Pop Culture Story

Since my retirement I have been spending a lot of my time working for campaign finance reform. How can I help average Joe and Sally citizen regain control of their government? How can we take back our state government from the control of big corporations? I continued to be dismayed at how few citizens, in spite of the recent legislature corruption, still have precious little time to contribute to this cause.

This morning I read how much time and money parents spent trying to protect their children from our popular culture which has now completely taken over our country. (See: ”Non-Drinking Fun For Grads” by Kate Schuman, Wisconsin State Journal 6/5/06). It soon became clear that a significant component of the parents’ planning strategy was to keep their older teens safely confined and strictly supervised within their public high school during a significant portion of their graduation-day celebration. As a former professional institutional youth worker, who knows something about program structure and programming, I was truly impressed with how creatively and thoroughly these parents were in helping the school plan their child’s graduation prom night.

This story made it abundantly clear how parents perceive some of the dangers lurking in their child’s environment ---a culture of alcohol, drugs, cars, young romance and their feelings of invincibility. You may rightly be thinking, “So what’s new?” What is new I think is their increasing feeling of powerlessness, fear and anxiety. Already ever and ever more extended both at home and at work, out of both love and fear, they give of themselves so unselfishly and lovingly. After giving and caring for so long and so deeply for 17 or 18 years, their child’s graduation day certainly is not the time to let down.

What I don’t understand is why more of our retirees, singles and parents, don’t allocate at least a little bit of up-stream time and effort toward working to protect their children and their grandchildren, to take back control of their communities from corporate exploitation and greed. Instead, as citizens and parents, we become more and more complicit and dependent upon the corporate backed and commercially-supported popular culture. Like in our State government, the corporations have literally moved all of what has now become “standard” staples and corporate commodities right into our school houses. This was so graphically seen Schuman’s story.

Her story illustrated, I think, just how desperate and co-dependent parents have become on our pop culture to help them seduce, manage and control their children. The story included the fact that the parents raised over $16,000 dollars to hold one medium size high school prom. While at the same time less that 8% of our citizens check off 1% of their income tax to pay for public campaign financing, which if fully implemented, would take our state legislature back and give it to the average tax paying citizen. In reading this story I had to wonder how much pop culture values and choices has now replaced old time and trusted child raising virtues of building in their child trust, self-discipline, responsibility, self-reliance and common sense.

The $10,000 dollar gift giving bonanza, including Target’s gift to every graduate, clearly illustrates just how much our popular culture is synonymous with our commercial culture and all of its trappings, i.e., “Deal or No Deal, case cubic, iPods, futons, play stations and DVD players. These were just some of the gifts that were given to the graduates. As one student graduate aptly put it, “With all these prizes you might as well spend a night at school.” If all the money raised and spent, the expensive gifts, the corporate sponsor, are not enough evidence to show how the corporations have now hooked both our youth and their parents I don’t know what is.

Certainly the ever-present, all powerful and impersonal corporate giants, like adopted step-parents, are beginning more and more to make our parents feel ever more fearful and co-dependent on corporate influence. This impotence and powerlessness can be stopped. The people can reclaim their legitimate influence both in their home and in the larger community by getting corporate power and influence out of our State Capitol and our schools NOW.