Media and other headaches

Sneakers? Check. Morning TV show to pass 40 minutes on an elliptical machine? Check. Soft-core porn advertising for the commercial break? Check.

Who knew you could burn so many extra calories at the local gym just being humiliated by the content of an ad for designer watches? Thanks to Italian fashion icons Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, we can all cringe with embarrassment while three anorexic-looking twentysomethings engage in the latest TV and advertising fad: Sexual threesomes.

You are probably wondering how sexual perversion and timepieces go together in a television commercial. Me, too.

Apparently the target audience for the brand D&G Time includes promiscuous young adults with upward of $650 to spend on a simple wristwatch. I guess when the watch is all you plan to have on at the end of the day, it had better be special.
 

Thanks to Oprah Winfrey's interview of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, I'm heading out to buy her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Like millions of Americans, Mrs. Palin intrigues me, not because I'm a huge fan or a huge skeptic, but because despite mountains of media content produced about her, she remains a mystery.

Those who want the stereotyped, "Saturday Night Live" image of Mrs. Palin to hold up as fact argue that the mainstream media has offered an accurate picture of the woman and that picture is "I can see Russia from my house."

It has a long way to go to make its organization's name a reality, but the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood claimed an important recent victory.

CCFC has for years sought to reveal the truth about so-called educational videos designed ostensibly to increase the brainpower of growing babies. Studies show no measurable gains in intelligence or verbal skills associated with baby videos. In fact, researchers at the University of Washington found that for every hour per day of screen viewing by infants aged 8 to 16 months, a measurable decrease occurs in communicative development.

In 2006, CCFC filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against Baby Einstein and brand owner Disney, charging that the company's marketing misled parents into thinking the videos could positively impact development and learning.

Back in 2005, I was asked to consider auditioning for the reality show “Wife Swap,” the premise being that I would visit the home of an uber-cool family that was unaccustomed to my authoritative parenting style, and a permissive and culturally savvy mom would stay in my home with my husband and our four children (presumably to be appalled by the sight of children who read newspapers).

The honorarium for this appearance was to be $20,000. My children thought this was a big pile of money, but that’s before any of them enrolled in college. They know better now.

Through emotional outbursts in virtually every corner of our culture, from the halls of government to popular music to professional sports, famous folks recently have offered up a veritable smorgasbord of bad taste on which to comment.

Summing up: People are rude.

The flurry of incivility that lately has found its way to Youtube's "most viewed" list ought to make us worry about the messages our children are getting, given that Youtube is the most popular Web site for children 8 to 18. It's time to turn our kitchen tables into learning labs and take advantage of this week's teachable moments.

To review:

I finally had to sit down with my 11-year-old daughter for "the talk." Despite my best efforts to preserve her innocence and protect her from growing up too quickly, I simply had to tell her some important facts of life.

No, we didn't have a talk about how babies are born. This talk was about America's assault on girlhood. The time finally came for me to explain to my daughter the relationship between media and marketing and money, and why some people think nothing of exploiting girls if it increases their ratings, sells advertising and beefs up the bottom line.

It's time to pull out the blood pressure cuff, and I'm not suggesting this as a do-it-yourself health care solution, though by the looks of things, it could come to that. Given the reforms suggested so far, "DIY" may be a viable alternative.

As if there isn't enough political news to elevate our national blood pressure, a new study released this week in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine says the blood pressure levels of America's children are elevated thanks to - drum roll, because you're going to be shocked by this - TV and screen time.

Just when you thought it was safe to park your child in front of a television set for six or eight hours on end to watch every manner of questionable - even depraved - human behavior (MTV's "Real World: Cancun," anyone?), it turns out it's not just media content that endangers child health but the very act of consuming media.

"What are you doing? I love that song," I say to my daughter as she reaches over to change the radio station in my van. "That's Darius Rucker. He was born to sing country music."

Best known for his lead vocals in the pop group Hootie and the Blowfish, Mr. Rucker's first country solo album debuted at No. 1 on the country charts. Obviously, I'm not the only one who thinks he's meant to sing country.

"I just think this song promotes mediocrity," Betsy says. "It bugs me."

It says something about the times in which we live that my husband and I decreed "no news" on our vacation. It's the only way we figured we could relax.

It's not easy to avoid all that's happening in the world, but it turns out a few ground rules do the trick: no free newspaper at our hotel room door, no Internet surfing on our laptops, no TV news. Nothing that might connect us -- even superficially -- to the world beyond the beach. The only exception to our "no news is good news" pact is my scheduled foray online for the purpose of filing this column.

So here I am, quickly checking to see what newsworthy events have happened in the world while I've been busy reading Harlan Coben. It turns out the content in our news media, much like daytime dramas, doesn't change much over the course of a few days.

 “Wow,” my daughter said as she strolled into the kitchen on Sunday morning. “Billy Mays died. It’s officially celebrity death week.”
 
News of the passing of TV’s most famous pitchman had barely broken and we were already speculating, over breakfast, about what might have happened.