Won’t Someone Think Of The Children?

[babylonsister]

http://firedoglake.com/2009/09/25/wont-someone-think-of-the-children/

Won’t Someone Think Of The Children?
By: Eli Friday September 25, 2009 6:01 pm


Just when you think the right wing's ability to freak out over imaginary outrages can't possibly get any more ridiculous(death panels, Obama's fake birth certificate, census data being used to take our guns away and put us all in FEMA interment camps), they go and top themselves again:

An outraged Andrea Peyser writes in the NY Post today:

And while you were snoozing, the creators of American Girl, which is sold by Mattel, got bold. They engaged in all-out political indoctrination.

Snuck into the collection is a doll that comes with a biography that is weird and potentially offensive enough to keep Mom running to the Maalox. Gwen, you see, is harboring a terrible secret.

She is homeless. A homeless doll.

(...)

What message is being sent with Gwen?

For starters, men are bad. Fathers abandon women without cause. She's also telling me that women are helpless. And that children in this great country, where dolls sell for nearly 100 bucks a pop, are allowed to sleep in motor vehicles. But mothers don't lose custody over this injustice. Because, you see, they are victims, too.

ZOMG! Our poor innocent children could be exposed to the fact that there are homeless people! Where will this liberal perfidy end? Good Lord, what if American Girl releases a... GAY doll? (As Peyser helpfully points out, they already have "an African-American doll, an American Indian doll. A Jewish one.")

It's funny how the conservatives' idea of "protecting" children always seems to involve sheltering them from reality, rather than from any actual harm. They don't want children to know anything about homeless people, or gay people, or sex, or science, or anything a Democratic president might have to say, even if it's just "study hard and stay in school."

And yet, when Democrats want to expand a program like S-CHIP that really does help sick and injured children, conservatives are implacably opposed to it. Why is that? Do they really want to protect children from harm, or just from ideas?

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Better hide this book then!

This is a sensitive book about a boy and his dad who live at the airport. Homelessness is not a common subject for any children's book and a picture book on this small family is a daring deed for Bunting and Himler to attempt. They had to walk a fine line to tell us this story. A misstep in any direction would have brought condescension, over-simplification, false cheerfulness or hopelessness and Fly Away Home is free of all those things.

As with any picture book, it's good to start with the cover. On this one we have the dejected father in an airport waiting area with his son leaning over the seat to drape his arms across his father's shoulders. Both are clean, dressed in plain blue (the boy narrator warns often about the dangers of being noticed.) The father's hands hold a large blue bag and beside him on the seat is a smaller one. We'll learn in the book, that these contain their only possessions. In the background are a man and woman obviously waiting to welcome travelers off the flight that may be arriving even now. Not under strictures to be unnoticed, this couple wears bright colors and the woman carries what might be an oversized purse.

To open the book is to get an insight into a counterculture that most of us don't even know exists. The matter of fact narrative by the boy tells us a story of coping with misfortune and homelessness. There is no preaching here, neither does the author/narrator offer a simplistic solution. There is hope here, however. The boy has watched a sparrow trapped inside the airport for days slip out of an open door at the right moment and "Fly away home." We and the boy hope he and his father, as well as the other homeless in this book, find their opportunity to do the same.

http://www.carolhurst.com/titles/flyawayhome.html

[FedUpWithIt All]

2. A homeless doll that costs $95. n/t

[Ineeda]

3. there are certainly more sensitive ways to teach kids about homelessness, IMHO n/t

[Berry Cool]

4. Then again, if you want little girls who really have it good to understand how the other half lives,

you may have to hit them where they live. And they live at American Girl Place.

How much they will want this kind of doll, I don't know. They may prefer not to trouble their beautiful minds with such a thing. But then again, American Girl does have dolls of a Depression girl and of girls who are not white, and they sell well, so who knows?

From looking at their site, the homeless doll is not one of their "main character" dolls. She's a "friend" of this year's "Doll of the Year," Chrissa, a modern-day girl who stands up against the popular girls at school and their tendency to bully the others. "Gwen" is one of the girls she befriends and defends when the other girls ridicule her. Chrissa, who is white, also has a friend, Sonali, who appears to be from Latin America somewhere.

Maybe having such a doll in the mix will get some girls to think beyond themselves. One thing's for sure: the object seems to be to get them to realize that anyone can be a good friend, and that bullying is bad and they shouldn't ridicule kids who are "different."