Because the girl with the daisy is more artistic?

Because it's likely to give children nightmares.

I would equally object to my children's seeing any of the pro-life commercials that feature bloody limb fragments.

What, unlike 90% of the rest of broadcast TV, to say nothing of TV news? Give me a break.

Hrm. It is a bit intense and unexpected, and if I had kids who had seen it just by chance, I might be upset, not because they saw it, but because they weren't prepared for it in advance.(I know there are a lot of things you can't prepare kids for in advance: sudden death, puberty, accidents, whatever. But I think sometimes it would be nice to be able to discuss with the kids what they are about to see before they see it.) The news is generally cradled with frames and talking heads, and while it can be as graphic, I think most people have a sensitivity buffer when it comes to the news because of how it is framed and presented. But I think that same sensitivity buffer needs to get pulled down now and again so that we are spurred to action by truly horrific things.

I think CNN could have showed it later in the evening perhaps...

It was very impactful. I found myself tearing up...and imagining the faces of all the people round the world who go through that. I also found some of the comments mentioned chillingly callous or just willfully belligerent.

Holy shit.

I mean. Wow.

They can't run that on television. See, because if they did, I might start to have hope that it was a redeemable medium, and I might start watching it again.

I am more comfortable believing they are soulless, heartless bastards out to make a buck. Don't try to change my worldview here.

Crap. All I can say is: crap. Insert shocked voice here. I'm with Ben on this one--if they ran that on television, they might come dangerously close to restoring my faith in their knowledge that the power of the media might actually be used for good.

I mean, I've seen things that kick ya, but this didn't just kick ya in the teeth but in the gut. As a friend just pointed out, we don't have a problem with landmines in the US. (Well, depends. Been to former munitions dumps recently? We've got one in the suburbs of DC, now a lovely little community...) But we could use our power for good, I think. If the US raised its voice about landmines, too, who knows...

Don't know if that commercial would actually prompt such, but it's definitely chilling. Frankly, though, I think the danger with it is that the intense visceral reaction prompts a backlash: that wouldn't happen here! And people can turn away in relief, shoving down their original heart-rent reaction. Randomly (while recovering), I wonder if this reaction would change if it were kids playing soccer--same everything--but the voices were all in Korean. Or Hindu. Or Afrikaans. Something that says: these kids look like your kids, but this is "someplace else"--yet the parents' reactions are just like what you'd feel. So you're not seeing 'yourself' on the screen but really someone 'who loves their kids just like you'. Does that make sense to anyone other than me?

Got to give people a little distance, or they'll just run away, unfortunately, because that commercial really *hurt* to watch.

It's just because it makes them feel bad.

Don't tell me children should be sheltered from it. They see fictional representations of much more intense violence every day. The ad is very restrained in that regard.

The thing that makes them feel bad is not the blood. It's the realistic depiction of human emotion.

Violence, hell: If CNN *did* run the ad, a significant fraction of the calls they'd be flooded with would be from soreheads taking them to task for showing United Nations propaganda.

James Lileks is probably writing a column about it already, just in case.

What the people quoted in Kovacs' column seem unaware of is the reason that this ad is directed to the US. For the last twenty years the US has, through the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations, refused to join in any of the international resolutions against the use, manufacture, or sale of land mines. In this respect it has few peers. If memory serves, that short list is made up of ideologically similar places such as Syria, Libya, and North Korea. (And my failing memory may be leading me to malign Syria.)

The reason cited in the halls of Congress for the last twenty years comes out of the Pentagon. Without land mines, we can't guarantee the safety of the Korean DMZ. Therefore the US is doing what it can to keep the use of land mines from becoming illegal in the international stage. It's only coincidence that we also sell the suckers to other countries.

That this state of affairs persists is one thing that sickens me about both parties, and all the mentioned presidents. Even if this was a case of Congress overriding presidential action, the bully pulpit should be in use to make the American public aware of that fact. Instead, most of the people in this country who don't actually read the news are unaware of the stirling company we are keeping in this area of international relations, and can't understand why anyone else in the world would be giving this country the hairy eyeball.

