45 Hours of TV a Week? Get Real!

Here's a rant from Mr. Educationweak who usually rants at the Winecommonsewer.

So your worthless kids spend more time gawking at the tube than you spend at work (in a bad week with overtime). Not only that but the little twerps are simultaneously surfing the I-Net AND punching buttons on the Gameboy with the Ipod welded to their ears (and text messaging the news about Friday's party to their friends on the cell) .

“These kids are spending the equivalent of a full-time work week using media, plus overtime,” said Vicky Rideout, M.A., a Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President who directed the study. “Anything that takes up that much space in their lives certainly deserves our full attention.”

Well, No, Vicky, it doesnt deserve your attention because it's none of your got dang business. And it's crap, you've been had (or you're making it up) by a bunch of kids who are even now chuckling to themselves about how moronic this study really is.

Plus, your credibility is suspect. Dude, you work for Kaiser, the witch doctor of modern medicine, whose main claim to fame was the invention of rationed health care, from which the modern delusion of managed health care (courtesy of our federally mandated HMO system) evolved.

And golly gosh darn gee whiz, Senator "It Takes A Village" Clinton was the keynote speaker at the press conference announcing the study's shocking results (webcast here). Now there's a surprise.

Even allowing for households where the TV is constantly blaring in the background during all waking hours, it isn't physically possible for any kid to watch TV 45 hours a week. Not even Beavis & Butthead watched that much TV.

Jake & Katie get up around 6:45 AM. They're on the bus at 8:00 home again at 4:15. Dinner around 5:00. They've got homework, gymnastics, Little League games and practice, soccer games and practice, chores, baths, quiet reading time, and then bed by 9:00. If they're lucky they get to watch American Idol twice a week, the Friday night family movie at Casa de las Rocas Grande, and a cartoon after school.

Never once in their entire lives have my kids ever watched TV for six and a half hours in a single day (not once). Further, I doubt that they know any other kid who has watched that much TV either, given that a majority of kids move directly from school to after-school day care.

In the immortal words of the Tim Cavanaugh, I call Boo Sheet on this. I'm tempted to spell it out, too.

I can hear it. I know, I know. But we simply HAVE to do SOMETHING. It's for the children after all.