"Is it true?" my daughter presses. "Is a grown-up man in the government that stupid and wrong and gross and bad?" she demands to know.
Though I have spent all of my adult life as a journalist in some form, I do not allow my daughter to consume news unsupervised. She may not watch any television or online news, and she only reads newspaper articles pre-approved, placed in context and explained in detail by Mother Censor. While I have made my professional living deeply dependent on the First Amendment, I'm a repressive, state-run Maternal Media Blackout when it comes to my kid.
I'm especially restrictive about stories where parents are violent, vile or publicly wreck their families. For example, she's never heard of the other recent posterboys for Men Behaving Badly, Arnold Schwarzenegger or the recently indicted John Edwards.
Mother Censor says: Thanks For Nothing, Rep. Anthony Weiner!
Somehow I have been able to protect her from a lot of news thus far. Somehow, I was not able to shield her from the news of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner's, um, 'Weinergate' tweets.
Lest you think my daughter's news blackout has left her ignorant, I have told her about all kinds of news events and we read lots of appropriate stories, explored lots of news footage and we have had numerous discussions about what is going on. It's just that I don't let her experience the news raw, unattended and without guidance, context and her own personal Truth-squad. We've had all the talks about all the topics a girl her age should know about. She would not allow anything less, curious creature that she is.
I have taken her to classes I've taught on the legal and ethical implications of teenagers sending naked pictures of themselves and each other via cell phone (known as "sexting"); and I have shown her less racy but still inappropriate photos students post on Facebook as examples of what not to do. She is appropriately horrified and understands the permanence and power of posting online and how you cannot ever un-ring that bell.
Can you vaccinate your kids from creepy news?
You think you can inoculate your kids. You think you can vaccinate them by offering your take on information so when they hear it at school they process it through the filter you've provided. That is what you hope when your 4th grader comes home from school and asks if the following absurd story could possibly be true.
"Did a grown-up man in the government show his private parts?"
"Mom, in school they said that a grown-up man in the government whose name is a bad word had done sexting and showed his private parts," my daughter reported. "Just like you said not to for kids. I was surprised a grown-up didn't seem to know that was wrong. I don't believe it. Is it true?"
She is, of course, talking about New York Rep. Anthony D. Weiner who held a press conference Monday, admitting he took pictures of himself and in a new media comedy of errors he sent the picture to a female Twitter follower in Seattle, mistakenly thinking he sent it as a private message but, alas, accidentally posted it for all to see. He says he "panicked" and then made up a story that he'd been hacked by a conservative blogger named Andrew Breitbart.
The press conference was painful to watch. Rep. Weiner is married, so he made the obligatory tearful apologies for the pain he's caused his family; oh and then he admitted he lied some more about the photos, and then, of course, there were further disclosures of more online indiscretions with about six other women, some before and some after his marriage. He appears to have taken more pictures of his body and on and on. You get the drift. Regrets? Congressman Weiner's got a few.
"Is it true?"
"Is it true?" my daughter presses. "Is a grown-up man in the government that stupid and wrong and gross and bad?" she demands to know.
"Yes," I say. "This one seems to have admitted he is all of those things."
We discussed how people can make terrible, terrible mistakes and be sorry forever. She asked if he had "a problem in his brain," and I said yes, there, too.
"Does this mean he's going to be put in jail?" she asks.
"No, honey. This means he's going to be put on the Supreme Court."
To read more stories of men in power behaving badly and how social media like Facebook and Twitter can wreck marriages, check out:
