No Market Left Behind

Parenting is not (alas) all trips to the science center and birthday parties and touching bedtime stories. There is an element of parenting that is sheer endurance. Sometimes its sleepless nights, or coitus interruptus, or "no, really, I promise for the 5,972nd time, there is no such thing as monsters/bloody mary/__________, but yes, you can climb into bed with me at 2am again tonight."

But that's a piece of cake compared to Radio Disney.

Radio Disney is, at heart, a cultural venus flytrap for children. They are lured by the saccharine sweetness and trapped by endless contests in which the latest and greatest thing (or trip to Disney) is foisted on them for being the 6th caller. It is nationally syndicated radio, so there is literally nowhere you can go that you can't flip the radio to AM and tune it in. Another casualty in the battle for mutually agreeable music. It is mildly excruciating to hear the crappy pop songs of my youth bubblegummed out yet further for the next generation. What sadistic creep thought it would be cool to have the latest glossed teenage sensation remake "I Want Candy"? God help us all...

And we won't even go into the recent spate of 70's remakes, from Dancing Queen to Superstition, with several bizarre stops in between.

Unfortunately, it is the only thing that gets my daughter to clean her room. When you flip on the Radio Disney kiddie crack, she starts dancing and throwing away paper. So I figure I can deal for an afternoon. And there is something sort of nostalgic about hearing "U Can't Touch This" after all these years. Kinda makes you wonder what MC Hammer is up to these days. For about five seconds, anyway.

But of all the chilling soul-sucking things I've heard on Radio Disney, nothing compares to the bit of propaganda I was just subjected to, in which the No Child Left Behind Act was actually compared to Brown v. Board of Education. Courtesy of the US Department of Education. Education budgets fell short this year, leaving hundreds of thousands of children behind. One can only assume that they needed to take that money from the schools so that we could all be told how monumental this legislation really is. You don't have to sit long with the implications before a sort of dumbfounded ennui takes over.

My only saving grace is having long ago taught my daughter to ask of all commercials, "what are they trying to sell me?" and "do I really need it?" So hopefully at least one person isn't buying it. She knows. Her school doesn't even have a P.E. program. Her teacher worked like crazy to get them ready for their standardized tests; her anxiety over the results was palpable. It must be hard to be a veteran teacher these days. I see now why everyone out east sends their kids to private school if they can possibly afford it.

Sigh.