NAMES IN THE NEWS : Midler Junks TV for Daughter

NEW YORK — Actress-singer Bette Midler won’t let her 3-year-old daughter, Sophie, watch television, eat junk food or stay up late because she doesn’t want her to “be jaded at 8.”

“I’ve got to say we’re on the pompous side,” she said of herself and her husband, Harry Kipper, in an interview in this week’s USA Weekend.

“At first, I thought, ‘Well, gee, everyone’s going to think I’m a jerk.’ And then I thought I don’t care what they think. I want her to have a foundation in things the world considers good and artful,” she said.

Midler said she nixed television because the programming is too violent and the commercials are too sexual.

“We just do stuff together. We do a lot of construction paper, a lot of drawing, a lot of chatting, a lot of dancing around and making up stories and games and stuff,” she said.