Did anyone else notice the "Daily special offer" at the end of the Worldnet Daily article? Is it just me, or is that also disturbing?

(Can't comment on the video. My computer has little video viewing capacity, and is utterly sound-free. That will ahve to wait for tomorrow.)

I would advocate it shown later in the evening. Powerful stuff.

But do I think Americans should be shown what the rest of the world has to deal with? What most of the world has had to deal with for a very long time?

Damn straight.

I am very grateful I live where I do. And I am very unhappy with the current administration for a variety of reasons.

"Oh nonono, CNN can't possibly show this, we wuv childwen so vewy vewy much, we could NEVER show then getting hurt like that, nuh uh" I'm sure that's the reason, this IS CNN we're talking about after all, nothing but the purest motives ;).

Because of the chilllddrreeeennnn.

If they were to show Brandy Chastain in her sports bra, scoring a goal and then getting blown up by a landmine, it would be, well, network television. They should have a extended trauma room scene afterwards too.

I've been at that soccer game, or its moral equivalent.

I think the ad should run, but as suggested above, later in the evening. Yes, the blood and gore is relatively slight compared to any random episode of CSI. But it's not something I'd want my nine-year-old to see; kids can handle a good deal of physical violence, but (speaking for my kids, anyway) they are far more vulnerable to emotional violence. If this ad is aimed at people who presumably have some chance of changing this administration's appalling record on landminds, they want to reach me, and other adults. Rebecca isn't their audience.

(I'd add that advertisements generally pop up unannounced; if you're letting your small children watch "X-Treme Soccer Explosions," in which Brandy Chastain, in a sports bra, gets blown up and then taken to the trauma center, at least you have some idea of what you're exposing them to.)

wake up people. if it's on the internet, your kids have already seen it by now.

they also have probably seen rotten.com, etc...

the true responsibility parents have is not sheltering kids from information so much as offering CONTEXT and PERSPECTIVE. "no suzie, i don't think this is ever going to happen to you at your school...but i think that's the point. because it does happen every day in some other countries to little kids just like you, and i think the people who made the movie think that's not right. what do you think?"

you know one of the things that might happen when a kid sees this movie? it might make him/her turn to his/her parent(s) and say, "so why DO you grownups allow these things to be left lying around, huh? answer me that."

if i had a kid i would hope they asked questions like that every day, otherwise i would feel like i had failed as a parent.

Um, guys? How many children are watching CNN?

It's only coincidence that we also sell the suckers to other countries.

Does anyone know who exactly is manufacturing them in this country? Does it in any way tie back to Olin Chemical or Bradley? I intend to find out exactly where the money's going (at least so far as it is public record), but no point in reinventing wheels.

While I doubt it's the reason they won't show it, it is, critically speaking, a terrible ad. If I were their employer and they offered me this ad, I would fire them. It's a minute long. It spends a lot of time (and attention span) on unnecessary exposition. Then, even after the point has been made, it lingers and lingers. Compare this to a typical ad spot of 15 seconds. It could the same thing better in a quarter of the time.

And it has a terrible tag line.

You mean people should be forced to realize that the rest of the world isn't sweetness and light and bunnies hopping through the fields? Oh, you horrible monster!

Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with it. Shock is all that ever grabs people's attention any more, and if it makes some people wake up, where's the harm? I don't think this is any worse than what flooded every television network after 9/11, and people had no problems letting their kids watch that.

Heresiarch, it's aminute long because it's supposed to make you very, very uncomfortable. It's not supposed to make you think "land mines are bad" -- that's easy. It's supposed to make you flash on it all day the next day and the day after, and feel bad every time you do it.

Selling a brand is a really different thing from making people think. One of the mistakes politicians often make is using ads that look and feel and act just like product ads. You may be able to win one election with them, but you haven't done anything lasting. Remember how clunky looking a lot of the Republican propaganda has been? They didn't get their big lies across in spite of that -- that was a deliberate part of a multi-pronged campaign.

Which is something people ought to bear in mind.

Because it's a political advertisment, which probably isn't appropriate as a public service announcement? I 100% agree with the ad, and I hope it gets on television, but I really, really, really don't want to see PSAs politicized.

