When kind was still considered cool.

It must be hard raising kids with today's media. When I was growing up in 50s, many of the TV sitcoms were gentle family dramas. Along with the comedy there were lessons on etiquette, morality and tolerance. The popular shows included Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, and The Donna Reed Show. Today's sitcoms are, for the most part, sexual, cynical, and scatological and generally too adult for children who watch them anyway. There are very few life lessons in Two and a Half Men, Rules of Engagement, and Mike and Molly, shows populated by amusing characters with very little character. Even today's quiz shows, unlike such innocent fare as What's My Line or To Tell the Truth, are out for the easy laugh, notably The Family Feud which strives to get answers that are either sexual or toilet-related. So children today have a steady diet of low-brow humor, endless sexual innuendos, and unwarrented cynicism along, of course, with thousands of commercials that often feature the same kind of negative humor. Happily we have freedom of speech. Unhappily many people in the entertainment and advertising industries use it in the most pessimisic possible ways.