BLOGS BY BOB

In my last post, I admonished journalists to cover real news and leave Paula Abdul alone.  Today there is another celebrity in the news but this time the story has some substance.  A column written by Mick Hume in Today’s London Times

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/mick_hume/article3857381.ece) explores the Hanna Montana “Vanity Fair” picture spread.  Montana is really Miley Cyrus, 15-year-old daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus of “Achy Breaky Heart” fame.

Montana, with her parent’s permission, posed for some semi-nude pictures for “Vanity Fair.”  Times columnist Hume headlined his article, “Reasons To Hate Hanna Montana.”   I urge you to click on the above link and read his entire column.

Hume observed, “But there is more at stake here than trashy teen TV, or discovering “where Hannah ends and Miley begins”. The furore suggests we are all confused about where childhood ends and adulthood begins. With frequent rows about the alleged sexualisation of children, nobody seems sure where to draw the line any more. An apologetic Cyrus says she thought Annie Leibovitz’s pictures would be “artsy not skanky”. But who knows where the art/skank divide might be when such a goody-goody popster as Miley goes on stage dressed like a “saucy” St Trinian’s girl?

The problem lies not with children, but adults who have lost a clear sense of what it means to be a grown-up in a world of kidults, adultescents, mummy’s boys and big babies. I thought the most “revealing” Vanity Fair picture was the creepy one of her on her 46-year old father’s lap. Never mind the bedsheet, look at him preening in his long greased hair, sleeveless vest and tattoos. As Howard Stern says: “It looks like his daughter is his girlfriend. He’s trying to be hot.” Little wonder that kids don’t know how to behave if adults act like dorks.”

As a parent, grandparent and great-grandparent I, too, wonder what has happened — not to kids, but rather to parents.  Had someone suggested photos like these with either of my two daughters I would have stuffed their film in their mouths, called Child Protection and led a boycott of the magazine.  I simply cannot believe the stupid decisions some adults make with regard to their children.  Bill Cosby said it best, “The family is not a democracy.  Kids don’t get to vote on issues of importance to them.”   Obviously we should listen to our children but it is up to parents to set the values for families.  When the wrong values are set, or if they are set by the children then “Vanity Fair” rules. Unfortunately sometimes the “children” are parents.

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