Randolph, wearing his conservative hat, for once.

I wouldn't mind my son seeing this ad. He's ten. Yes, he would be upset. And we'd talk about it, and then he would understand why it was an important ad. Then he would probably want to do something, so he'd probably do a current events on it at school and write some emails to our US Reps and Senators.

Maybe I'll talk to him and if he's interested, we'll watch it together on my computer tonight. Then I'll let him post his thoughts on it here, if he wants, and in a letter to CNN and some of their advertisers.

Truthfully, he would be unlikely to stumble across it without myself or his dad being there. There's not a lot of television or web surfing that he gets to view unsupervised. He's not allowed to just watch network or cable news channels without one of us watching with him. We don't want him misinformed, after all.

"Did anyone else notice the "Daily special offer" at the end of the Worldnet Daily article? Is it just me, or is that also disturbing?"

I assumed people knew that WorldNetDaily is a wingnut site, with a specialty in UN-bashing. The fact that they're running a story about CNN refusing to take that ad should be taken as a boast.

Unrelated story, but pass this around: Ashcroft blocked the FBI from acessing a database of gun purchases in order to protect the "second ammendment rights" of suspected terrorists. I kid you not. The FBI had a list of 1200 suspected terrorists, and Ashcroft denied them the right to check how many of them bought guns because he thought they had a "right to privacy".

"The legal debate over how gun records are used became particularly contentious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was disclosed that the Justice Department and John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, had blocked the F.B.I. from using the gun-buying records to match against some 1,200 suspects who were detained as part of the Sept. 11 investigation. Mr. Ashcroft maintained that using the records in a criminal investigation would violate the federal law that created the system for instant background gun checks, but Justice Department lawyers who reviewed the issue said they saw no such prohibition."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/national/08terror.html

I think it should be run with "violent content may not be suitable to children" warning beforehand.

(Which reminds me, how come all those viagra/levistra/etc ads get to run without an "explicit sexual language" warning beforehand?

Here's a link to StopLandmines.org, which is hosting the video. I don't know why Boing Boing felt that a link to WorldNutDaily was appropriate, but a link to the people who sponsored the ad is not. I'm not overly fond of embedded .wmv files either, but it would be nice of them to link to the page where you have some context, more information, and an opportunity to donate.

(I won't link to The Brooklyn Brothers, the ad agency who created the spot, because they resize my browser window, and I hate that.)

Mayakda -- That would ruin the surprise, wouldn't it?

While I doubt it's the reason they won't show it, it is, critically speaking, a terrible ad. If I were their employer and they offered me this ad, I would fire them. It's a minute long. It spends a lot of time (and attention span) on unnecessary exposition. Then, even after the point has been made, it lingers and lingers. Compare this to a typical ad spot of 15 seconds. It could the same thing better in a quarter of the time.

And it has a terrible tag line.

The tagline, alas, isn't what it could be, I'll grant you that.

However, I'll have to respectfully disagree with your other criticisms. With regard to length, this is most likely the long version of a commercial; it's not uncommon for there to be a longer version of a commercial that runs for a few weeks before it's replaced by a parred down version once the message has gotten out. Think, for example, of the Volkswagen ad for the New Beetle convertible (the one with the man with the interchangable day-parts); a minute-long version of the ad played in movie theatres and on television for about a month before a cut version (I think it was 20 seconds) replaced it. By the time the short version came around, it was meant to do little more than remind you of what you had already seen.

That's how most ads work: they remind you of a product you've already seen. You don't need more than fifteen seconds of Coke because you already have a familiarity with Coke. When introducing a new product, ad agencies often have longer commercials that are meant to imprint their brand or product on your mind so that shorter commercials can be used later.

Artistically speaking, the ad's long, slow beginning is meant, I think, to lull you into a sense of security. The camera work and sound design suggests, say, a life insurance or car commercial so that you're that much more shocked when a bomb quite literally goes off in the middle of everything. It's not needless exposition so much as it is misdirection, a narrative bait-and-switch.

