Lessons From the Baby-Sitter

Even immersed in a much-needed vacation, my commitment to this column is such that my reading list included “The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on Our Children,” a new book by James P. Steyer.

“If another adult spent five or six hours a day with your kids, regularly exposing them to sex, violence and rampantly commercial values, you would probably forbid that person to have further contact with them,” suggests Steyer, a Stanford professor and part-time producer who founded the nonprofit lobbying group Children Now, who proceeds to detail how parents let the media do just that.

Blame it perhaps on the poolside umbrella drinks that accompanied my reading, but I didn’t find the book “explosive,” as the publicist’s notes claim. What ultimately struck me most, in fact, was the title, prompting both reflection on what “the other parent” taught me during my formative years in the 1960s and early ‘70s and the realization that, for the most part, it probably helped make me a better person instead of a more sociopathic one.

Looking back, the original “The Twilight Zone” was one of my most reliable tutors, variously illustrating to be careful what you wish for, that mindless conformity is dangerous, that bigotry is wrong and that it’s wise to carry a spare set of glasses in case you suddenly find yourself alone on Earth.

“Bonanza” and “The Rifleman,” meanwhile, helped drive home the importance of family even in a single-parent setting, the evils of racism and intolerance, settling disputes peacefully when possible and knowing where your pa keeps his gun, just in case.

The other parent repeatedly showed me that you can be friends with someone of a different background, whether you travel the globe together spying for the U.S. government or explore the galaxy on a starship. I also decided it is a bad idea to break the law, especially in Hawaii, because Steve McGarrett and his Five-O team would always catch you.

Reruns of “The Honeymooners” provided insight into the tenuous nature of get-rich-quick schemes and the idea that couples who bicker and fight can still consider each other the greatest. “All in the Family” treated me to political discourse between laughs, and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” offered valuable tips on handling a demanding boss and exercising safety and caution if there is an ill-placed ottoman in one’s living room.

From children’s movies and TV programs came the message that man should respect the forest and its denizens, that lying has consequences and that it is painful to lose a pet--particularly an “Old Yeller” dog that you have to shoot yourself--but that people do and carry on.

There were more frivolous lessons, too, among them that if some stooge tries to poke you in the eyes, placing a hand at an angle perpendicular to your face will thwart the attack. I discovered, thanks to the limited-animation techniques of Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, that it’s possible to be entertained for hours by programs in which characters move very little other than their lips. I even learned that organized crime can be fascinating, although just as nobody ever tried to poke me in the eyes, no one solicited me to join the mob, either.

As for music, I recall being told the answer is blowin’ in the wind, to jump up on the peace train, to imagine that there are no wars and killing and that if I go to San Francisco, to look for gentle people with flowers in their hair.

Such recollections notwithstanding, Steyer’s work shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. He is clearly correct that children’s relationship with media merits discussion, though that debate would greatly benefit from a more dispassionate tone than he adopts or that is generally heard in political and grant-minded academic circles.

The book accurately observes, for example, that media were far less pervasive, intrusive and explicit when baby boomers were kids, though one can argue that not all those changes are wholly negative. Just consider the video market and cable channels that have sprung up dedicated to children’s tastes--a two-edged development, really, creating wholesome viewing options for kids and tempting increasingly harried parents to overuse the TV as a baby-sitter.

Among his most salient points, Steyer focuses on how media consolidation has left companies driven foremost by shareholder value to act as entertainment custodians for children, who are viewed as little more than pint-sized consumers. He also includes an appropriate call for limiting tykes’ media consumption and teaching media literacy, enabling kids to better understand and deconstruct the messages that bombard them.

That said, some of his suggestions are naive or impractical, and he contradicts himself by saying millions of parents are outraged enough to string up purveyors of smut while simultaneously acknowledging that apathy--or more charitably, resignation--has allowed media excesses to mushroom.

Finally, Steyer largely spares the Clinton administration from criticism even though the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which eased the rules governing media titans, was passed on its watch, a noteworthy omission given that one of the author’s then-students, Chelsea Clinton, researched the book and wrote an “afterword” for it.

The media landscape today has undergone exponential growth in the number of outlets available, meaning that children inhabit a world that bears scant resemblance to the one their parents knew.

Yet no matter how much things change, TV and media are invariably derivative of themes that worked before, which explains why so many vintage series and movies--from the recent successful “Scooby-Doo” to upcoming prime-time revivals of “The Twilight Zone” and “Family Affair”--keep being recycled.

Come to think of it, that might help explain why many adults, including parents, aren’t necessarily galvanized by this issue. Weaned on TV and rock ‘n’ roll, they harbor fond memories regarding a media diet that their parents often hated. Moreover, for all the junk we consumed, most of us not only survived childhood but somehow did so without shooting up the neighborhood.

And by the way, kids, though it isn’t quite the same as our parents’ tales about trudging 10 miles through snow to get to school, we did it without Nickelodeon.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.