Moms Talk: When Does the News Cross the Line?

Wars, battles, combat, conflicts, skirmishes, strikes. Whatever you want to call it, people have been fighting for years.  

Regardless of your stance on war (What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again!), they happen. They happen in far-flung places that some of us [me] can’t pronounce, find on a map or spell.

And speaking of things I can’t spell, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, or is it Kadafi, or maybe Qaddafi, or possibly Gadhafi, was recently captured and killed by a group of rebels who filmed the whole thing. This video footage was made public and replayed multiple times on television and the Internet.

In non-human related news, a group of exotic animals was put to death earlier this month in Ohio because the owner evidently released the animals from their cages before he committed suicide. Law enforcement killed many of the animals because they posed a major safety risk for the residents of the town. Images of the dead animals lying on the ground, and some being dragged by trucks, also were shown on TV and Internet.

In non-war but still unsettling news, a 14-year-old girl was videotaped performing oral sex on her ex-boyfriend, and the video went viral on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Never mind that her age made the tape child pornography.

Each time the news mentioned any of these stories, I changed the channel to prevent my children [particularly the 6-year-old] from seeing the images. I didn’t want him to view animal carcasses lying there or a bloodied dictator being dragged to his death.

The 15-year-old is a different story.

As I mentioned in an earlier piece, this  junkie didn’t even know who Steve Jobs was when he died earlier this month, but it’s important to me that she knows what’s going on in the world around her. We discussed the teenage viral video situation, but still there are some images and news that I don’t think it’s necessary for her to see.