The ending, meanwhile, lingers in order to give a sense of aftermath and devestation. The idea is not to convey how excruciatingly awful it would be to be blown up by a landmine, but how torturous it would be to witness something like that happening to your sibling, child, or friend. The ending lingers in the hope of making the message likewise linger. I can't speak for others, but the parts of the ad that I will best remember are the images from the denouement: the screaming mother, the sister by the crater, the soccer player rubbing blood on her sock.

I imagine that the shorter version of the ad will lop the beginning and ending off wholesale. The commercial will likely begin in the middle of the soccer game and go to black after the explosion. If it doesn't go to black, the (bad) tagline will likely appear over one of two images: the little girl standing next to the shredded earth, or the mother being held back as she screams.

(A good introduction to the good ad/bad ad, long ad/short ad idea can be found in this Slate article.)

One reason - Americans think they are safe. It doesn't help with revenue if you alter that perception too much.

Excellent ad though.

HP -- Good point on spoiling the surprise.
Maybe a warning that doesn't mention vioence would still work?
"The follwoing ad is not suitable for viewing by children. Viewer discretion is advised."

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I agree that most Americans could stand having their complacency shaken a bit.

On the other hand, if the desired result is action, then the degree of shock resulting from the ad may create a defensive backlash that might actually impede the progress of getting rid of landmines -- cf the whole gay marriage tumult.

Because this is the real intent of the advertisers, I suspect. Not to get the ad shown -- if they're smart they'll have figured out that exploding kids wouldn't make it onto TV. Really. Wax indignant all you like, but most of us aren't the archetypal soccer moms upon whom CNN relies.

But to get the ad talked about? To get people hearing about it on talk radio, or in their favorite blogs, and make them want to watch it on the gazillion Web sites it's mirrored on? That they can do.

This road's already been paved by Burger King and Budweiser. Hooray for memetic engineering, and I wish them well. Heck, they might even get people to start talking about land mines as well as the commercial. Stranger things have happened.

Don't tell me children should be sheltered from it. They see fictional representations of much more intense violence every day. The ad is very restrained in that regard.

My children don't see fictional representations of violence against *them*. They watched Buffy, a show which was clearly about a heightened reality; they never expected vampires and ghouls and the like to attack them. (I asked. Repeatedly.) I do keep an eye on which shows and movies they watch. I cannot protect them against commercials; by the time a commercial is clearly inappropriate, it's over.

The law (regulation?) says that every time a TV show returns from a commercial break, there's a warning in the top right-hand corner that the segment will contain language, violence, sex, drugs, annoying unfunny dialogue... if I continue, I've been warned. This ad is deliberately set up to be shocking, to attack without warning. This ad says, targeted directly at children, "You aren't safe. You aren't safe in your routine activities. Somebody's going to kill you."

I think landmines are lousy and contemptable and evil. I think we should sign the treaty banning them. I think running ads targeted at frightening children is contemptible.

Landmines are characteristic of the industrialization of violence. We use cheap mass-produced devices to keep people out of an area, so we don't have to hire and train so many soldiers to patrol it. I could comment on other things we send overseas to blow up later, such as chemical plants, but that's another thread.

It is easy for us, the public, who pays for landmines to be built, votes for politicians who decide to use them, and supports the troops that plant them, to disassociate our support for landmines from the consequences. The mines explode far away, often long after they were planted. The victims are foreign and poor. The victim has to trigger the mine, so right-wingers can wonder what the victim did to deserve such misfortune. Anything other than thinking of the murderous intent of using mines in the first place.

Showing the emotional consequences of violence is disturbing because it restores our natural reactions. The normal reaction to violence is to be deeply upset. The only way that we are able to conduct such violent national policies as a group, without breaking down as individuals, is through carefully cultivated and sophisticated mechanisms of rationalization, denial, and desensitization. And nothing is more disturbing than having to contemplate the consequences of our own policies.

The ad is offensive on several levels. It challenges our self-righteousness. It challenges our values, that all people are created equal, but Americans seem to be more equal than others. And it challenges our way of life, where money always seems to be more important than the lives of the poor. That's pretty good for just one ad.

And, TomB, it explains exactly why CNN won't run it.

