Sunday, October 7, 2007

Broke

“Teach your children credit responsibility while playing the game.” Such is the uber-current pitch of the Monopoly Electronic Banking Edition. No need to consult The Street or the Fed: This decidedly millennial transactional “game” illuminates the state of the American economy with more guts and accuracy than CNBC, Bernanke, and the Wall Street Journal combined.

Monopoly has since 1935 been popular in that kid-tested, parent-approved way. It’s a fun game, of course, but on top of that it’s allowed children a glimpse at money in all its facets: investing, spending, saving, earning, risk-taking, and leveraging. Kids were receptive to these lessons in currency because they could touch the money, they could see it grow and dwindle, they felt the bittersweetness of handing it over in exchange for hotels or property.

Now, with the Electronic Banking Edition, kids will be infected with the disease that has crippled our household budgets and asphyxiated our national economy. People - kids and adults - benefit from experiencing money. When we spend, we need to access our senses. We need to hear the shuffle of paper as we count; we need to visualize the difference between having and not having - and no swipe of a card can suffice.

Money means something different today than it did a few years ago. “Affording” something is determined by whether a machine will accept a transaction; this mentality has resulted in a nation of robotic card-carriers poised for the next swipe.

The Monopoly promo says it best: The game “capitalizes on today’s trend of a cashless society.” And that’s what I call morally bankrupt.

From Mandewilkes.com

O'Reilly "Gone Too Far" Again?

People yearn to be offended by Bill O’Reilly, who is in reality the most even-keeled, politically correct commentator out there. Indeed, I’m not an O’Reilly fan precisely because he is obscenely open-minded. I can’t explain the vitriol against him, except that it’s maybe an instance of inertia: O’Reilly made one or two brash remarks years ago, and the gravy train keeps chugging along the rusted tracks of irrational Bill-bashing.

If blacks, liberals, and wrought-with-guilt whites would actually listen to O’Reilly’s much-maligned praise of a Harlem restaurant, they would nominate him for president of the NAACP! Supposedly egregious was his claim that diversity “is what this society is all about now here in the USA. There’s no difference. There’s no difference.”

That sounds like the exact message of the black-is-beautiful lobby. Nobody can legitimately hear racism in O’Reilly’s “we’re all the same” comment.

Most striking is that there are so many more commentators who would really offend - people are just too occupied pretending to be offended by O’Reilly. Bill’s offensiveness is child’s play compared to John Gibson, Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, and John Stossil. And, of course, me.

From Mandewilkes.com

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Why Have 'Em if You Won't Raise 'Em?

Our scared-silly society robotically recites a litany of kid-killers, among which are attention deficit, profanity exposure, and injected chicken. While everyone’s in a tizzy about childhood inactivity and environmental meltdown, we’re ignoring the true source of danger to kids. And that is daycare.It’s been a busy month for crappy childcare providers. In a Los Angeles facility, police found 14 kilograms of cocaine, 50 pounds of marijuana, and enough guns to arm the Laotian military. All this contraband was located in a toy chest. Among baby dolls and G.I. Joe’s were guns and drugs, and all anyone seems inclined to care about is whether the dolls’ arms were made of lead.

But that’s not all, folks:

A Tennessee nursery was condemned after a 4-month old infant was discovered with a pacifier taped into his mouth.

A Nashville daycare lost a 5-month old. Firefighters later found the baby after ransacking the building to look for him.

A childcare facility in Texas has been closed after parents found thumbtack injuries on their kids’ bodies. Apparently, this daycare took disclipine very seriously.
All of this since September 1.

Preemptively: Some parents do these things too; it’s not just daycare workers who harm kids. I want to be very clear on that point, because that is the predictable comeback I get when I talk about daycare dangers. Also: I agree that the majority of kids in daycare aren’t lost or raped or punctured with thumbtacks. Certainly most kids in daycare don’t share their toy boxes with guns and narcotics. This is usually the second comeback I get.

Admittedly, I’m not overly concerned with the above instances of physical abuse in childcare facilities. But it’s these tangibles examples I repeat because they so neatly counter and complement the apocalyptic concerns about silly things like SPF and acid rain. A child shouldn’t be raised in a daycare not so much because there’s a risk of physical harm, but because it’s just not right. While kids can certainly benefit from sunblock and toxin-free paint, they thrive when they’re raised by their parents. Whole grains make for a healthy heart; Mommy makes for a full heart.

No amount of organic blueberries or sunscreen or Baby Einstein-type reinforcements will ever reach the good we can do by simply raising our own children.

From Mandewilkes.com