Word: beaverisms
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...Turns out, some have. In order to meet the standards imposed by the Children's Television Act of 1990, a number of local stations around the country are claiming that many Saturday-morning cartoon and kiddy shows, including The Jetsons, G.I. Joe, Super Mario Brothers and Leave It to Beaver, are "educational" in nature. In a report prepared by the Center for Media Education in Takoma Park, Maryland, consumer groups charge that these stations are skirting the law's intent to upgrade children's TV programming by lumping all programs into vague categories such as "programs specifically designed for children...
This gloomy and roughly powerful novel is not a politically correct sermon on cultural diversity. There are no heroes of tolerance here, native or otherwise, although Vollmann grudgingly admires Samuel de Champlain, the stodgy soldier who founded Quebec. French lay explorers craved beaver pelts. The priestly black gowns wore hair shirts and spiked girdles in self- mortification, and lusted to harvest souls. They strove to break down native sexual and religious customs, but, as Vollmann tells it, were more tolerant of the Indians' prolonged and joyous ritual torture of captured enemies. Tribes sold their souls (literally) as dearly as possible...
...telling peculiarity of the family-values issue that it is so often framed in visual memories of television shows. Many Americans conjuring images of an earlier family ideal think of Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It to Beaver or The Donna Reed Show. They may even think that family values are something enacted in black and white -- the home returned to after school, the milk and cookies, a rustling of Mother in full stiff skirts. Americans almost never cite books as aide-memoire or illustrations of family values, perhaps because the TV sitcoms of American childhoods tended toward the sunny...
...1950s and '60s, TV broods were happy, homogeneous, parent-dominated units, unburdened by any problems that couldn't be solved by a heart-to-heart with Dad at the end of the episode. The era of Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver began to fade during the '60s, but it didn't really end until 1971, when All in the Family presented a more realistic, unsentimental picture of family life than TV ever had before. That ground-breaking series gave rise to a string of untraditional TV families, from Maude (who defied the conventions of TV momdom...
...sincere delivery of that stereotypical singer- songwriter. Brooks pulverizes his songs in performance, putting each one across as if it were Born to Run. He has the brass of Billy Joel but a sweetness of temper that keeps him on the south side of overbearing. All that, and a beaver felt Stetson (size 7 5/8) that makes him look dorky. Deliberately, one assumes...