When I was a kid, few things were as exciting as getting up to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Darkwing Duck, Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin—absolute masterpieces, every one of them.
My own daughter is now in that same phase, only her tastes skew heavily towards Sesame Street. Every Saturday morning she grabs my hand, takes me downstairs to my computer, pushes me into the chair, and points at the screen, waiting for Elmo to appear, at which point she does a little clap-and-spin dance move. It’s painfully cute.
She doesn’t know how good she has it though. Back in my day, we had to get up at a specific time to watch cartoons in the order chosen by Disney, with commercial interruptions, because that’s how TV worked at the time. Not so anymore. Thanks to streaming services and on-demand video, kids can watch whatever they want Saturday morning.
Thousands and thousands of kids shows at her fingertips, and all my daughter wants to do is watch the same handful of Sesame Street episodes over and over and over.
But while my daughter was clapping along to the Letter of the Day song (which is annoyingly catchy and stuck in my head on a loop all weekend) some other kid was having a very different Saturday morning. He was having, in my opinion, a much worse Saturday morning.
Because instead of watching Pokemon or Digimon or any of the other pocket monster shows, this little dude was standing outside the Niagara Falls Convention Centre, waving around a piece of poster board with the word “corrupt” in big letters above an image of Doug Ford.
As a parent, this image fully bummed me out. Y’know that SPCA commercial with the sad puppies and the Sarah McLachlan song that people find so emotional? That thing doesn’t bother me in the least bit. I could watch that video on loop for hours and not flinch. But this image of a kid spending his Saturday morning at a political rally, in the freezing cold, waving a crummy little protest sign? Heartbreaking. Just a complete downer.
Even though he appeared outwardly happy (a meager smile across his face) you could tell this kid didn’t want to be there. How do I know this?
Because he’s a kid. Because no kid anywhere gives a hoot about provincial politics. Because kids just wanna be kids.
The only reason this poor kid was out there (the temperature in Niagara Falls was -3 degrees that day, by the way) was because his parents were going to this silly rally. He’s probably a good kid and he wanted to make his parents happy, so he agreed to go.
I try not to be a “judgy” parent. To each their own. Parenting is hard and we’re all just trying to get through it. So when I see a parent doing something weird (iPad on the table at a restaurant, really?) I don’t wag my finger or adopt a “holier than thou” attitude.
So it’s with great reluctance that I say this: if you take your kid to a political rally, you are a bad parent.
Your kid only has a scant few years to enjoy the wonders and carefree joys of childhood. They will have decades to be ground into paste by the political machine. Keep politics as far away from your child for as long as possible. Partisan politics is a poison, a plague on society, and exposing your kid to it should constitute child abuse.
Every single plastic bag comes with a little warning label that says “This is not a toy, don’t give this to your kid” and politics should come with the same warning.
Let kids be kids for as long as reasonably possible before infecting them with politics. And on Saturday morning, let ‘em watch some dang cartoons.
James Culis can recite every word of the Darkwing Duck opening theme song. Find out how to yell at him at the bottom of the page, or scrawl a colourfully animated letter to the editor here.