Baby Einstein and buying into whatever we're fed

This commentary from NPR is an interesting take on the subject of that gigantic WTF moment in the State of the Union address last week: Baby Einstein's founder singled out for numerous minutes as a true, American "hero." That's quite a lot of valuable speech-time real estate the President gave to Mrs. Aigner-Clark.

Um, what about Katrina?

From the NPR piece:

During the build-up to the Iraq war, the President's chief of staff was asked why Bush waited until September to promote the invasion. He replied, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

Do we want to raise a generation of die-hard consumers trained from birth to buy into war as just another product? Or do we want to raise democratic citizens?

We know what this Administration prefers.

Comments

[Emily]

I still cannot BELIEVE that Bush called out baby einstein woman.

Yes ... let's reward someone whose goal is convince parents across the country that it's good for their teeny tiny babies to sit spellbound in front of a TV set for endless hours, and layer on some bogus debunked research linking their poorly produced videos to infant brain development.

From our President, a pat on the head for mothers everywhere.

[TM]

I couldn't believe that either - it seemed totally out of place and rediculous.
As far as katrina goes, that was a year and a half ago so there might have been someone recognized last year - I don't remember.
Certainly I think we could find someone better than that.

[Ann D]

Meanwhile, up in Canada, the Conservatives have launched nasty Republican-style campaign ads after getting advice from a key Bush political strategist. (We're experiencing political lag -- what you've been through, but with a delay. NOT HAPPY.)

[Graham]

Apropos of nothing, I've noticed that Baby Einstein stuff has a lot of factual errors. One alphabet book I remember had a picture of a sea lion with the words "seal" (wrong, but close) and the Spanish "sello" (completely wrong, that's a seal like on an envelope). If they're gonna call themselves Einsteins, they ought to be smarter.