Friday, June 24, 2016

No News is Good News

News flash: I will be avoiding the TV news until after the election. And if we still had little ones at home, I would NEVER let them watch. Even without the election, there is much not to like.

Violence! Adult content! Celebrity "news!" AND SLANTED! You can tell the networks' politics by whose photos are flattering and whose are creepy.

Very different from the olden days (my childhood!).

Frank Reynolds delivered Chicagoland's news.  He never editorialized. Just the facts (kind of like Dragnet!). P.J. Hoff cartooned the local weather.

The biggest scandal of my childhood? The boys at school saying "hell" and "damn" at recess! The teachers solemnly escorted all the girls into a conference room. After reciting the naughty words to us, the teachers asked us to I.D. the culprits letting BAD WORDS fly on the playground. Yep - this was my first exposure to "cuss words." From the teachers. 

Anyway, given my head-in-the-sand childhood, it seems inevitable that I found out TV news is not for kids the hard way - by letting our kids watch.

D2 was a sensitive little soul. We never realized she was even paying attention to the TV news until she started remembering the Iranian-held hostages in her bedtime prayers. At age 4. She worried about them for 444 days.

And when, at last, the Americans were released and we watched them descend the steps of the plane onto U.S. soil, D2 was overcome. (Okay, D2 was pretty much always emotional, but this was a personal best, even for her!) 

We dried her tears, but the deluge was unstoppable. Between hiccups and gulps of air, she kept repeating something over and over. It sounded like "Where are they? Where are the hostages?"

Finally we figured out what she was saying.

"Where are the OSTRICHES???"

All that time, D2 had been praying for the safe return of our BIRDS!

Like I said - letting the kids watch TV news? BIG mistake! HUGE!

And that's the way it is.


1 comment:

  1. it is a privilege and a pleasure to be able to turn off the news. The political climate is enough to kill us all. However I must confess that I am a news junkie. News is and always has been biased by EVERY reporter. Simply choosing which story to write shows bias. And unfortunately news sells. It's a BIG BUSINESS. Our beloved Frank Reynolds covered the Vietnam war, the protesters, the Democratic National Convention, the Black Panthers, free-for-all sex and drugs in The Age of Aquarius. I'm sure he had difficulty trying to report without bias. Nevertheless the current constant barrage is overwhelming and I, too, long for the innocence of our children to last a little longer. We must try to protect, discuss and tackle subjects they worry about--including ostriches.

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