Speaking about what the kids are watching- I couldn't believe what I was seeing a few weeks ago when I turned on the ABC (Disney) saturday morning cartoons. I watched three cartoons- Lilo and Stitch, Fillmore, and The Proud Family. Here's what I saw:

Lilo and Stitch: the premise behind every episode is [i:a8b66f65aa]bio engineering warfare[/i:a8b66f65aa]. Lilo (the girl) and Stitch (the cute teddy bear alien) are the forces of good. They have a mad scientist type uncle who makes [i:a8b66f65aa]genetic modifications[/i:a8b66f65aa] to a living thing in order to create a new biological super weapon, laughing [i:a8b66f65aa]'because I can'[/i:a8b66f65aa]. Then it's Lilo and Stitches job to battle and overcome this new super weapon in order to restore peace. One subsequent episode made references to the middle east and extolled the virtues of how leaders sometimes have to [i:a8b66f65aa]lie[/i:a8b66f65aa] in order to do their job. Yikes!

Fillmore: is a school setting cartoon done in a classic police serial drama style. Fillmore the hero, heads the 'safety patrol' departement on campus who's job it is to investigate, interogate, arrest, and basically weed out the 'bad' conspiratorial criminal students. It's conditioning kids to rat each other out and get used to the FBI 'safety patrol' types running ramshod all over campus. It has major undertones of [i:a8b66f65aa]Homeland Security[/i:a8b66f65aa].

The Proud Family: the minority show. Characters are black, hispanic, and one outcast ugly white girl. This cartoon is rife with racism and bad ethnic stereotypes. In the premiere episode (which I think I saw) everything was drawn ugly. Many of the characters were ugly and wrinkled, the background is ugly (the colors are drab and grey), and the bad kids are even uglier. Plots varie, but one thing is constant- lots of bickering, back stabbing, themes of not being good enough, and the black characters putting each other down. And get this, in every episode there is a moment when one or more of the black characters is directly or indirectly compared to a MONKEY! For example, in the premiere episode all the minority kids have to [i:a8b66f65aa]'overcome their past'[/i:a8b66f65aa] by learning to play American baseball. Their coach (the dad) implores them to sell more peanuts to pay for their uniforms (and they fail ofcourse). So he gives up on them and returns the next day with his new monkey which he explains can sell more peanuts then they ever could. Talk about blatant racism!

Watching these three disney cartoons back to back, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was left with a sinking feeling. The material was subversive as hell. They definitely want to catch young minds while their still young and impressionable. What's the world coming to?