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FWIW --

<http://www.reason.com/0402/cr.ch.teenage.shtml>

Teenage Wasteland

Critics on the left and right falsely portray kids as passive victims of
mass media.

Carl F. Horowitz

Hollywood has become to the right what big corporations are to the left.
When it comes to criticizing popular entertainment, the two targets
coincide, and the differences between left and right dissolve. I vividly
remember the ghastly sight of Jesse Jackson and Bill Bennett appearing
together on CBS’s Face the Nation a decade ago, united in their eagerness to
protect vulnerable youth from cultural pollution.

Two new books, one mainly from the right and the other from the left,
reflect this bipartisan view of America’s young people as victims of mass
culture and mass marketing. But both also contain hints that kids are not
empty vessels waiting to be filled with evil desires -- that in fact, they
and their parents can counteract the antisocial messages decried by critics
like Jackson and Bennett.



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