Most of G’s shows are pretty good. Dora, Diego and Little Einsteins are good influences.   The themes are noble, the plots full of lessons and good behavior, and the dialog teaches her new vocabulary.   She learns about sharing, how to buy groceries in Mexico, and Igor Stravinsky.   She learns how to strive to excel. G constantly surprises me with new words or questions from her good shows.   We’ll be playing and she’ll go from wanting to fly like an eagle to swimming like a humpback whale; she’ll want to protect her toys from Swiper; she wants to help animals in trouble.

Then there is Max and Ruby.

Let me give you the premise – an incredibly average older sister and her almost-retarded younger brother, they go about simple daily tasks which she can barely complete and he constantly fucks up by doing something almost-retarded like stuffing the circuit breaker box full of gummy worms. No language skills, no problem solving, just a long slow-paced cartoon version of an incredibly bad sitcom where everything gets screwed up each episode.   Its lack of ambition is like quick-sand.   A short-lived comedy series called The State once did a spoof of a sitcom character who’s tag-line was “I’m gonna dip my balls in it!”   This is the kids’ version.   Max is described as being a 3-yr old, and I guess I should take pride in the fact that G is far more advanced than him, cause he never speaks or reasons or expresses much in the way of an emotion.   Not once have I heard G apply a single thing from the show – its simple stupid mindless bad tv.

The worst part is the main characters themselves – they are rabbits, but incredibly fat rabbits.   And they move incredibly slow.   The look like incredibly overweight fat kids.   Fat, slow RABBITS!!!!   Its bad enough that there is an epidemic of fat children with diabetes, but to glorify them is sadistic.

One of the most enduring benefits of going to Princeton was all the people I was surrounded with.   You couldn’t help but grow by osmosis when everyone in every class and at every meal was a pretty bright person.   The roommate of a girl I dated was related to the guy who invented the atomic bomb!   All my and Beckie’s school friends at our wedding were either doctors, doctorates, or computer programmers, and married to lawyers or financial analysts or other doctors.   I have that same synergy with a lot of my coworkers at Ticketmater, who across the board are damn capable people who push me to maintain my position by pushing myself.   There is no denying how you play at the level of the people around you.   So, as a good parent should I not let her watch this show?   I keep hoping its a phase and she’ll get bored with it.