It is all our fault and apparently nobody is immune.

My wife’s car has one of those rear entertainment centers. We thought it would be nice to have since when we bought it we knew we would take it on family trips and the bulk of the driving with the kids.

After a while the kids got used to the DVDs we had in the car and if they were good we told them that we would get them a new DVD. They really thought they were top dogs when they got a new DVD, so we started to use that as a reward system. Then one day I was noticing that the kids would laugh during the DVD when it sounded like nothing was happening. Then it hit me, we never actually watched the DVDs. For all we knew it could be some of the most graphic and vulgar things known to man as the video with a nice kids show audio track and we would not have known the difference.

So I have decided that maybe I should start to pay a little more attention to the things my kids watch, and most definitely the programming that I put on for them.

Take tonight for example. I was doing some work while my children where up in the play room and they where watching the ever popular kids show “Dora the Explorer”. I thought to myself “this is this is on Noggin, it’s part of the Nickelodeon family of channels, it’s got to be safe”, but I was wrong. It was filled with all kinds of insane things that seemed cute and maybe even harmless on the surface.

For those of you who don’t know, Dora is this little Hispanic girl with a football shaped head. And that’s about the most sane thing about this show. Dora has a talking monkey that wears shoes as her friend. In the episode tonight, Dora was talking with her grandmother and her grandmother was telling her about making some chocolate treat. And she told Dora that the chocolate grew on a tree and that this tree was her friend and that the tree gave her hugs when she was sad. WTF?!?! And this tree sings with her, yeah the tree sings.

So Dora decides that she is going to go find said singing tree, but she has to check her map to find out how to get there. But for some reason she can’t check the map, you have to check the map and tell her how to get there. Oh and the map talks. Anyone else think that the creators of this show are constantly on an acid trip? Well the map says that to get to this magical chocolate tree that you need to go through the jungle and then to a cave. Say what?!?!

While un-chaperoned laces out and her talking monkey are in the jungle she comes up to a toucan who tells her that there are snapping turtles, snakes and a crocodile in the jungle and that these animals wont let her pass unless she feeds them cookies. Let’s think about this shall we, teaching kids to hand feed wild and dangerous animals. Yeah, I can see why this show is wildly popular.

So maybe feeding turtles isn’t a big deal. And the snakes, while not a bright idea still could be done with some distance and you might be safe. But a fucking crocodile!! Come on.

Then after jungle it’s off to the cave, but not just any cave, oh no no no, it’s a fucking bear cave. Sure, let’s teach our children to go to bear caves. Makes perfect sense to me! The monkey asked what happens if they meet the bear and Dora advised him that they “would have to be very careful”, ya think? Then the monkey and ole football head meet up with a talking iguana, sure it happens all the time. But the iguana tells them that they just have to sing to the bear to put it to sleep. I know that is what they tell you to do in wilderness survival school, to sing and to do so loudly! You know, draw lots of attention to yourself. And they where wondering where the bear was when they got to its cave, almost like they were disappointed because the bear wasn’t there. Of course the bear comes while they are at the cave and they sing it to sleep… yeah.

One of the other episodes had a water skiing bull. In the same show the talking map sent extra point head along with the pronouncing primate to “Pirate Island” where they had to sing and dance for trees so that the trees would let them by. Who sends a kid, even with a monkey to any place called “Pirate Island”?

Oh and don’t forget about the talking backpack and the stealing (and talking, apparently everything talks in this show) fox.

No wonder that the younger generations are fucking stupid. Look at what is (was in our case) entertaining them. Just remember that these are the people who are going to be taking care of us when we get old. You know, WE ARE SCREWED!

Don’t get dead