Get your child out of my face.
At the risk of sounding like a total jerk, I’m going to come out and say it bluntly: I’m tired of people parading children in front of me in an attempt at sympathy.
The Healthy Kids Campaign commercials have spurred me to write this column because I’m so done with the causes and poor sick children who “need my help.” The Healthy Kids Campaign shoves sick children down my throat and asks me to vote “yes” on Measure 50. St. Jude Children’s Hospital bombards me with images of tiny cancer patients in search of donations. Anti-abortion activists assault me with images of aborted fetuses, thinking it will change my mind. And we’re just one disaster away from another flood of magazine covers plastered with close-up shots of crying, orphaned young ones. Oh, and the Christian Children’s Fund? I’ve spent my lifetime looking at its TV commercials and images of the tubby white guy in a sea of malnourished African children. Are you kidding me? This is how you try to persuade me? I’m tired of it.
Yes, cancer, healthcare, abortion and African children are all important issues – hell, children in general are important – but I don’t need these children paraded on the screen in front of me to make me act. Show me the issues, not the kids who will die if I don’t give you money or don’t vote the way you want me to. Show me the happy children who have benefited from your work, not the sickly ones who you’re busy videotaping instead of helping.
I’ve consumed enough media at this point in my life to know that the sad child technique is nothing more than a gimmick. It’s a cheap shot; the laziest, worst kind of marketing technique out there. I’m not a middle-aged mother, so your gimmick will not get my sympathy.
When “Kid Nation” premiered, everyone cried “Exploitation!” Yet no one seems upset with the use of kids to get money/sympathy/votes. Why is it cute when a presidential candidate picks up some lady’s baby? He or she is only doing it to look friendly and to get your vote.
It doesn’t even stop at children. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals loves to use pictures of bleeding, tortured animals as a way to get people to stop eating meat. This is not useful information, but rather an attempt to scare people into changing their eating habits. In fact, all it does is make me lose my appetite for food in general when I see a gutted cow lying on a warehouse floor. It reminds me of the scare tactics of sex ed, where teachers showed us shriveled penises and swollen vaginas to keep us from having sex.
These techniques are not only reprehensible, but they are desensitizing the public to images that should typically be disturbing or moving. In all honesty, seeing a teary-eyed baby on a magazine cover should move me. But you know what? It doesn’t. I’ve seen that image too many times.
Marlo Thomas and Jerry Lewis, if by some freak chance you’re reading this, take note: Your use of children with illnesses or disabilities disgusts me, and I will not donate any money to your cause.
[email protected]