New Kids Good But a Tad Crude

It is hard to argue with the ostensible goal stated at the opening of tonight’s “New Kids on the Block: Hangin’ Tough Live in Concert,” an 8 p.m. special on cable’s The Disney Channel. But the show proceeds to present a paradox that is as puzzling as most things involving adolescents.

“We came here to do a job. And that’s to be good role models for every kid in the country and in the world,” says one of the band members in a voice-over while quick-cut video clips show the five young musicians preparing to play a Los Angeles concert on their recent tour.

And a lengthy introduction of the five, with clips and comments about each other, seems to show the members of the hottest musical group among pre-teen fans in the nation are clean-cut, wholesome kids.

On “one of the crazy days” they confess to having, for instance, they horse around having a good old pillow fight. One clip shows the Kids joking innocently with member Joseph McIntyre about the “birds and the bees,” and in another, dark-eyed member Danny Wood confesses that he is nervous with girls to whom he is attracted. Finally, Donnie Wahlberg says that while one may be rich and successful, “If you don’t have a smile on your face, what good is that?”

This is a rock group? They come across more like 4-H Club members.

But here comes the paradox: Once on stage, the band is into its slickly sung and choreographed act that includes bumps and grinds that are far more openly suggestive than the famous hip-wiggling of Elvis Presley that caused “The Ed Sullivan Show” to photograph him only from the waist up.

And this band’s primary audience seems to be younger than Presley’s, made up of girls on either side of the 10-year-old milestone, judging from recent The Kids’ performances.

Would the late Walt Disney countenance such sexual innuendo? This is certainly not the kind of thing we ever saw on Talent Roundup Day, although the band has appeared on the new “Mickey Mouse Club” now running on The Disney Channel.

OK, times have changed and children are far less innocent. But you still have to question whether truly good role models for kids would be quite so imitative of the MTV look.

The special will be repeated Saturday, and Feb. 16, 19 and 22.