Kids' Beat - regulation of video games industry and Presidential candidate John McCain visits Yale

Reason, Feb, 2000 by Michael W. Lynch

Date: Tues, November 30, 1999 1:02:30 PM

From: mlynch@reasondc.org

Subj: Threats to Sanity

The sign at the door said, "Ten Critical Threats to America's Childrens" (sic): I would spend the next 45 minutes at the National Press Club listening to the ramblings of third-tier cheerleaders for more government spending.

Arnold Tanis, a pediatrician, had the most to say. He stood at the podium, his shoes collapsing on their inner heels, as he read haltingly from his prepared text. He fretted about parental responsibility: "No one wants to accept responsibility in this country."

He stressed the importance of teaching self-esteem. In the same voice I imagine he uses to calm the fears of his 2-year-old patients, he said every child, no matter how bereft of talent, has a reason to feel proud. "Look, you put on both shoes of the same color," he offered as a way adults could make a child feel good. For mothers, he noted, breast-feeding can be a source of pride. He ended his remarks by telling us we should heed the words of great Indian chiefs, including Chief Seattle, who is famous for something he never said. In the question period, Tanis said we should give children the vote.

It was so painfully obvious that the five speakers had no news to offer that by the time they shut up and opened the floor to questions they were met with skepticism that bordered on hostility. One guy challenged the claim that it's a dire sign that one in two children has access to guns. The questioner said he grew up with access to guns, used for killing deer, and that this posed not the slightest threat to the larger society.

Someone else questioned the complaint that one in five kids lives in a family receiving food stamps: Doesn't this show that we are already addressing the problem of hunger? Yet another fellow, obviously perturbed at having wasted his morning at this press conference, said that for almost every one of the 10 so-called threats, things are already getting better, not worse. He asked, reclining belligerently in his chair, if this didn't show that we are already on the right track.

In response, Tamara Lucas Copeland, president of the National Association of Child Advocates, allowed that there "were a number of positive [trends] that we didn't address." But, she added, "We can't let the positives overcrowd the negatives."

We certainly wouldn't want to do that.

Date: Thurs, December 9, 1999 6:28:43 AM

Form: mlynch@reasondc.org

subj: McCain Stumps in Bush Country

The room was poised for a maverick attack: Sen. John S. McCain (R-Ariz.) was bringing his presidential campaign to Yale's Silliman College, one of the school's 12 residential colleges, where he was scheduled to appear at a Master's Tea, an intimate gathering of 350 or so Yalies. Entering the building, I passed four Bush enthusiasts holding signs that read, "Bulldogs for Bush" and "Yale is Bush Country." Forty minutes before showtime, a long line was forming. I queued up, before recalling that the press doesn't wait in lines. I was soon settling into a second-row center seat.