The penalty was off the field

STEVE SMITH

There were two recent events that highlighted how much kids need

parental supervision and how much they don’t.

On Nov. 21, my son Roy held his 12th birthday party at Vista Park

in Costa Mesa. His idea was to get a lot of kids together to play

football.

Roy had called 15 friends in the days leading up to the party and

13 showed up. On the way to the park, I wondered what role to play in

their game and decided that no role was the best role of all. We gave

Roy four plastic cones to use to mark the field and then left the

kids alone. In less than five minutes, they had marked the field,

picked teams and established the rules. I walked away to help set up

the picnic table.

A few minutes later, I turned to watch them play and discovered to

my surprise and near horror that they were not playing touch or flag

football as Roy and I had discussed, they were playing tackle.

My initial reaction was to stop the game and convert them over to

a safer option. I thought about how I was going to explain to a kid’s

mom how Johnny came to a birthday party with a gift and left with a

broken arm. But after watching them and estimating the possibility of

some serious damage, I decided to leave them alone.

During the game there were a few long time-outs while kids

recuperated from mild concussions or bruised ribs but other than

that, they were fine. Just kidding. They played for two hours. No

parents intervened, and none were needed.

But six days earlier, parents were needed. On Nov. 15, ABC aired a

soft porn promotion for the television program “Desperate

Housewives.” In the commercial, actress Nicolette Sheridan appeared

nude in a locker room (her back was to the camera), trying to get

football player Tyrell Owens to skip his game for a roll in the hay,

or in this case, perhaps a romp in the shower.

The problem here is that the spot was shown just before the airing

of “Monday Night Football,” a show watched by a lot of kids.

ABC got called on the carpet for its bad judgment, but the network

seems to have just learned what trial lawyers have known for years:

It is often better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for

permission.

The consequences of airing this controversial ad were small

compared to the payoff, which has been huge. The spot received more

attention than Secretary of Defense Colin Powell’s resignation

announcement and more than 600,000 viewings of the commercial have

occurred on just one particular website. The commercial will no doubt

bring curious viewers to tune in to “Desperate Housewives.”

“Desperate Housewives” is the latest in a series of stupid shows

meant to keep you tuned in between commercials.

There are several red alerts for parents here, more proof that we

must be more vigilant than ever.

The first alert is that there is now concrete evidence that the

networks don’t care what kids see, or more importantly, when they see

it. This commercial was another ambush; that is, ABC showed something

provocative at a time when parents had their guards down. Unconcerned

about a parent’s right (and duty) to screen images for impressionable

kids, they have decided that surprise attacks work best.

These surprise attacks will increase in number as more and more

viewers continue to leave network TV for cable shows.

Not only did ABC show too much skin, they furthered the stereotype

of weak, sex-obsessed males by showing Owens caving in to Sheridan’s

demands. What he did was forgo his responsibility to his employer for

some casual sex.

There wasn’t much of a role model there for women, either. Did

Sheridan want the athlete to go AWOL to have an election post-mortem

or to discuss Iran’s nuclear potential? No, she was good for only one

thing -- a quickie with a total stranger.

Here’s the message for TV and the rest of the media: Parents care

less about what you show and more about when you show it. Stop the

surprise attacks on our kids.

As more and more people turn away from network television, parents

can expect an increase in the ambushes.

So, parents weren’t needed at a public park, but we were needed in

the privacy of our own homes. Go figure.

Perhaps there is a new TV show here. We’ll call it “Desperate

Networks.”

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(714) 966-4664.