One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four….

Well, let’s see how things are looking for the children in our media, shall we?

1. “Slumdog Millionaire,” with 8 Oscars and a gross of $300 million dollars worldwide has suffered a little publicity setback. Azharuddin Ismail, age 9, is now homeless because his shanty has been bulldozed into oblivion. Rubina Ali, also 9 years-old, who created an indelible character in the same film, barely escaped becoming a part of India’s brisk trade in human trafficking when her father’s asking price of $200,000.00 made worldwide headlines. The family now denies that this child star was on the market. India has not denied that the slave trade in slum children still exists.

2. The Gosselin Sextuplets and their older twin sisters, recently complimented by their Mother as “very good with interviews” will soon have those skills tested…skills that we all know are so critical to grade-schoolers...as the fishbowl existence encouraged by their divorcing parents, Jon & Kate, and sustained by millions of mindless viewers implodes thanks to Fame. The Learning Channel, a division of Discovery Communications, may not pick-up this profitable franchise next season. “Jon minus Kate” just doesn’t have a ring to it.

3. The Suleman Octuplets and their six older siblings have learned that they’ll have memorized a new press release dealing with Mom’s latest medical procedure and suddenly-suspect employment practices. Legions of potential reality show script-writers are frantically doing rewrites while the Internet content providers who are paying for this train wreck try to ignore their culpability in a pending lawsuit.

4. Children employed in the entertainment business are still exempt from federal child labor laws as they have been since 1938.

At least there is one person putting his money where his mouth is…in a nation of 300 million…who is prepared to stand in front of the rumbling battle-tank that is already covered in the blood of innocents.

One person.
Paul Petersen