Jan. 4th, 2008

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I was sitting here pondering a little story that scrolled by on Slashdot about the fact that none of the hopeful Presidential candidates who want to create strong video game-related legislation did well in the Iowa caucuses (whether correlation implies causation is up to you). And thinking about that, and about this 'privilege check' meme that's going around that basically claims you had a privileged childhood if you had any time with your parents, and if your entire family had any college education.

And really, I feel like there's one thing never addressed when people want to ban or severely control movies, music, video games, web sites, etc, that might have content inappropriate for someone's kid: once debate on that sort of thing moves out of the knee-jerk shouting, I see people agreeing that you should share things with your kid, and talk about them. About the issues raised by the narrative, about the issues raised by the whole experience. Screen media before you let your kid absorb it; discuss it afterwards.

But who the fuck has time for this in an economy where both parents (if they're both still there) probably have to work punishing jobs? Raising a kid is a full-time job in and of itself. By today's standards, I was privileged, because we were a comfortably middle-class family - with just one income. Earned on hours that let my dad actually see me and still have some of himself left to do it with.

This is what powers "THINK OF THE CHILDREN". Not having any time left to raise the kid, being forced to let them come home to an empty house and watch/play whatever the hell they want, without any chance of the parent providing context, without any chance to tell them that "wow, this is not exactly good behavior". And being afraid of that, of the fact that kids can get around almost any technological lock you put on the TV, the net, the game console... better to just make sure there's no chance of ever running into content that might have your kids asking you uncomfortable questions, or following unpleasant examples. Right?

Think of the children: redistribute the country's wealth so that parents can spend time raising the little infosponges themselves, instead of leaving it to the media spigots. Redistribute the culture's time so that it's not all given to corporate masters and the quest for money.

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Margaret Trauth

October 2020

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