Barney’s Strange Love

Or:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love George Bush

By: Speaker

     I often prop myself up on my elbows and stare out my bedroom window and reflect on the world.  Most of the time when I’m in this deep thought I wonder what went wrong.   I wonder why bad things happen.  Why are there bad kids?   Why are there shootings?  Why are more and more people taking mind-altering drugs?  Why will we probably see in the next eight years the first president to be impeached for stupidity?  Is it because as Lieberman says our children are accosted by a barrage of violent and sexual imagery every time they turn around?  Is it because kids are watching so-called “garbage” like South Park, The Sopranos, Pulp Fiction, and 20/20?  Is even so-called “Children’s Television” safe anymore, with Burt and Ernie being “Life-Partners?”  Is it because kids today are forced at an earlier age to deal with complex issues and problems like death, premarital sex, drugs, divorce, homosexuality, and Michael Bay films?  Is it all of these reasons? 

Okay, so what about all this sex on the television?[1]  I agree that it makes sense (if you’re hopped up on paint fumes).  I mean, monkey see monkey do, right?  Only we’re not monkeys anymore.[2]  I believe that we don’t bombard our children with enough sexual and violent imagery.  When Lieberman says that these days movies are getting worse and worse, I tend to agree with his statement.  Except that the movies he points out as bad, I think are great.  It’s excrement like A Knight’s Tale and Tomb Raider and Pearl Harbor that I think aren’t worth the celluloid they’re printed on.  No, the movies that Lieberman says are garbage because they’re too “violent” are great, I love them.  Those are the movies with good directors and good character development and substance.  The violence and sexual imagery is what tells the story.  I think it’s a contradiction to herald a legend like Kubrick for his artwork, which is both sexual and violent, and then to tear down an upcoming great like Tarantino or wonderful satirists like Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  I love Kubrick, Tarantino, and South Park.  I even grew up on violent games like Doom and Duke Nukem, and also shocking movies like Natural Born Killers, The Exorcist, and From Dusk till Dawn, and I turned out fine.  I haven’t killed anyone yet, and I may just end up actually contributing to society!

     Okay so if it isn’t the movies, is it that our kids face things too early? Well, 150 years ago, Daddy would often leave for several days or weeks and young boys had to be the “Man of the House.”  Also, young girls had to grow up because people got married a lot younger back then.  Often, kids would see someone get shot or even witness first hand, right out in their front lawn, cows doing it.  Right out there on the front lawn, plain as day, some old bull mounting poor ole Bessie having a go at her.[3]  Kids in the 19^th century were treated like young adults, adults who had a lot to learn.  They were still kids, they got whooped, but if they had a serious inquiry, like a question about sex, their Paw would take them outside and point to the bull and Bessie.  Now they’re treated like babies who are too precious to know what the world is like until they leave college.  Parents are too embarrassed to confront kids about anything, so they concoct lies about storks and cabbage patches because they don’t want their kids to be corrupt.  And I’m not talking about just five-year-olds here.  I’m a college student and I live in a dorm.  We pay for cable with our housing costs, and when I moved in we got HBO, Cinemax, and then a bunch of crap channels.  During my second year on campus, we lost HBO and Cinemax because some “College Student’s” parents didn’t want them to see all the naughty things on the pay channels.[4]  They didn’t want their baby to be corrupted by television in College!  I just think this is ridiculous.  There are five package stores within driving distance, one of which is in walking distance, a number of bars on the strip within walking distance, Fraternity parties every weekend, and a fully accessible Theatre Department in the middle of campus, and they don’t want their little babies to be corrupted by HBO and Skinemax.  People can just be daft sometimes.

