I know two Michael Medveds. As a fellow movie critic I sit with him through screenings and talk to him before the film rolls. I find him kind of a doppelg䮧er. He was a radical '60s protester who became an archconservative, and I was a redneck who became a moderate liberal. One of the Michaels (the one I know best) is a very smart and decent individual. I once watched him let two cars in front of him on crowded Denny Way. I like that in a person. The other Michael is a bombastic and hypocritical talk show host, nationally syndicated from local station KVI. I once, to my horror, heard him take to the air to say that the film Amistad "promoted violence against whites." A few days later he attacked the film on Face the Nation, but on national TV he changed his tune, saying he thought well of the film but smeared a study guide that was distributed along with it. I loathe that in a person. Now both Michaels have teamed up with their wife, Dr. Diane Medved, to write a book.
Saving Childhood: How toProtect Your Children from the National Assault on Innocence
by Michael Medved and Diane Medved (HarperCollins, $24)
Part cultural tract, part "Puzzled Parents" hints column,
Saving Childhood represents the Medveds' combined knowledge of conservative child rearing and observation of the forces intent on destroying that objective. It also, admirably and successfully, pleads for the protection of innocence. The parents of three children, the Medveds are well qualified to speak to the topic. Michael Medved frequently discusses the matter on his show, and writes about it as a contributing editor to
USA Today. He is also the author of the controversial 1992 book
Hollywood vs. America, which in a low-grade feverish way made many of the same points put forth in
Childhood. Dr. Diane Medved is a Seattle clinical psychologist in private practice and a full-time mother.
Saving Childhood is an interesting, often infuriating, sometimes precious tome. It balances its didactiveness (get ready for a lot of poll percentages) with amazing displays of cognitive dissonance and a warm earnestness that's hard not to enjoy. Two-thirds of it alarms and aggravates, while the last third soothes and placates.
In the first 200 pages, the Medveds address what they refer to as "the Assault," a barrage of attacks on children by the modern four horsemen of the Innocence Apocalypse: the Media, the Schools, Peers, and Parents themselves.
There are points both salient and absurd here. The Medveds correctly measure the nation's weariness at our no-limits media and give parents wise cautionary notes about the Internet, movies, and cynicism. Yet they also warn against the potential evils of ballet (only the lithe and coordinated allowed), environmentalism (scares children with doom and gloom), Mother's Day (one day is too restrictive), attractiveness (sets unreasonable standards), the DARE program (makes children afraid of strangers), and time-lapse photography. Don't believe me on the last one? Here's the quote:
"You can't watch a real-life caterpillar make a cocoon and hatch into a butterfly in half an hour, yet on TV nature shows, little kids watch as time-compressed cinematography makes it all flash before their accepting eyes. When children from their earliest years see quick and neat resolutions on dramas and sitcoms, it's hardly surprising that so many young Americans later feel frustrated when their personal projects—in romance, weight loss, or career advancement—fail to produce results as ideal and immediate as those they witness on TV."
That's a lot to hang on a metamorphosing caterpillar.
As with many conservative arguments, there's a DAM (Doesn't Apply to Me) relief valve for every case that the Medveds make. They say divorce is destructive, but DAM, not for themselves (second time 'round for both) or Michael's parents. (On his radio show, Michael has given credit to his father for staying with his mother so long.) Relocating your family is disastrous and should be avoided, but DAM, not when you've got a new job in Seattle like the one Michael secured.
The Medveds impugn the immediacy and accessibility of talk radio. Michael's own show, he writes, reminds him "of the impact of his every word." But Medved's show is frequently peppered with just the sort of double entendres that make a parent cringe when listening with a child. When Al Gore hosted a cavalcade of entertainment figures at the White House last year, including supermodel Christi Turlington, Medved opined, "Christi Turlington meeting with Al Gore in the White House? If you thought he was stiff before . . . uh, never mind." So much for the impact of every word.
The subchapter "Violence Begets Violence" claims a clear connection between television and aggressive behavior. That TV violence causes aggression is, the Medveds write, "clear and indisputable. And contributes greatly to children's departure from what would be their more gentle inclinations." This would be all fine and good if, DAM, Michael didn't admit, nearly daily on his show, to his puzzlement about his own son's fascination with guns. This is a boy who has rarely seen television, yet has a mini-munitions dump of plastic rifles and pistols. How were his boy's gentler inclinations so swayed?
