Reality TV exploiting our children

Last week, this column broached the idea of silent children, the children who, emotionally, disappear or become invisible in a number of ways. They are physically present, but are discounted to the point where they are, for all intents and purposes, "gone."

This week leads me to deal with another serious subject, also in the realm of child abuse, related to one of my least understandable aspects of modern life, the question of why so many people are fascinated with reality TV.

Somewhere in the rural areas of Georgia, a very lovely and historic state, there lives a family of crude people who are either too dumb to know they are being laughed at, not with, or who don't care, so long as they get the money they are being paid for "Honey Boo Boo."

This show is apparently an offshoot of "Toddlers and Tiaras," a show on which tiny children have apparently been dressed by their parents as ladies of the night.

It's not the specifics of those shows that I want to address here, so you'll forgive me if I slightly erred in the titles. The crux of the matter is that, in the show mentioned, the child being featured is only 6 years old.

I don't suppose there is any way of enacting a law against people promoting their children on reality TV, and I'm pretty sure that the concept of "stage door parents" has been around for as long as there have been stage doors. There are probably even times and places on reality TV where it's appropriate to have kids participating, though the only one that comes to mind is the homesteading show that used to be on, in which the family had some teenagers.

It becomes an ethical issue, though, when the child being exploited is too little to know she or he is being so used, and when the situation is so absurd that the family involved actually makes a mockery of themselves.

In plainer terms, there seems a large gap between a teenager helping his or her family create a farm out of wilderness, and a child of early primary age whose family resembles the cast of "Li'l Abner."

I have an 8-year-old granddaughter whom we are raising as our own. Extroverted and confident as she is, I would not want her appearing on TV or any other media, unless she were playing a legitimate, fictional part. To do otherwise, in today's age of instant access and communication, is asking for problems.

In addition, I would surely not want her to be in a position where she was being deliberately buffooned, either by herself or with other children.

It says something pathetic about our society, that parents will do this, and that we will watch it.

Clyde Davis is a Presbyterian pastor and teacher at Clovis Christian High School. He can be contacted at: [email protected]