donny and marie and 50 cent

Saturday, November 10, 2007

donny and marie and 50 cent

Did you see the Osmond reunion on Oprah?

Oh my gosh. It was wonderful. Over a 100 squeaky-clean white-teethed relatives of Marie who still is a little country and Donny ... a bit rock and roll.

I tend to remember myself as having been cool and all-knowing when I was a kid. More Go Ask Alice than Nancy Drew but the truth is I was once young and naive. I did have a 45 of Puppy Love. The Osmonds, god help me, were my Beatles.

My parents, god love them, were not neurotic baby boomers and didn't know that they they should worry about a concept such as puppy love which could then lead to teenage sex and unplanned pregnancy or even worse suicide. No. This was the era right before After School Specials and Oprah and Phil Donahue. Kids were naive and parents didn't have a clue.

Well I do have a clue and for better or worse my kid is not listening to Puppy Love or the even creepier now that I think about it ... Go Away Little Girl or Too Young.

Nope. Tweens and Teens are now listening to hip hop and I am worried. When my son repeats lyrics that have bitch and whore in them, I go ballistic.

So how do I monitor this? I have already moved the computer out of a spare bedroom into the kitchen so I can see what games my kids are playing when they are supposed to be doing homework. Funny how when I walk over to check their progress the computer monitor miraculously changes from Mech Warriors back to a Word document about African religions.

But since I can't stand most of the music they listen to when they are on the computer in the kitchen, I make them wear headphones. I guess this is where I am going wrong. Because unless I hear my son singing along I have no idea what he is listening to.

Now I know they know my values. Values that started when my sons were young and I would put a note on birthday party invitations ... no weapons or war toys please. When they started watching TV it was PBS and then Nickelodeon. I told them they couldn't watch anything with violence and I know they got the message because tv channels were frequently changed the minute they heard me coming. At least they knew what I meant by violence and tried to protect me from seeing it. Now I find I must put a block on shows with adult humor such as South Park or Mind of Mencia. Children do not get irony.

And they don't get how powerful some words can be -- that they are racist and misogynistic and homophobic. But I think my son just likes the rap and the rhyme and the beat. He doesn't get, I guess just like some adults including Don Imus, that some words hurt, a lot. Must I rely on Al Sharpton to monitor the hip hop music industry? Do I need to wait for Imus-like trash talk to get the conversation going in public discourse? Where is Tipper Gore when I need her?

In the mid 80's Gore tried to get record companies to put warning labels on records. She was ridiculed and I probably thought at the time she was stepping on first amendment rights. Now I have kids and I get it. Sure I can try and ensure that my kids only download the clean versions of songs but apparently one can listen to songs on the internet and even download some for free.

Now look, I don't expect my kids to be squeaky clean like the Osmonds. We live in the real world. If they want to drink coffee and imbibe responsibly once they are of-age, I am all for that. And, by the way, that is the extent of my knowledge of Mormonism. But it just seems the real world is a much scarier place than when my parents forked over the cash for Donny Osmond's newest single Puppy Love. It was 1972 and I was eleven.

In 2007 I have an eleven year old and one of his choices could be to download Hip Hop artist 50 Cent's just released new single entitled I Still Kill. Lovely. Okay, I know just like I didn't get into some crazy love affair at a young age because of listening to Donny Osmond, I am sure my son will not become a killer by listening to gangsta rap. Still, I Still Kill ain't Puppy Love.

And so it goes.