Politicians running for everything from the presidency to dogcatcher point to education as a crucial issue for America. We know education is the avenue for creating opportunity in life, and every politician worth his weight in campaign promises has a plan for improving the quality of education in our nation and for enhancing access to higher education.

Politicians seem to think the biggest barrier to a college degree is financial aid. Clearly, the politicians who think this have yet to help a child actually apply to an American university. The biggest barrier to higher education isn't money; it's the application process itself.

In short, the only people who can get into college these days are the students with a personal executive secretary (aka "Mom"). You can't complete the process without an Excel spreadsheet, 27 different user names and passwords, an electronic signature PIN, tax returns dating to the American Revolution and a partridge in a pear tree.

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.

Here's my October "no surprise" - I'm officially sick of the presidential election.

I'm not sure exactly when I reached my saturation point - somewhere between the YouTube video of a Yoko Ono-esque woman directing the "Obama Youth Choir" and the opinion piece I read assessing the authenticity and relevance of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's "Minnewegian" accent. It's come to this.

No wait - it was Friday on an airplane bound for Wichita, Kan. I was chatting with a woman headed home for her high school reunion, when the subject of the previous evening's vice-presidential debate came up.

My seatmate and I both had missed it. For my part, a long-planned speaking engagement conflicted with the event. The woman in seat 5B had another reason.

"I actually can't bring myself to watch Sarah Palin," she said. "There's no way I could sit there and listen to anything she had to say."

Say it ain't so, seatmate.

It used to be that every time one of my children started a conversation with the words, "Hey mom, can I talk to you about something," I braced myself for a question about sex.

Now I hold onto my hat for a question about something far more difficult to answer: the economy.

A week ago while driving my 10-year-old to a party, Amy delicately broached this subject in the way one might ask where babies come from.

Sensing this was sensitive territory, she cleared her throat and said, "Mom, the kids at school keep mentioning something about Wall Street and some sort of crisis. Also, I heard on the news that we're all going to be depressed about it. It's making me worry that something bad is going to happen," she said.

You might think there's a huge difference between telling my daughter what's going on in the financial markets and just filling up the minivan with the sound of my voice babbling, but it turns out there isn't.

Knee pads? Check. Low-sodium, sugar-free diet? Check.

Annual well-child physical? Check. Seat belts in the minivan and helmets on the bike? Check.

Cell phone? Not so fast.

According to a study released in Europe, your child's risk of brain cancer may jump as much as five times if he or she uses a cell phone as a youngster.

Presented in London at the conference of the Radiation Research Trust by Lennart Hardell of the University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden, the research concludes that children who start using cell phones before the age of 20 are much more likely to contract glioma, as well as two other forms of cancer. Or not.

Someday I'm going to do the research and find out why marketers think there is a relationship between getting a headache and buying clothes for a teenager.

I'm convinced there's data out there supporting the notion that the more offensive and irritating a store's soundtrack, the more cash we moms and dads are likely to plunk down on the counter.

This has to be true, or why else would I have to endure vulgar rap music while trying to outfit my 14-year-old son with blue jeans that reach the tops of his shoes?

You might argue that the music they play in hip mall stores is intended to attract young customers. But all the people I saw on Saturday who actually made purchases weren't young - they were parents, like me.

And like me, many of the parents I saw were frustrated, annoyed and even offended by the hypersexual atmosphere that is the mark of today's mall.

I want to be careful not to seem overzealous. After all, a columnist loses all credibility by making sweeping generalizations or oversimplifying the cultural and social issues that confront us. My statements must ring true without hyperbole, if I'm going to be taken seriously.

With that caveat in mind, I submit: MTV is killing our culture.

Specifically, the annual cultural orgy known as the MTV Video Music Awards, held Sunday evening in Los Angeles, at which awards were given for outstanding achievement in the creation and production of music videos.

Suppose that we ignore the relative merits of music videos as an art form. Not since Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video have I seen one that captured my attention. But that one cost a cool bajillion dollars to produce, and no one wears wolf makeup or red leather jackets anymore.

I will never forget the Democratic National Convention of 1968. Not because I understood what was happening in the streets of Chicago regarding the police force, the Illinois National Guard and mobs of antiwar protesters, nor because I followed the political maneuvering that ultimately secured the nomination of Hubert Humphrey for president.

No, what I remember was the shriek my mother let out when she discovered that while the family was gathered around the TV in the family room, my 3-year-old sister had wandered off, found a pair of scissors and cut several huge bald spots into the back of her hair.

Mind you, I was only 7. My capacity to understand the political battle on TV was limited, so the drama around my sister's new "do" was for me a bit more concrete.

If my younger sister lacked appropriate supervision, the times were to blame. This was August in Detroit. The riot of the previous summer was as fresh on the minds of my family as the scene that unfolded in Chicago.

I doubt my grasp of the convention was little more than impressions, but this I knew - whatever was going on had my parents glued to the television. It had to be important.

True confession - a little over a year ago, I caved and bought a TV for the kitchen.

It's a small TV - not the sort of thing on which you'd watch an important football game or a movie - but big enough so I can see what Rachael Ray is doing across the room while I'm making my own yum-o version of mac 'n' cheese (from a box).

I didn't get the TV only because I'm a Food Network junkie. The real reason I got it was to try to keep people from taking food to various parts of the house so they could watch television while they ate. Our family room was starting to look like the dirty-dish belt at the local all-you-can-eat buffet.

So I capitulated on my longtime rule that there would be no TV while my family ate because clearly I was suffering under the delusion that anyone was obeying this rule in the first place - my husband and myself included.

Fair warning - this column is going to be a rant. But bear with me because it's possible you also saw Sunday's USA Weekend featuring tween icon Miley Cyrus on the cover with the headline, "Why You Can't Ignore This Face."

The story wasn't about Miley, per se.

No, the article inside was titled, "The Secret Power of Tweens." It was a culture piece about the influence of today's 8- to 13-year-olds.

According to the article by Michele Meyer, "Kids who aren't old enough to be in middle school, let alone high school or college, are determining what cars, clothes, computers and music we buy, what movies and TV shows we watch, even how we talk and write."

She connects the dots between the power of today's youth and the marketing machine that feeds their appetite for consumption, quoting one Robert Thompson, founding director of the Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University: "It has nothing to do with development, other than of early and loyal lifetime shoppers ... If you can make an 8-year-old into a consumer, you potentially have her for 70 years."

The bottom line in this cultural trend is simply follow the money. The article cites children's marketing expert (yes, there is such a thing) James U. McNeal in estimating that tweens spend or influence their parents to spend $500 billion a year. That, says the story, is enough to buy both Microsoft and Google.

OK, stand back. Here I go.