But of course - duhh - that's what you were saying. Sorry.

Mayakda: Actually, I was trying to be ironically ghoulish. I gotta work on voice. (Oddly enough, I am ghoulish, but it rarely comes across in my prose.)

My inner cynic compels me to point out that this ad may have been intended as a viral from the get-go. The ad may not be targeted at CNN viewers as much as blogreaders. The manufactured controversy targets the online viewership to those most likely to respond (that link again), like Electrolite readers.

That said, I'm having a hard time understanding what Randolph is talking about when he says the ad is political. I understand that there's a tactical argument to be made--that giving up landmines may make invasion and aggression more likely--but I'm not aware of any argument that, say, to blow up children is an extension of Lockean property rights, or that my right to self-defense trumps your freedom to walk about without fearing death or dismemberment.

Heresiarch, I have to differ you on elapsed time. One of the most effective uses of film I ever saw was the freeze-frame ending of Fail Safe, which went on for minutes. B&W pictures of kids in playgrounds in NYC, people on the NYPL steps, etc., just as a nuclear weapon exploded.

Patrick: no, I don't know worldnetdaily form a hole in the ground. (Although the hole in the ground looks more appealing, speaking as a non-American). And as someone remarked above, it seems an odd choice of site to choose to link if one does not support it. I think the reason it startled and disturbed me to see the anti-UN ad was that I was coming to the site via you and, presumably, BoingBoing.

Xopher:
And, TomB, it explains exactly why CNN won't run it.

Yeesh. No. You're all whittling the world down until it's chip-shaped and fits on your shoulder.

There's a much simpler explanation. It shows children blowing up. Never mind whether you think there ought to be more children blowing up on TV to heighten awareness. Television networks have to consider whether several million parents are going to be more likely to reflect deeply on the geopolitical ramifications of land mines, or scream incoherently at them on the phone, in letters, and in e-mail for several weeks because their brains stopped at children blowing up.

If I was a television executive and wanted to keep my job, I'd probably make the same decision. It doesn't really matter what the commercial's about. Point to one other US commercial that's ever graphically depicted dead or dying children, and I'll begin to consider your conspiracy-of-values theory. Even the freaky The Truth commercials don't actually show kids dying.

Meanwhile, it seems to me that the commercial is succeeding. I just saw it on tonight's RocketBoom, a pretty good buoy on the ocean of buzz. So the message is going out. It's probably getting out to more people because it's not on CNN. Mission accomplished, and cheaper, too.

If folks don't want to see children blowing up, a good place to start would be not blowing up quite so many children. In the real world.

PinkDreamPoppies said: "Artistically speaking, the ad's long, slow beginning is meant, I think, to lull you into a sense of security. The camera work and sound design suggests, say, a life insurance or car commercial so that you're that much more shocked when a bomb quite literally goes off in the middle of everything. It's not needless exposition so much as it is misdirection, a narrative bait-and-switch.

The ending, meanwhile, lingers in order to give a sense of aftermath and devestation. The idea is not to convey how excruciatingly awful it would be to be blown up by a landmine, but how torturous it would be to witness something like that happening to your sibling, child, or friend. The ending lingers in the hope of making the message likewise linger. I can't speak for others, but the parts of the ad that I will best remember are the images from the denouement: the screaming mother, the sister by the crater, the soccer player rubbing blood on her sock."

The long, lingering ending was a good idea, I think, suffering from poor execution. My problem is that there is too long of a lag between the climax (the problem) and the frame (the solution)--there is too much time spent thinking "What is this trying to tell me?" before the tag line comes. If they had put the tagline below almost right after the explosion while allowing the scene to continue, that might have worked better.

And then there is the problem of the intro. Sure, they're trying to establish a scene of domestic tranquility, all well and good, but people watching commercials are already bored and relaxed. You don't give them a reason to change the channel, you interest them enough to keep watching. They could have baited the trap, so to speak, in six seconds instead of twenty: people know what life insurance commercials look like. They could have made that work for them instead of against them.

Really, the problem isn't the length. I concede that one could conceivably have a minute-long commercial following this general layout that would be good--I just don't think this ad is it.