     Okay then, if its not because they find out things too young, then what is it?  I think that the actual cause to all of the world’s problems can be summed up in three words:  Barney the Dinosaur.  I’m not saying that this giant purple version of George W. is actually the cause of all of our problems, just that he embodies them all.  He represents what is wrong with this nation, namely I think that as a society as our problems have grown, we have begun to baby our children more and more, and I think maybe, just maybe, a lot of the problems could be solved if we didn’t baby our kids, and ourselves as much.  Think about it, 150 years ago when kids were treated like young adults and had more responsibility and people weren’t embarrassed to teach them about things, the outlaws were doing the shootings, not the kids.  Now we have outlaws and kids shooting people.  Now that we have been hiding our children from the world, they don’t know what to do when they actually enter it.  Also they don’t know what power they have when they hold an actual weapon because their parents told them if they touched it they’d be spanked instead of saying, “Now look here Johnny, see this here gun, it kills, don’t touch it,” and teaching them more about it.  So now we have kids trying things they don’t know much about, and we have kids shooting people.  We have kids who are growing up to become criminals, drug dealers, and scientologists.  I think if we would just stop babying ourselves and if we would stop letting ourselves “not touch” issues with kids and just teach them from day one, then a lot of problems could be prevented.  I think Barney’s strange love of everything portraying the world as perfect is more dangerous than South Park will ever be. Just check any of the number of intelligent essays on www.jihad.net.

     I bet that you’re asking yourself right now, “What can be done about this heinous problem?”  Well, this is a rather difficult task because nothing could solve this atrocity short of a complete paradigm shift of everyone in the United States of America.  I wish I could just snap my fingers and have everyone simultaneously reach enlightenment, but sadly, this cannot be.[5]  So, my proposition is to fix this crime against humanity within four years.  Legislation shall be passed for the next presidential election putting an age cap of 30 on all politicians.  No one over 30 may run for office unless they are the incumbent candidate.[6]  Not only will this force people to have more respect for young people once they are running our country, it will also force people to revamp everything to get ready for our new young leaders.  People constantly say we have to reform education because our children are our future and they will one day run our country.  The only problem is that it’s so long until they will be running it and it costs too much money to reform education, so they overlook the problem because by the time the people affected by the poor education are in power, the current leaders will be dead.  After my plan, the government will obviously give education an overhaul in order to prepare the youth for running our country in four years.  They almost have to, because if they don’t, then we’ll be in a lot of trouble.  We will allow children to grow up in their teens instead of their late twenties like they are supposed to. Also, once they are in power, they can actually make changes.  One problem with politicians is that they are all concerned about re-election and they won’t take risks.  Most politicians when they are young are very ambitious and are risk takers. When they become older, they become very grizzled and don’t think that risk taking is practical.  If we get them in office when they’re just out of college, then maybe they’ll just take the risks and turn our country around.  They could put a stop to wastes of time and money that never worked in the first place like SDI, the drug war, and Dianetics.  The spokesman for this campaign will be the famous writer of Clerks and Dogma, Kevin Smith.  Due to his foul mouth, this will serve the purpose of teaching people that vulgarities are not bad.  It will teach them that they are just normal words that have been discriminated against for far too long.[7]  All of this will insure a vastly improved quality of life.  Our education system will be improved.  Parents will be forced to allow their kids to grow up earlier and talk to them, there by decreasing teenage births and school violence.  The young people in office will no doubt stop the drug war, allowing for people to not be scared of being arrested and allowing them to admit their problems and go to rehab.  This will save tons of money.  Drugsense.org states that on the drug war alone, the federal government will spend 19.2 billion dollars and the state government will spend 20 million dollars just this year.  It will prevent nearly 4,000 new HIV cases in a year by lifting the federal ban on the needle exchange fund.  Also, instead of sending addicts to jail they can go to rehab, solving our corrections facilities’ overpopulation problem by preventing 1,532,200 arrests and about 236,800 incarcerations per year (http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm).[8]  This will also get rid of the black market and cut down on drug related violence and dealers going directly to kids.  Again this will also solve other problems and lead to a slippery slope of goodness and positive changes.  This plan will ultimately make the world a better place and rid it of all things abhorrent.[9]  Can’t you see how much better the world would be if my plan were instated?  If only it were possible.  Oh well, I guess my only hope is to hope people come to their senses naturally.  Or maybe I could just sit down and watch hours of Barney episodes with hopes of it brainwashing me.  Maybe it could teach me to stop worrying and to accept the world as it is.  Nah!

 Works Cited

The Jihad.2001:http://www.jihad.net/.

Drug Sense.Drug War Clock.2001: http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm. 

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