What's In A Word? It Depends Who's Reading It. by Doug Wrenn

What's In A Word? It Depends Who's Reading It.

By Doug Wrenn

February 28, 2007

"Scrotum." In the course of almost 19 years of marriage, "The Better Half" and I have discussed some pretty unique and even outlandish news-generated topics over supper, but this one could have won an award. In fact, it did.

Susan Patron's children's book, "The Higher Power Of Lucky," won this year's (allegedly prestigious) Newberry Medal. Apparently, Newberry is no Mayberry and Lucky is no Opie.

The book, intended for children between the ages of 9 and 12, fulfills a basic writing precept: grab the reader's attention early on.

The first page of the book describes 10 year-old Lucky Trimble listening to a 12-step meeting in which she hears someone describing getting drunk on rum and seeing his dog get bit on "the scrotum" by a rattlesnake. In all fairness to the author, I have not read the book, so maybe I'm out on a limb here, but were the references to drunkenness and the bitten dog scrotum (as opposed to a bitten leg, for example) really that crucial to this story for young kids?

Digging deep beyond the dust, dead spiders and cob webs of my cerebral archives, I can vaguely recall reading about some relatively uneventful characters named Dick and Jane, who were constantly and contently running around and chasing a ball with a dog named Spot and a cat named Puff. (Or was "Puff" the "Magic Dragon"?) Unfortunately, my classmates and I were deprived of more explicitly detailed sexual identification of the heroes of our textbooks, but somehow we managed to discern the males from the females without the need for anyone's genitalia to get bitten by venomous reptiles, as gratuitously regaled by rum-induced drunks.

We are sexualizing our children at increasingly younger ages and then wondering aloud as to why they so quickly turn into promiscuous little friction dummies. Just look at the clothing. Little girls no sooner out of diapers are wearing two-piece bathing suits, hip-huggers, shorts so high that they could be shirts, shirts so high that they could be hats, plunging necklines, plunging backlines, halter-tops or any similar garment that exposes mid-drifts and attempts to accentuate body parts that haven't really even arrived yet. For the body parts that have arrived, they are later desecrated with more ink than the New York Times Sunday edition and are pierced by so much metal that by high school, kids can't even walk past the refrigerator without all the magnets jumping off and sticking to them. And then you wonder why we have such inane media saturation about a dead play-bimbo bunny who bedded so many men that the judge needs a crowbar and a compass to determine paternity of her surviving child, and a newly bald, little bar-hopping brat, with ignored kids of her own, who shaved her head and thinks that rehab, like the tanning salon, is over when the bell rings. Like I said, "friction dummies." They contribute nothing to society but its added decay, and still, some mesmerized zombies with more time than brains still think what these dysfunctional degenerates do is actually riveting and relevant news. Meanwhile, more little confused, messed-up friction dummies are being created in a home very near you.

It's bad enough kids now have to hear why Heather has two Mommies and see how cucumbers can model condoms but now their pets are becoming sexualized in school, too. It doesn't matter whether you cite the gay agenda or the straight but secularist, "If it feels good do it" agenda, the obvious plan is to normalize such depravity so early on in gradually increasing increments that it isn't at all questioned by these kids as they grow older, screw their brains out, ruin their lives and also enter and exit rehab via a revolving door.

I don't buy the trendy drivel that this sneaky smut entices healthy and necessary conversations between parents and kids. I couldn't care less what sewage some writer deems titillating in a steamy paperback novel for adults, but only parents, and not "a village," should decide what they discuss with their kids, and when it should be discussed. This poorly veiled gutter trash only forces the issue on a timetable that parents might not want. For those who invoke the classic defense that parents have the right to say no to this book for their kids, that's pretty lame, considering that kids can get these books at school or in libraries without parental knowledge or permission (kind of like an abortion in some states). And you public school elitists wonder why your credibility is in the same vessel in which the Tidy Bowl Man navigates through choppy blue water when the flusher is depressed. Private schools and advocates of home schooling should give these loopy, liberal public school dolts an award in gratitude for sending them their added business.

Yes, I said "dolts." If they're not dolts then they're duplicitous schemers with an agenda. Take your pick. It's a little late now that some, and only some, schools and libraries are banning this book. Let us review the process. These passages were intentionally written by the author, supposedly reviewed and approved by her editor, and then purchased by inexcusably clueless school and library administrators who were duped into thinking that these books were the cat's meow instead of a dog's swollen scrotum. The author is not the only stockholder of blame in this sordid charade.

One particular rocket scientist, who is employed by a bookstore, not that she has any bias, pooh-poohed the brou-ha-ha about the book in a news interview and cited another author who has written many children's books with sexually explicit themes. Of course. I hear there is more than one aroused and salivating child molester out roaming the countryside too, so I guess that real nifty practice is also justified. Sensing the loneliness of her other foot, Madam Bookseller could not resist the temptation to plant that one in her mouth with room to spare as well. She expounded that as it is tough enough to get kids to read, we should allow them to read whatever they want. Given the success of their research, I am sure that both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine fame and shame would wholeheartedly concur with and zealously embrace that deeply insightful premise. (Paging Dr. Spock…Paging Dr. Spock…Dr. Spock, please report to the padded pediatric room…STAT!)

Contrary to popular belief, a bird that quacks, swims, waddles, has feathers, a flat beak and webbed feet is actually a duck. Only coincidences happen coincidentally. (Whoa! Yogi Berra would be proud of that one!) I don't think Patron lightly dismissed her choice of words. I think they were planned and she got her jollies (and a fairly hefty check) from them. Just like how we were supposed to believe that the depraved mutant who immersed a crucifix in a jar of urine and covered a portrait of the Blessed Mother with elephant dung was creating art, this award-winning sewage is passed off to us as literature, and we, the numb-minded of the great unwashed are supposed to shut up and nod with unquestioned understanding and approval. Newsflash: that odd-looking little creature really is a duck, the Emperor is buck naked, that wasn't art; it was urine and excrement used to desecrate cherished religious icons, and "The Higher Power Of Lucky," is really just a lower version of porno. In the case of one angry, Catholic-hating reprobate, the taxpayers of New York got swindled into funding his venting, and in the case of the other cretin, she was rewarded for her sick fantasy, and in both cases, all because those in charge of making what should have been an obvious and simple decision instead wanted to be trendy, accepted and liked among those noses point in the same northerly direction as their pinky fingers. Common sense? Common decency? Indeed! Ha-rumph!

In another news interview, a librarian suggested that readers read beyond the initial "scrotum" page to get the full gist of the book, which is kind of like saying that if you touch a hot stove and get a first degree burn, by all means, you should keep your hand on the hot stove to fully take in all of the experience of a third degree burn. (All I really care about is how the poor dog made out.) Nevertheless, I'm sure Marx and Hitler would have made similar recommendations to fully appreciate "Das Capital" and "Mein Kampf." The librarian elaborated that later in the story, Lucky (an ironic name) finds her "higher power" and delivers herself from her circumstances.

Circumstances are one thing but graphics are something else. For years and even decades, both quality and decorum harmoniously and effectively cohabitated in the content of children's books. What has changed since then? It's not that the books, music and movies have to catch up with sexualized and desensitized children. They helped to create sexualized and desensitized children while their naive but now-happening parents slept. The chicken not only came before the egg; it created the egg.

So much for the obsolete and endangered ideal of childhood innocence. Opie has left the building.

Sadly, although not surprisingly, this kiddy-primer of "porno-light," despite just being released in November, has already been a top seller.

So's Britney's hair.