No Room for Creativity

Does anyone wonder that our youth prefer to play Nintendo games?

Children who try to do something on their own can expect to be told, “tear down the tree house--it doesn’t meet adult aesthetic standards.”

Or “someone might get hurt--liability, you know.” Don’t take up photography--some would-be censor will claim you’re a pornographer if you take a picture of one of your friends that they feel is “inappropriate.” A home chem lab--you must be doing drugs.

Try to build a homemade airplane--the city fathers will decree you can’t build that at home, either. Become interested in radio. Thousands like me will plead to help you study for your FCC exams, help build your station, help erect your antenna--and representatives of homeowners associations will demand that you “should move to an industrial zone,” as one recently testified in a city Planning Commission hearing.

Go back to your Nintendo game, kid. America deserves to become a third-rate technical and artistic nation, somewhere behind the former U.S.S.R.

B. CHANDLER SHAW, Granada Hills