I realize this is a matter of parents anguish and not actual children fear, but when I was a kid, the two things that traumatized me deeply were Bambi (not the mommy death scene: I didn't make it to that. I was absolutely terrified of the scene in the dark cave and had to be carried howling from the cinema) and "Blessed be the meek", an SF short story about sheep turning feral and killing people in Australia. The Karel Thole cover especially haunted me for years. Oh yeah, and cows completely freaked me out.

The long, lingering ending was a good idea, I think, suffering from poor execution. My problem is that there is too long of a lag between the climax (the problem) and the frame (the solution)--there is too much time spent thinking "What is this trying to tell me?" before the tag line comes. If they had put the tagline below almost right after the explosion while allowing the scene to continue, that might have worked better.

I think you're likely right about the time lapse between the tagline and the climax, but I wasn't bothered by this because I felt that the intent of the commercial was obvious from the moment that the landmine blew up. In retrospect, the commercial's meaning could be lost on some people, perhaps a good number of people, because of that time lapse.

And then there is the problem of the intro. Sure, they're trying to establish a scene of domestic tranquility, all well and good, but people watching commercials are already bored and relaxed. You don't give them a reason to change the channel, you interest them enough to keep watching. They could have baited the trap, so to speak, in six seconds instead of twenty: people know what life insurance commercials look like. They could have made that work for them instead of against them.

Again, I think that it was meant to be boring and I believe that this was used to good effect. Perhaps I'm an abnormal TV viewer, but I, and most of the people I know, usually don't channel-surf during commercials if we're watching a program we are interested in (for fear of missing something) and so instead zone-out or go to the bathroom or whatever during commercials.

With this in mind, the commercial creates a sense of security, a need to not watch the television, that is disrupted by the landmine in much the same way that the scene would unfold in reality. I imagine that the effect would be: Oh, soccer. Car commercial? Dinner. Eating soup. An explosion. What the hell? Screaming. What the hell? Oh my god. Landmines.

I suppose the ad's efficacy depends largely on its audience, as all ads do, but it seems to me that most of the people watching CNN are people who zone out during commercials instead of compulsively channel-switching.

Also, once again, I suspect that the minute-long version of the ad, with the protracted introduction, would not be run for long. It would run long enough to catch some people, generate buzz, get people gabbing and blogging, and then be replaced with a more obvious, snappier version. The main idea, I think, is to grab those people who aren't compulsive channel-changers, shock the hell out of them, and make them tell their friends.

I'll chime in with Steve Eley: regardless of how I feel about the ad's artistic merits, the reason it won't run is because it shows children getting blown up. If it were adults, especially business people, it might be different, but I'm honestly not surprised that CNN declined to run the ad and can sympathize with their decision.

Stephen King, in much of his fiction, first establishes a sense of security, with highly realistic scenes and emotionally plausible characters and actions. Thus, when Horror manifests, it is more effective, due to the contrast in atmosphere. Other writers do this too, of course, but I contrast this with authors such as Lovecraft who have eldrich tendrils reaching backwards into the first paragraph. I might also reference the typical Twilight Zone episode, or Alfred Hitchock film. My point is: until demonstrated otherwise, I shall presume that the ad's director knew what he/she was doing.

I suggest that landmines are not the greatest problem in Korea. As to children being blown up by landmines, I think that this was intentional on a massive scale in war between Iran and Iraq, with children being used to find landmines, by being sent en masse across mined roads and areas. Children, to Saddam or the Ayatollah General, being considered especially expendable. *shudder*

HP, as I see it, public service announcements are for things like "don't drink and drive", not to build support for causes like the UN landmine treaty, which is a political purpose. I very much support that treaty, but if political ads can run as public service announcements then the public service announcement system becomes just one more way to distribute political propaganda, which I would very much prefer not to see.

Jonquil said: This ad is deliberately set up to be shocking, to attack without warning. This ad says, targeted directly at children, "You aren't safe. You aren't safe in your routine activities. Somebody's going to kill you."

