Kids And Breasts

B1055-LH33

Kids And Breasts

Finally, someone is taking the moral health of our children seriously. No, I’m not talking about the Catholic Church. I’m talking about the National Organization of Women. NOW has filed a number of complaints about those famous (or is it infamous?) Hooters restaurants, which have a kid’s menu and which allow children to be served. NOW is concerned that Hooters is not a fit place for children, that it is an adult entertainment venue and thus inappropriate for kids. Now, it is indisputable that some people, mostly infantile men with no real life, are entertained by big-bosomed young ladies in skin-tight tops delivering cheeseburgers, but does this make Hooters off limits to kids? If it does, then this protective instinct shouldn’t stop there, but be extended to other morally and physically dangerous places for our precious children.

School: No one who cares about children should send his or her children to these places. They are so strapped for cash that they usually don’t have enough hand sanitizer to go around; they are so broke they have to serve carrots and milk, instead of being able to splurge on real food, like fries smothered in nacho cheese sauce and chicken nuggets covered in body-warming grease. Schools have playground equipment that rival the danger potential of a Chuck E. Cheese. Metal and plastic covered with snot and jelly droplets and God-knows-what-else: a playground more suited for microbes than children. And don’t forget the lecherous teachers and big-for-their-age bullies who are unsupervised and unnoticed as they steal lunch money and peek under girls’ skirts.

Cars: Of course traveling with your child by car is just a crazy thing to do. Sure, car seats have improved (if you can figure out how to install them)and airbags don’t deploy for smaller kids in the front seat, but an American car is filled with potential tragedy. For example, car interiors are made for shredding, and bits of plastic are not good for the esophagus of a toddler, on whom the thrill of traveling to Mommy’s yoga class is lost, and for whom picking at the upholstery is a wonderful buffet and a good way to pass the time. Then there are all the entertainment devices which are meant to divert your youngster and keep the “Are we there yet?” whining to a minimum, but while you are being a conscientious driver up front, your kid is watching violent cartoons which can program her to visit violence on the first evil robot she sees, or your son is watching a video game which encourages him to put on armor and use his broadsword to kill wicked elves throwing bolts of lightning, and then you have participated in filling your child’s head with dangerous anti-social tendencies. Here, I recommend using the Amish method of transport, with the only possible side effect being that your kids might begin to fetishize horse butts—but that’s what you pay therapists for.

Church: Any religious institution is a dangerous place. If the place is legit and does what religions in general are supposed to do, then you will have a serene, happy, tolerant, and generous child, and that’s not good. We live in a polarized, competitive, thoughtless and greedy society. Will your really want your child to be out there hugging trees and trying to pull beached whales back into the ocean? It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there; it’s vicious and no one gives quarter to anyone. Having a beatific smile and a fondness for bean sprouts will not get your kid into Harvard. Any kind of spirituality is not good, especially in this rotten economy. I mean, what if EVERY parent let their kid follow her bliss? It’s safe to say the world would be a different place. Enough said.

Outside: Well, this is a no-brainer. Where to start? Ok, child molesters, air pollution, danger of alien abduction, radiation from high-tension wires, gay people walking in public, and pit bulls trained to shred whatever moves. In the warm weather, women and girls all dress like hookers with a friend on the police force, so that the sensitive child is exposed to the dangers of bouncing and jiggling flesh—and lots of it. Outside is bad.

Inside: This is no better. Pet dander is a big problem. TV has more sex and violence than politics, and those morning pop tarts are filled with enough chemicals to make your kid glow in the dark. A space heater in the bathroom while your kid is washing is probably not a good plan, unless you relish the sight of a crispy kindergartner. And up in his bedroom, your teen is surfing a very dangerous Web, filled with images to make even the French blush and the Chinese blow a fuse. Unless you are very affluent and/or privileged and can hire some professional bodyguards as Lady Gaga or President Obama can, you’d be better off buying a cage and locking your precious progeny inside.

After school programs: Are you nuts? Who checks the credentials of the supervisors? Is OSHA around to designate that finger paint as lead-free? What about having a hundred screaming kids running around like congressmen after votes while a couple of burned-out adults—not yet listed by the sheriff’s department on the local sex offender list—try to keep sharp objects out of their greasy little hands?

So, there is danger everywhere for parents—so what are they to do? Well, I hate to sound like Sarah Palin here, but there IS something: supervise your kids! How many concerned parents—worried about the moral purity of their kids—would willingly, smilingly, go into a Hooters restaurant, kid’s menu or not? Raise your hands. If the place is so depraved, then go to Burger king instead,. Let the young and old men ogle to their hearts’ content—and mind your own parental business. There is a ton of whining about how degraded the mortals of America are, and how awful it is that we allow homosexual people out on the streets in broad daylight holding hands, and that TV is a cesspool of depravity, sex, violence, and perversion. And that’s just the commercials. If Hooters is so bad, avoid it. If you think outside is dangerous, go with your kids. How many parents lament the content of the web, but buy their kids the latest computer, then leave them alone in a locked bedroom for hours? So many concerned parents decrying the lack of sound Christian morality in the land, so many hours of TV and computer videos watched by their youngsters. So much hypocrisy, so little thought. Hooters has traded on the physical attributes of its waitresses, and it’s not alone. Kids are exposed to more bare flesh in ine typical American day than a harem owner sees in a month, and there is no end to sexuality and violence in the popular media. Parents and those so very concerned with morality spend a lot of time wanting OTHER people to protect their own children. This is like shooting yourself in the foot, then wanting to sue the people who made the gun.

If suggestive clothing and come-hither smiles don’t seem appropriate on a kid’s menu, I suggest that dad come home earlier from work and mom take a day off from her book club and sit down and have a home dinner with the kids. Talk, laugh, tell jokes, find out who you kids are. To paraphrase a presidential epigram: when you’re a parent, the buck stops with YOU.

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