Between Saddam's hanging and dirty-dancing, there's not much left that is suitable to watch
15 January 2007
A baby came to stay in our house for Christmas. This delightful event meant we had to think about child-proofing the house. One forgets the long reach of little arms and how they can pull a pot or kettle off the stove as one sweeps past with the little dote in one's arms. Since she is not walking yet we were spared the terrors of infantile mobility and when she was put in a place she had to stay there.
I had put her in a place which I thought was safe, on my knees, when she and I sat down to watch the Sky News at 5 o'clock on Saturday 30th December 2006. A safe place it was not. The news began with the official version of the execution by hanging of Saddam Hussein. I was stunned by the sight. And, the commentary did even better, the reporter talking of Saddam "shuffling to the trap door" because his feet were shackled and his hands manacled. How glad I was that she was not a couple of years older!
I had recovered my wits enough at that stage to turn the ghastly show off and I don't think she really saw this dreadful spectacle but how man children around the globe saw it? "Serves you right," I suppose some of you will say, for watching Sky anyway. I can't tell you what featured on the other channels' news programmes that night because I refrained from watching them. The wireless gave quite enough in the way of details.
Before deciding that I am one of those lily-livered types who believe that children should be brought up in cotton wool, let me assure you I am not. As a child, because of illness I missed many terms at school and learned to read quite early. Reading matter at home was not child-centred, Dickens et al being considered light reading for a child. Debtors' prisons I got used to soon but a book of Edgar Alan Poe's short stories-The Pit and the Pendulum and other Stories were nearly the end of me. They are extremely unsuitable for a six-year-old.
It was said that Saddam's execution had to be televised so that the Iraqi people would believe he was dead. Any Iraqis I know are as intelligent as any Irish and I'm sure seeing him in a shroud or coffin would have sufficed. And the unofficial version of the execution would seem to have made a tyrant into a martyr all over the Sunni world. One does not have to be opposed to capital punishment (as I am and many others) to feel this dreadful display is another serious mistake in President Bush's so called "war on terror". That terrible video will be all that most children will ever know of Saddam - he was looking dignified and trying to pray and his executioners like something from Edgar Alan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum".
Given that most agree with the maxim "the child is father to the man" or the woman, it is amazing how casual we still are about what passes as entertainment on television and the effect it may have on children. Seeing that manufacturers pay to have their wares advertised on television I am presuming they are not wasting their money and that what is seen has some effect on the viewer. Because I cannot bear reality TV shows I cannot set my self up as an expert but many of them seem to involve the denigration of those people who are foolish enough to become involved. Every day one reads of "celebrities" leaving shows early "in tears" or "rage". Are children supposed to think the behaviour on these shows is the right way to act towards their peers?
A great debate has begun about lowering the age of consent to sexual intercourse. Along side is another debate I'm glad to see has begun and that is on the sexualisation of children. As far as I know we are not yet at the stage of having eight to ten year old girls in talent competitions making sexually explicit jerking movements as described in the Herald Tribune recently about an event at a school on Long Island but can it be far away?
I'll admit the descriptions of such antics can be hilarious. In the column "An Irishman's Diary" in The Irish Times on 26th October last, Frank McNally wrote about a dance called in Spanish slang "perro" or "freaking" in English which, as he said, involves "a high degree of male-female body friction". It began in Puerto Rico but thanks to the internet site You Tube has gone global. (No wonder the internet is now favoured by advertisers.)
To quote McNally "the dance comes in two broad styles. The formal style involves the male and female partners rubbing their crotches together. The more relaxed informal style involves the male partner rubbing his crotch against the buttocks ("perro" is slang for "dog") of a female friend, or indeed - this being the informal version - a complete stranger".
And, to remind us of the past, McNally wrote "the Charleston seemed decadent once, after all". A far step from dancing at the crossroads. With any luck at all our teenagers will take part in the dance and not in some sexual revolution. Recently, I heard someone bemoaning the fact that there are now more children born to women over forty in Ireland than to teenagers! Really, it's very hard to decide what is the right age to have a child. A few years ago it was those same teenagers who had babies who were berated. And the abortion rate amongst teenagers has gone down, too, so that can't be the cause of the decreased birth rate - just a change of behaviour. Young people must have their wits about them more than some think.
The baby will be bombarded with all sorts of images from a very early age. Can the baby be protected from those images which cause distress or encourage what could be described as "socially undesirable behaviour? There is supposed to be some watershed on television (9 o'clock, I believe) before which programmes, including the news, are supposed to be suitable for child viewers but this was not my experience on December 30th. Anyway, the internet will have it all.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
