By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Film critic and talk-radio host Michael Medved joined his wife and co-author Diane for a recent pubic appearance in Bellevue. The couple, touting their most recent book, Saving Childhood, spent more than an hour talking about their contention that since the 1960s, modern American society has devalued its children. They also answered questions on a range of topics.
The Medveds, who live in the Puget Sound area with their three children, settled in a corner of the Barnes and Noble bookstore, where they autographed copies of the book’s paperback edition and also sold copies of Toward Tradition founder Rabbi Daniel Lapin’s book.
Toward Tradition is a Jewish political organization that aligns itself with politically conservative Christian Fundamentalist groups.
Michael and Diane Medved have been married since 1985. The couple met in Venice, Calif., according to the official biography on Michael’s Web site, where they were both involved in Pacific Jewish Center — a congregation founded to help attract unaffiliated young Jews to a traditional Jewish lifestyle.
Diane Medved is a clinical psychologist and the author, in her own right, of three prior books: First Comes Love: Deciding Whether or Not to Get Married, The Case Against Divorce. and with former Vice-President Dan Quayle, The American Family.
In their Bellevue appearance, although Michael frequently invited his wife to explain or enlarge on portions of their proposition, he still wound up doing most of the talking.
“Diane provided the psychological expertise and most of the writing work,” Michael told the crowd of about 30 fans. “I provided the outline and the first chapter and basically set up the book.”
He added, jokingly, that the fact that they had collaborated on this book and remained happily married was a testament to the strength of their relationship.
The book’s premise, Medved said, is they believe “not that kids are growing up too soon and becoming adults too soon, it’s that they are becoming adolescents too soon and staying adolescents too long — in some cases, forever.
“We have a certain former President who I think exemplifies that in a very dramatic way,” he said, to the delight of the crowd of overwhelmingly conservative listeners.
In Saving Childhood, which was originally published in 1997, Diane and Michael Medved define “childhood innocence” as the natural result of nurturing a sense of wonder, optimism and security. The Medveds contend that childhood innocence is under attack from four main sources: television and other mass media, schools and teachers, peer groups and their own parents.
The first of what Michael Medved called the pillars of innocence is security, which he referred to in terms of predictability and reliability, or “basically, order in your life, which all children crave,” and which he said is also an essential part of being an adult.
“The second element of childhood innocence is a sense of wonder – that idea that there is something spectacular and fresh and amazing about the world,” said Medved. He went on to say that one of the most controversial of the couple’s recommendations was to turn off the TV to preserve that sense of excitement about the world.
“Television is the absolute mortal enemy of a sense of wonder,” he said. “It dulls everybody’s sensitivity and openness and vulnerability and their awareness of the real world. The real world can’t compete with television in terms of excitement and pacing and entertainment value, although the real world can be pretty entertaining.”
The third aspect of childhood innocence, he continued, is maintaining optimism, which Medved said can best be accomplished by “expressing gratitude regularly.”
“Dealing with pessimism, dealing with the culture of whining that is so much a part of American life — the best way for dealing with that culture of whining and of ‘competitive victimization’ and ‘victimology’ is to start by expressing gratitude,” he said.
“The basic theme that we’re dealing with in Saving Childhood is a two-part theme — first of all, the assault on childhood innocence and the tendency of various forces in this society to attack the very idea that there is a meaningful difference between children and adults. You can’t have children and you can’t have childhood, without adulthood.”
Regarding the second theme, Medved argued that the “model of childhood” has shifted in America from a traditional “model of protection” to one of “preparation.”
“The idea was there were certain realities that you would protect your child from experiencing,” he said. “That shifted in the 1960s, like so many other negative things The problem with the preparation model, the idea that we’re going to prepare children for things that they’re going to encounter later, is that there is no evidence at all that it works.
“Many of the programs that they’ve tried with AIDS education or with sex education or with Operation DARE, or so many other things that they use to scare children in schools, the indications are, at best, that this kind approach is totally ineffective,” he said. “It doesn’t help kids and that’s our main concern.”
After laying out the basic premise of their book, the Medveds opened the appearance up to questions on any subject. At the urging of the small but enthusiastic audience of mostly like-minded people, they spent nearly as much time talking about the “liberal” faux pas of actor Eric Roberts, a recent guest on Medved’s syndicated radio show, as they had on childhood innocence.