasons].

There is so much that's wrong in this story beyond the headline that I don't really know where to begin, so I'll start with a little over-simplistic analysis just to get the ball rolling.

Public health officials love the parable of the floating babies. You may have heard it -- the townspeople are gathered at the riverbank for a celebration when suddenly they notice a baby struggling to stay afloat in the river's rushing waters. Someone runs to save the baby when he notices another one coming from upstream. More and more babies now come rushing down the river as the people of the town quickly make a human chain to try to save the infants.

Then, the story goes, a few townsfolk begin to run upstream along the riverbank. Someone yells to them, "Where are you going?"

"We're going to find out who is throwing these babies into the river and stop them!"

And the moral, of course, is that we can't just rescue those who are caught in the current of health risk; we have to look for the source of the problem if we're going to make real, systemic change.

Welcome to the riverbank.

It must be the result of an official safety study, conducted by at least three highly trained traffic engineers, culminating in the adoption of a policy on interstate snow removal.

Said policy, because it reflects "best practices" as well as a full spectrum of litigation-avoidance measures, now must demand that the highway be cleared of snow while simultaneously being treated with an anti-icing agent — salt or sand, or more likely, some chemically perfect combination of the two.

I have no doubt this policy is dutifully followed after having been reviewed by the head of the road commission only weeks ago, when it was presented with all due authority at a meeting of professional snow-removal technicians.

This is the only explanation I can imagine for the illogical traffic jam in which I have, for the past 27 miles, crawled down the interstate while ahead of me three snowplows ride abreast across the entire expanse of expressway, slowing the midday flow of cars to a maddening 15 miles per hour.

It's been just a week since the historic election that will put President-elect Barack Obama in the White House on Jan. 20, and we can expect that he'll move quickly to bring about the change he promised for two years on the campaign trail.

However, I hope we're not expecting Mr. Obama to do what must be done for America's children.

Wait a minute - didn't we just endure roughly 36 months of rallies and rhetoric promising to restore good government, economic security and unlimited opportunity for our children? Didn't Mr. Obama assure us he knows how to make this a safer world for the next generation?

Didn't he invoke "America's children" while taking the moral high ground on every issue from the federal debt and the price of crude to greed on Wall Street and anger on Main Street?

He did. And I have no doubt he meant every word of what he said. But I also know one thing for sure: This president will not do what must be done to assure a safe, bountiful and productive future for America's children.

That's because no president can.

I'm waiting for someone to write the book "Economic Meltdowns for Dummies." Until they do, I may never understand the relationship between the "for sale" signs in my neighborhood and my possible post-retirement career as a Wal-Mart greeter.

I keep watching the news to try to figure it all out, but the other day I saw a story that says even the experts aren't sure what will happen next. So I guess that makes me an expert, too.

Only a few weeks into the economic crisis, we're seeing a trillion stories about how to live with less and make due without expensive extras. (I say "a trillion stories" because who really knows what "a trillion" looks like? I'm always on the lookout for how the news of the day impacts families, so I'm focused on news stories about how moms and dads should talk to their children about the economy and its impact on daily life.

According to several news stories, parents across America find themselves in a new and unfamiliar situation - denying their children the material goods that define happiness in our consumer-driven culture.