But...I thought he loved me (*sob*)

Yeah, yeah, I've been gone & now I'm back. Whatever. You can't force rants.

So now that school is out, I am free to watch daytime TV. Specifically, feeling myself in an anthropological mood, I thought I'd check out What The Kids Are Watching these days.

Parents: time to invest in a Panic Room, and to seal your younglings inside.

I'm not talking about the cheerful insipidness of the normal fare for very young children: Bob the Builder, Dora the Explorer, Li'l Einstein - that kind of show has always been with us, and frankly, many of us grew up with worse (I hereby exempt Sesame Street up through the mid-80's and all episodes of the Electric Company from any criticism, ever.)

The current thing for the pre-teen and teen set is the school soap. From its origins with the cutting-edge, award-winning (and personally beloved) Degrassi Junior High, the Teen Soap has taken over entire STATIONS and have a veritas that I hope to be falsitas with all my heart - because you would not BELIEVE what these kids are up to.

Remember back in the good ol' days, when a sitcom would have a Very Special Episode in which one of the main characters would be tempted to have sex but then go running out of the Room of Iniquity at the last minute? Most likely these shows would include at least several of the following: 1) A boyfriend (usually, although the female seductress was not unheard of) who seemed like "such a Nice Boy." 2) A Secret Getaway that the teen character had to either lie to be involved in or would outright storm out the door; 3) Dramatic moments of struggling with Teen Conscience, followed by the seductor/tress conveniently leaving the room long enough for Our Hero to Make her/his escape; 4) A teary scene with Understanding Parental Figure, usually containing the phrase "I thought he loved me..."

Now, we have shows in which kids MIGHT agonize over whether to sleep with someone, but it's usually the prude character. More likely, there is sex, and THEN there are consequences, provided you have a show that deals in consequences. There is some beach-looking show on The N in which sex seems to be a matter of course, and the only consequence has to do with the Drama of one character stealing another character's significant other. Famously, the new generation of Degrassi High (again, on The N), has Manny sleeping with Craig (who, by the way, is Ashley's boo) - but the American distributors chose to leave out her subsequent pregnancy and abortion. Another character on the same show - the Smart Girl Nerd - has sex with her boyfriend and chooses to carry the baby to term and give him up for adoption. Another episode deals with an outbreak of - I am not kidding here - Throat Gonorrhea - because apparently kids really do think that oral sex is not "real sex." This stuff airs before 10 pm, people.

Lest you think that this show is some kind of anomaly, let me direct you to the message boards for The N, in which several posters can be seen at any given time decrying Degrassi as "boring" and "lame" and "not hottttt enuff." Teen soaps are big, and once they outgrow Miley Cyrus and Jamie Lynn Spears (way to role model, btw), it's all downhill. Drinking is a matter of course. Sex as a means of gaining power is commonplace. Lying, cheating, stealing, backhanded dealings - all are rampant, and not even the "good characters" are exempt. It's a little too much like the real world, in that morality is hard. But this is TV. Is it supposed to be this real? If you can't get a readily available morality play in 22 minutes on TV, then where are you going to get one?

Parenting (and teaching) is getting a lot harder, methinks.

Now, get off my lawn.