I don't think the ad is targetted at kids--kids, as someone mentioned above, don't generally watch CNN. But my kids, at least, hop around on different channels, and, having played soccer, are quite likely to be drawn in to the earlier part of the ad. My 14 year old could handle the ad, though it would quite properly disturb her. My 9 year old would think she could handle it, but...no. She's pushing very hard to grow up, and sometimes I have to be the one who draws a line as to what is appropriate and what she can handle.

I think the ad should be seen--God knows the apathy in this country on this issue is appalling. But. I keep making a vague, imperfectly articulated connection between kids coming unawares upon land mines and kids coming unawares upon this ad. Yes, I know, it doesn't compare. Except that somehow it does.

Unrelated story, but pass this around: Ashcroft blocked the FBI from acessing a database of gun purchases in order to protect the "second ammendment rights" of suspected terrorists. I kid you not.

This scares me.

No, not Ashcroft. The ease with which you become outraged at the thought that "suspected terrorists" might have rights.

Maybe you don't like the right in question. Maybe it isn't a right. Maybe it is, but it shouldn't be. But the phrase "suspected terrorist" has no place in the discussion of that issue.

I'm not enraged by the idea of suspected terrorists having rights. It's the predictability of Ashcroft supporting anyone's right to bear arms, terrorist or Sunday school teacher, when he'd very likely be perfectly happy to toss the rest of the Bill of Rights out the window. Imagine Ashcroft concerning himself with the suspected terrorist's other rights--like say, to a speedy trial. You want one right, you gotta take 'em all.

Q for the parents in the audience: would you be okay with your kids watching TV ads/news segments that featured a Palestinian woman being shot by an Israeli soldier, and being carried away, bleeding, by her husband? Or an Iraqi family's car being fired on by soldiers? Or a burning American armoured vehicle with the charred corpses of soldiers leaning out the windows? Or the pavement of a Baghdad street with pools of blood and gobbets of flesh and a dismembered arm?

I'm trying to figure out if it's violence against kids, or real-live violence in general, that kids shouldn't be viewing. I haven't seen the landmine ad, but I have seen all of the above on my local news. Do kids watch the six o'clock news? (I don't have kids, so I'm clueless about this stuff.)

They show traffic safety ads that graphic here (New Zealand). On free to air TV, though I haven't kept track of the time slots. With kids, and upset parents,

Main difference would be that parents can't promise these thing won't happen to their kids here, I guess.

And I still remember an ad for seatbelts from when I was quite small. It used the "Que Sera Sera" song "I asked my mother, what will I be, will I be pretty, will I be rich", and a little girl playing dressups, then in the car, sudden stop, child through window, she'll never find out. It made a big impact, I always wear my seatbelt. Yay for well timed propaganda.

And I know when I was a kid we were supposed to watch the news (and read the newspaper) for current events in school, I'd presume that still holds.

I'm trying to figure out if it's violence against kids, or real-live violence in general, that kids shouldn't be viewing.

I doubt highly there's a prescription for "kids" generally.

We censor D.'s viewing habits for violence, explicit sex, and brain-sucking crappiness--but all to a very low extent. We primarily try to make sure we know what he's watching, have seen it ourselves, and can talk about it. As someone else mentioned upthread about her own kids, "imaginary" violence is less troubling to D. than real violence, b/c he has a healthy sense of the difference between fantasy and reality.

As for your examples, and this commercial, I think for me it would depend on context and the amount of exposure. He has seen some footage of violence in the Middle East, and we talked about it. But I wouldn't let him watch for long.

The thing for me with this commercial is it isn't real. It dramatizes something people in other countries have to deal with as a part of their daily lives. With parental explanation, D. could handle that. On the other hand, we chanced upon a showing of Bowling For Columbine on a cable channel with D. and I shut it off. He's definitely not ready to watch real footage of real kids killing real kids.

And no, he doesn't watch the news, really, unless he joins one of us watching. He watches the Weather Channel a lot, and has to read news that is compiled especially for kids at school. He "listens in" sometimes in the evening while he's doing his homework and my spouse and I read out loud from magazines or online news.

