Advertising to Children

I used to read Andrew Sullivan. He's great on torture. Then I stopped reading him, cuz he was so annoying on other things. Today, I added him back to my newsreader. And what do I find? He's currently on a kick making fun of an organization called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, because they would like companies not to advertise to children. He is annoyed they are trying to take away his Lucky Charms.

What an asshole. We don't have TV, so Ari isn't exposed to television ads at all, except for the very rare times he sees them at other peoples' houses. We don't buy him any toy-branded products (Thomas, SpongeBob, Bob The Builder, etc.), and we do not purchase junk food. We are, in short, Stalinists when it comes to protecting Ari (and ourselves) from commercial culture. This is extremely difficult to do, however, especially since commercial culture has so heavily invaded previously non-commercial spaces. The Boston Science Museum is running a Star Wars exhibit; the Children's Museum had a Clifford exhibit and I think has now moved on to Dora the Explorer. All the PBS shows for children are heavily cross-marketed, with characters appearing on toothpaste, underpants, cheap toys, and junk food snacks. More and more public schools are selling advertising space on school grounds. Many public schools show Channel One television, with advertisements.

Television, especially, is a profoundly powerful medium. Advertising to adults, who have experience with it, and understand, at least intellectual, the difference between reality and fantasy, between advertisements and content, is very successful. Advertising to children takes advantage of them, and as far as I am concerned, it is entirely pernicious.

I don't know that the appropriate response to this is legislative or legal -- except in the case of advertisements in public schools, which should be absolutely illegal; most of our over-consumption troubles will go away after peak oil. I think our consumer culture is destructive, degrading, and, because it is wasteful, ultimately immoral. I've responded by turning away from it as much as I can. I am happy with that choice, because I don't mind people thinking I'm kind of a Stalinist, but very few people are comfortable being that out of the mainstream, so I'm not surprised or irritated that organizations are attempting to call greater attention to the problems of advertising to children. For those of us with kids, combating consumer culture is a profoundly moral issue, and not just a question of a 'nanny state'.

There ought to be some way that lefties who are disgusted by mainstream American culture (consumerism, selfishness, wastefulness, careerism, pointless violence and vulgarity) could unite with righties who are also disgusted with it. But, as I've remarked before, many of those righties think I'm going to hell, so it's a little hard to connect.

Anyway, so Sullivan wins the "Shortest Time on My Newsreader" award.