Chicago Tribune, Aug. 1
… On Saturday, Oct. 2, the kid-friendly Nickelodeon cable channel will go dark for three hours. A graphic will appear on the screen urging youngsters to go outside and play.
… What a great idea. Here’s what we imagine. Thousands of children, blinking, will emerge in the blinding outdoor light, staggering from their darkened television rooms into the yards and sidewalks of every town in America.
Released from television bondage, they are confused, disoriented. But soon they adjust. They realize that unlike what they’ve seen on television, square yellow sponges don’t talk. Rabbits lack a ready store of wisecracks. Superheroes from Superman to Spider-Man do not – alas – save humankind from daily disasters.
Instead, they rediscover the wonders of a Saturday in autumn, in a world unfiltered by the television camera, unsullied by the flash and blare of cartoons. With any luck, the imagination cranks to life. There are piles of leaves to crunch satisfyingly underfoot, or a football to toss. There’s time to find a face in the clouds.
There are no commercial breaks.
Any parent who has grappled with a child to turn off the television and go outside to play will utter a small but fervent thank-you to Nickelodeon for its noble gesture, even if it turns out to be little more than a clever publicity stunt. With more and more kids tethered to the tube and more and more growing sedentary and overweight, it’s a valiant effort.
The parents also may be reminded that televisions do have off buttons. You don’t have to wait for Nickelodeon to do it for you. It could be revolutionary – kids and parents realizing that they can survive for hours at a time without television. Or maybe they’ll just change the channel.
Playing politics
The Guardian of London, Aug. 4
It was easy to find officials at the Democratic convention last week who were darkly convinced that George Bush was about to spoil John Kerry’s Boston party with a well-timed scene-stealer in the war on terror.
So it is hardly surprising that some of the initial reaction to this week’s heightened U.S. terror alert reflects the same suspicion. Within hours of Monday’s announcement of a new “high risk” threat level in parts of New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia, Mr. Kerry’s one-time rival Howard Dean went on the airwaves to voice a concern “that every time something happens that’s not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism.” It was impossible, Mr. Dean went on, to know “how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there’s some of both.”
Whatever their private thoughts, Mr. Kerry and his officials were careful not to be drawn down that road; the warning by Tom Ridge, the U.S. homeland security secretary, was made in good faith, they said. It is, though, a mark of the politicization of the war on terror that an announcement of such a kind should immediately be discounted for ulterior motives and that many will be unshakeable in their suspicion about both its timing and content. …
Hope for peace
Asahi Shimbun of Tokyo, Aug. 2
Rarely in recent history has there been such anxiety before an Olympics. Stories about preparation setbacks and the fear of terror have made headlines around the world. Hostilities continue in Iraq and other parts of the world. And there is no guarantee that the United States and other countries that support the Iraq war will not be targets of terrorist attacks during the Games. It is precisely because these are such dangerous times that it is meaningful to hold a Festival of Peace at the Games’ birthplace.
The International Olympic Committee set up an International Olympic Truce Center in Athens to call for an end to hostilities during the Olympic Games. The city of Athens promoted a peace song calling for laying down arms. At the amphitheater, an ancient ruin in Athens, images of children from many countries calling for a truce were displayed in 11 languages.
Some people may deride such a call as unrealistic in the real world. But are modern people more foolish than the ancients? … Reminded of the wisdom of the ancients, we too hope for peace and an enjoyable Games this summer.
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