May 17, 2002 A recent E-mail exchange regarding Jennifer's weight loss produced the following musing: >>Don't ask me why...but I watch  America's children getting heavier and heavier each year and it worries me.<< Well you asked for it, hope you don't mind a diatribe! They sit in front of the tube too much. They're bored. Kids today have everything regulated in their playtime. Toys leave nothing to the imagination. The detail on the action figures and dolls and video games don't give enough room to project their own fantasies onto them. And marketing grabs these poor kids before they can even read, bringing peer pressure to bear at younger and younger ages. When Elvis and the Beatles came to prominence it seemed that the entertainment industry shifted it's whole focus first to teens and now to younger and younger people, keeping pace with the baby boom's children. Parents spend a lot of disposable income on their kids. Teen angst sells and now they're creating angst for even younger folks. So parents pay for the very things that bug them the most- rap music, exploitation of women, violence, hatred of anyone with a different lifestyle, the dumbing down of all culture, all in the name of making kids think they're "cool" because their parents don't understand what they see in their music and culture. Unfortunately the industry is tied up in making huge amounts of money at the expense of robbing the culture of any integrity. Kids just don't grow up with a sense of individuality. I am not a parent but it seems to me that kids have very few creative outlets where they won't feel scorned by the ugliness of peer pressure. The sorry result is that all of society is affected and with each successive generation we seem to slide a bit further downhill in terms of communal intelligence and appreciation of art, beauty, and romance. I don't know what the answer is, I'm not another Tipper Gore or Dan Quayle but I don't think they're that far off base in some ways. The 1st amendment is still essential but when will the music industrialists begin to take responsibility for how they affect the quality of civilization? I know air-conditioning and automobiles make life easier but there must be some consideration for people's brains too.  I know there are safety and emission control standards for the former. How about the latter? Jennifer Leitham May 17, 2002