But the way we do things with D. should not be taken as the way all parents should do things with their kids. First, we're just guessing. Second, every kid is different. Third, I'm just not that bossy.

I wonder if that ad would still be as effective if it just shows the explosion, then reaction of parents, without actually showing any injured kids (just left to the imagination)?

Speaking as a parent now, and also as a former child.

I did in fact shelter my firstborn against depicted violence when he was very very very young -- I kind of think children under 3 don't need any kind of television or movies, but the nice fellow I married is the kind of father who will say, "take a nap, because tonight there's a classic pulp movie on that has the best wipes ever!" My younger child somehow accidentally saw "Aliens" when she was two and then whenever I wasn't home she'd pitch a fit until my firstborn showed it to her again.

However. That's only background. I think that children who are old enough to understand that there is a world beyond the front door ought to have some knowledge of that world. I wouldn't make them watch. But I was under ten when I saw newsclips of children my age being set upon by dogs and having firehoses turned on them so that they fell screaming to the ground. And later, the girl running, screaming, with napalm burning her skin off.

These things upset me. Yes. I'd rather have lived in a world where they didn't happen. But I think it was better for me that I knew. And more: I think it is better to identify with the person who might step on a landmine, the person who might be bombed, the person who might be set upon by dogs, than it is to identify with the person who sits in a plane and pushes a button, or the person who sets the dogs.

But I have a bias. I do. And I want my children to share that bias.

I have a bias too, and my kids already share it.

My kids don't watch the six o'clock news. I'd let them, if they were interested, but I'd be sitting with them, and we'd talk about what they'd seen--something my mother did, which I never got a chance to thank her for. For what it's worth, my older kid reads the paper, younger kid reads headlines and asks questions. I grew up watching footage from Vietnam; I won't say it made me the woman I am today, but it sure as hell had an impact.

Every parent makes different choices for their kids. Some of those choices make no sense to me, and some ideas that adults have about what kids can handle is, in my opinion, wildly wrongheaded. (I have a rant on this, but that's not for now.) I'll leave my fourteen year old out for now--she's old enough to find this ad on the net and bring it to me. I don't object to my nine-year-old seeing depictions of violence--even violence against children--so long as I'm with her, she has some idea of what's coming (ie., this is a newsclip, not an ad for Skittles), and we can discuss it. It would upset her, regardless of whether the kids were Palestinian, Afghani, American, or Inuit; she's an empathic, imaginative child, and can generalize from "a kid halfway across the world" to herself--and back again. But I don't want her coming across such things unknowing, just yet, or without me there to talk with her about it.

Aquila, my "here" is also NZ, but I grew up in the US. I've noticed that the NZ TV ads (like those traffic crash ones with Don't Worry, Be Happy playing in the background, or the safety-around-homes ones) and the news coverage are a lot more graphic and undiluted compared to the US. Would NZ parents object to the landmine ad, do you think?

They don't run it because it's filmed to look like news footage. Think of the War of the Worlds broadcast.

> Give me one good reason why ...

because it would make viewers uncomfortable
and possibly change channels, and changing
channels means lower ratings, and lower ratings
means less money, and less money is "bad"
for the network.

See, now, that's an legitimate answer because
you never said 'good' for who....

I'm not enraged by the idea of suspected terrorists having rights. It's the predictability of Ashcroft supporting anyone's right to bear arms, terrorist or Sunday school teacher, when he'd very likely be perfectly happy to toss the rest of the Bill of Rights out the window. Imagine Ashcroft concerning himself with the suspected terrorist's other rights--like say, to a speedy trial. You want one right, you gotta take 'em all.

This goes for both sides. With any other issue but guns, the left is up in arms (pun intended) about violating the rights of people just because they happen to be on a list. Phrases like "innocent until proven guilty" and "secret enemies list" get bandied about, people from the ACLU start going on the talk shows...

But when it's guns, well, Ashcroft can't violate people's rights fast enough.

Patrick:

I don't always agree with you, but I have to commend you on this one.

No American could watch that ad and not empathize with the people who actually have to live with landmines..As for the content, it was a little intense, but I didn't see any blood or guts.

It might upset some people, but I think that was sort of the point.