Iraq Not So Popular In Prime Time. What About Kids TV?

I've been sitting here over the last few days watching HBO's upcoming "Generation Kill" miniseries, based on the work of a reporter imbedded with a group of young Marines during the invasion of Iraq. It's a really good, grunt's-eye view of the invasion, intensely realistic. But I wonder, is anyone going to watch it for seven weeks? We don't even want to see Iraq on the news, apparently, do we want to see it on the entertainment schedule? Maybe not, and the reasons why could tell us a lot about our present please distract me society. I mean, we don't really want to hear about global warming, either, right?

Despite - or perhaps because of - that, Linda Ellerbee is doing one of her Nick News specials for kids this Sunday at 9 ET on Nickelodeon. It's about children directly affected by the war, because they have a parent serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.

As my friend Aaron Barnhart writes on his TV Barn blog,"We also meet kids whose father came home, as one in five serving in war do, bearing the emotional scars of PTSD. There's a whole lot of Iraq in my kids that shouldn't be there, the dad says."

Heavy stuff. Do we want to watch? Maybe not. But maybe if you sit down with your kids and watch, their generation will be able to turn things around, to get our world back on track. Sombody's gotta.

Aaron's piece, mostly an interview with Ellerbee, is definitely worth a read. "At Nick News, we tend to do what we feel is important, not necessarily what we think will sell," she says.

Comments

[Jason]

Of course people will watch Generation Kill. Besides being an unbelievable book, it's not the fluff and bullshit you get from the news. People might be sick of hearing about it, but it's where they're getting the "news." CNN and FOX both have their own agenda's when reporting it.