The Civility Solution

Sept. 14, 2009 Rather than rehash the coarse conduct of music stars, athletes, and politicos reaching some new lows this past week, I’d like to point to The Civility Solution (Sept. '09) the sequel to one of my faves, called "Choosing Civility: 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct."Why? Because we've got major media moments ripe for peeling back a deeper conversation on how this is … [Read more...]

So Sexy So Soon: Shaping Youth Chats With Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D.

August 17, 2009 Last month So Sexy So Soon hit the market in paperback, though my hand-signed hardback by academic rockstars Diane Levin, Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne Ed.D is frayed, highlighted, and worn from full use with youth and parent ed groups ever since its release last year. I broke bread with these two research pioneers at Susan Linn’s house when she hosted all of the … [Read more...]

Shaping Youth Is In the L.A. Times Today, Yawn

August 12, 2009 Well, it finally happened. Full tilt desensitization. I suppressed a huge yawn and a roll of the eyes reviewing Miley’s pole dancing antics at the Teen Choice Awards with a great big ‘meh, here we go again.’ All of the replays of video and trending topics in the Twittersphere landed on me as a great big cynical 'so what' example of the mouse house … [Read more...]

Raising Girls Amidst Meat Marketing: Carls Jr., Burger King Raunch

Jan. 27, 2015 Update:  It's achingly sad that I can reprise my own prose about "meat marketing" women with gobsmacking sexualization and objectification commodifying bodies as edible objects to be consumed, but alas Carl's Jr. is using the same stale crass-en masse trash for outrage baiting buzz in 2015 as they did five years ago.Guess they're consistent in their sexist tripe, … [Read more...]

Digital Data Mining 101: Echometrix Takes Kids’ Pulse

July 8, 2009 Still focused on "child predator" panic on the internet? I'd focus more on white collar stalkers like Echometrix, ubiquitous in far greater numbers, if I were you. Imagine digital tracking of every pop culture cue and kids' conversation in "real time" mode, self-described in their Echometrix blog as "opinion mining and sentiment analysis," to tap the "$190 billion … [Read more...]