“Cool Dad Raising Daughter on Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out of Touch With Her Generation,” from The Onion and via Fratguy:
Campbell said he has also been vigilant in ensuring Emma develops an increased familiarity with timeless classic films, a parenting strategy that will inevitably hobble her as she attempts to achieve individuation while negotiating an adolescence heavily influenced by the very latest pop culture.
Since her early childhood, a period sources said featured a Danger Mouse–themed birthday party that utterly baffled the assembled 6-year-old guests, Campbell’s daughter has been fed a steady diet of marginalizing cinematic masterpieces from the world’s very best filmmakers.
“Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder—you simply need to know who these men are if you want to call yourself culturally literate,” Campbell said of the three iconic directors whose creations could not have less utility to his daughter as she searches for a way to achieve a sense of belonging among her fellow middle-schoolers. “Sure, she makes a face when I don’t let her see some ridiculous movie with CGI robots because it’s John Sayles Night and we’re watching The Secret Of Roan Inish instead. But I’m giving her a leg up, even if she doesn’t know it.”
“I’m not unreasonable about this,” Campbell added. “If she doesn’t want to watch Harold Lloyd shorts tonight, that’s no problem. We still have another five or six Prisoner episodes to get through.”
Insisting he understood the important role entertainment media plays in the life of a sixth-grader, Campbell reportedly bought his daughter the Alice Cooper album Billion Dollar Babies on the grounds that the Adam Lambert CD she had begged for—and that all the girls at school had received—was not even a fraction as good as the 1973 masterpiece.
Just read it and weep, dorks. At least your parents let you alienate most of your own peers with your endless talk of hit points, twelve-sided dice, and hatchet-wielding dwarves. You’re all old enough to get this song, finally. My God, what have you done?
Historiann 
Hey! Who you callin’ a dork?
(looking around for other medievalists in the room)
Oh… yeah… got it.
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Oh yeah. I’m already there. I’ve got the Rocky and Bullwinkle DVDs cued up. Its good for the little tyke’s brain development. And by the time she hits high school she’ll have seen Dr. Strangelove a couple of times too…
Same as it ever was… same as it ever was…
Did you catch that Alice Cooper interview with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air?” – It was great, he was talking about the Vaudeville origins of his act. Apparently, or at least according to Mr. Cooper himself, Graucho Marx was a fan.
Same as it ever was… same as it ever was…
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This actually sounds a lot like my childhood, though not brought on my parents. As an only child, I generally spent more time with my parents, their friends, and my grandparents. Interested in the stuff they watched and listened to and being myself an avid reader, I never had much to talk about with children my own age. Now that I look back on it, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time on Ace of Base or New Kids on the Block to try and fit in or learn social skills. I got all that from paying attention to my teachers in school. And look, today I’m a functioning adult with a job in my field. With a child on the way now, I have thought about what kinds of media I want my child around or not around. With historians for parents though, our poor kid probably won’t know what century they’re in.
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Best episode of the Muppet Show ever:
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This guy may be a little overly-programmatic about it, but I don’t see any basic harm forthcoming from that. Kids will in their own way and good time, rebel against whatever they need to, the good and the bad, and do their own incorporating and mix-taping across the cultural seams. Better for them to down-market at their own pace than to try to upstream at a later date.
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My kid loves M.A.S.H. and the Muppets, and old Godzilla movies. Oh wait, but those aren’t “cool”. He also knows all the Rocky and Bullwinkle, will that count? hmmmm….maybe not of the same caliber. He knows the lyrics to the Beatles, Lou Reed, Queen…I’m getting there. Kid will never be hip. Although his dad is a big fan of Big Star and works with the widow of Alex Chilton, does that count?
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Hey, my twenty-sided dice have come in very handy for the Civil War simulation around Christmastime (only two kids every knew what they were really for).
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Madeline received a two kid friendly mixes of the Pogues from her uncle two years ago and has been singing along with Shane McGowen since the age of three. She was recently denied club admission on the playground for lack of a Justin Bieber T shirt (I’ve never been prouder). Doomed. I think the current equivalent of TalkingHeadsDevoREMRamonesTMBG would be the Flobots, but I am aware of them so they are probably already uncool QED.
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Let’s hope she has better dentition than Mr. McG. Jeebus.
What is this Flobots of which you speak? Anything like the Fembots, which (come to think of it) would be a pretty great name for a band!
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Denver based Nerdcore
Eminem crossed with Wheezer
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2Findex&gl=US#/watch?v=fD3uUIWGYNY
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I hope this kid has got the whole boxed set of the Fugs work from the ’60s. I was about to say a revival tour of that band would be in order, but it would be a real chore, since Tuli Kupferberg is gone a couple of years now, and Ed Sanders doesn’t get out of Woodstock much.
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My daughters know all about “The Prisoner”. Heck, it’s helped them to understand “The Simpsons” (which I understand was popular back in the day). They are also more conversant with seventies’ folk-rock bands than anyone under the age of forty has a right to be.
Raise ’em geeky, raise ’em right!
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