Debate

Never has a post here caused as much controversy as the one about Thomas the tank engine and friends being dicks. Not so much with the blog-o-sphere, but with members of my family. The post has prompted many phone calls from my siblings.

The second call, from Jim was in regards to my lack of mental filter. The third call was from my brother Mike to tell me he was letting his kids play with Thomas. And the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh call (I am sure there will be more) were all from LawnWhisperer. LW is a little upset at the fact that I said:

“Sure I let my son play with the trains but I don’t want him picking upon the how the trains treat each other on the videos.”

He finds it absolutely ridiculous that parent’s blame TV shows for adversely influencing their kids. He also finds it absolutely hysterical that I could be one of those parents. He pointed out the fact that we grew up watching Road Runner, Tom and Jerry and Bugs bunny cartoons and that we never dropped anvils on each other (Susie from Raising Liam also pointed this out) and that I was the worst when it came to how much time was spent in front of the TV.

He said it was all about parenting, which I know and I got his point after the first phone call and I agree with him. However, it was the 4 or so subsequent phone calls that he made to me to drive his point home.

“Bill, this is LW, I was watching Wiley E Coyote this weekend with the kids and you won’t believe what happened. Luke dropped Kyle off a cliff.”

“Bill, I was watching Finding Nemo this weekend with the kids and now Kyle thinks he can live underwater.”

“Bill, We watched Sponge Bob and now the kids think it is okay to live under a pineapple.”

“Bill, We were watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles this weekend and now the kids won’t listen to me. They will only listen to a giant Rat.”

During each one of these conversations he had me laughing at the different scenarios he would create. They would get bigger and broader in scope. We talked about steroids in baseball and violent lyrics in music. He said, “Any person that listens to Ozzy and goes out and kills someone, was going to kill someone anyway, regardless of the music. They just use the music as an excuse. People got to stop blaming this stuff.”

I told him I totally agreed with him but since I actually posted something to the contrary he had ammunition for a long time to make fun of me. On his last phone call to me about this topic he summed it up.

“You saying that your kids will be mean to each other because Thomas and his friends are mean to each other is like…well let me put it this way. If I were to watch porn it does not mean I am going to get laid.”