Three Way News

Your Source. For everything. Really.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Rude news

Cleaning out my drafts, vol. 1.

This is 8 days old, but awful enough not to give up on. WCCO ran a "news" report about teaching children manners. The report was awful for at least these four reasons:

The report is clearly a video news release. WCCO ran it to save some money. The report is really an ad for etiquette experts to parent your children for you.
The item is supposed to be about "connecting with kids". It's got nothing to do with real kids or real problems. How many 9 year olds out there are really concerned about which fork to use? For those few, run The Etiquette Song instead.
It's bad parenting. The advice for busy parents with lots of disposable income was to shuffle their kids off to yet another class where strangers go about the hard business of raising your kids. Here's an idea -- model good behavior for your children and generously reward good behavior with praise and attention. Then you don't have to pay an etiquette expert to create rules for you.
It reinforces the fraudulent notion of an meritorious society, where one can be admitted to the highest classes and innermost circles if one simply demonstrates the elegance of good manners. It's not true. Read Paul Fussell for a quick primer.

I don't know if I'd be more lost at a formal dinner party or a line dancing demonstration at a gun show. At least the boot scoot shuffle provides some low-impact cardio. Especially if you have to dodge sporadic automatic rifle fire.