A parenting issue we cannot ignore

Whenever Hillary or Lieberman bring up the issue of violent video games or internet controls, most of the comments on the Daily Kos run from snide "they don't get it" to "the're pandering to the right".

When a Republican makes some proposal for Net controls, such as Hastert's recent proposal to ban sites similar to MySpace.com we all yell "First Amendment" or point out the technical and social impracticality of the scheme.

We are making a big mistake.  The pornification of our culture and the inability of parents to monitor their kids' interaction is a big issue for anyone raising a child  Your 13-year-old may be 20 feet away, talking with anyone -- and you may not know it.  There was a recent NYT magazine story about a 13 year old, with a webcam equipped computer in his bedroom, ended up being the subject of a large child porn empire -- with him as the featured star, while his parents remained blissfully ignorant of the whole thing.

I know its fun to chortle that Rupurt Muchdoch, the media angel of conservatives, is leading the charge to pornification, but it misses the point.  No matter how distasteful, unconstitutional, or hare-brained these proposals are, they are addressing a real issue.  We cannot ignore it.

My children are grown, so this does not effect me directly, but many of my co-workers are raising children -- and they do have to deal with it. It comes up in casual office conversations. None of these people are nut-cases, they are all upper level scientists of computer professionals.  Last week an office mate mentioned that she is buying a DVD set of Mr. Ed programs ( a decades old sitcom starring a talking horse ) for her 8-year old, because she does not want her watching current programming.

All of us chuckled at the fuss over the NFL halftime show when Janet Jackson gave us a flash of forbidden flesh.  After all bare breasts are standard fare on European TV and their society does not collapse.  There was more to the fuss than that.  Even had Jackson  not suffered a wardrobe malfunction, the rest of the show was gross -- with crotch grabbing and other sexual actions.  It did not bother me, except at the level of bad taste -- but I would not want my 10 year old child watching this.

These are real, genuine concerns to many people.   I do not know of any solutions.  Even China, with a firewall and tens of thousands of full-time censors, cannot keep information from a determined Internet user. We cannot ignore or belittle this,  We must enter the dialogue.