While the body count from last week's tsunami continues to rise, the intelligence level of our newscasts on the event continues to fall. We've gone from reporting on the disaster, to reporting on our financial response to the disaster, to reporting on God's role in the disaster, to reporting on how the reporting of the disaster is affecting our children.
Wednesday morning on The Today Show, Katie Couric (who, when smiling, bears more than a passing resemblance to the creature from Alien) did a segment on how to help your children cope with the disaster. During the segment, she showed a clip of a family sitting together on the couch watching coverage of the tsunami* on television and cringing together as only a family that's shared a car with grandma after an MCL bender can cringe.
Katie's guest went on to say that talking with your children is a good way to help them deal with the disturbing images they've seen. They also suggested having the children do something constructive to help the victims, such as running a marathon. (Or was that a bake sale?)
As expected, I, of course, have a better idea. (Duh. Why else would I be writing this?) Are you ready? You may want to write this down: If you want to protect your children from the harmful effects of watching coverage of the tsunami, don't let them watch coverage of the tsunami!
As they say in the Guiness commercials, "Brilliant!" It's not rocket surgery, people. Hell, it's not even brain science. It's just common sense. A commodity which, unfortunately, seems to have washed away as a result of our own collective psychological tsunami.
*I can only guess it was coverage of the disaster, as they didn't show the TV screen. For all I know, it could've been that scene from Alien when Katie bursts out of John Hurt's chest.
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