Daddy’s, don’t let your daughters be turned into objectified, uh….objects

I’ve never had any respect for this guy.  I hated “Achy Breaky Heart” and all the awful, awful line dancing that came with it (and hung around in some spots even until today – blech).   I thought he was using his family to get back into the limelight with that Hannah Montana disaster on Disney.   In established Disney fashion, the show with the cute little girl soon morphed, over the course of a few seasons, into the show with the 14 yo sex vamp.  The influence this program, and others like it on Disney, cannot be overstated – they teach very young girls, girls as young as 3 and4, to want to be “sexy” and turn their bodies into objects of pleasure for leering men.   I have lost all respect for Disney over the last decade and a half, as they have produced show after show that has ruined not only the lives of the stars (Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus), but have deleteriously affected the lives of countless young viewers.  I can’t imagine this is what Walt Disney had in mind.

At a fundamental level, almost all Disney programs are wrong – even those that do not objectify their young stars.  My problem with so much youth programming today is this: they put children on an intellectual and moral plane at least equal, if not superior, to that of their parents.  So many TV programs today feature the incredibly smart and hip kids, the wry and a bit cynical mother, and the bumbling, stupid father.  Unfortunately, many men today do fit this role, but the TV programs definitely do not help.  Instead of having the steady, wise influence of a Ward Cleaver or Steven Douglas, we get idiots like Raymond Barone and Doug Heffernan.   

I apologize for my uncharitability towards Mr. Cyrus.  I cannot imagine making the choices he made.  If by some bizaare happenstance one of my children were offered a part in a TV show, I’d chase the agent or producer off with a shotgun.  But so that you may have a glimpse into the mind of someone who admits destroyed his family through this TV show, here are a few quotes:

Hannah Montana‘s final episodes began. “Season four, it was a disaster,” he says. “I was going to work every single day knowing that my family had fallen apart, but yet I had to sit in front of that camera. I look back and I go, How did I ever make it through that? I must be a better actor than I thought.”

“Every time something happened in Miley’s career, every time the train went off the track, if you will – Vanity Fair, pole-dancing, whatever scandal it was – her people, or as they say in today’s news, her handlers, every time they’d put me… ‘Somebody’s shooting at Miley! Put the old man up there!’ Well, I took it, because I’m her daddy, and that’s what daddies do. ‘Okay, nail me to the cross, I’ll take it….’ ”

 ‘This whole thing’s falling apart up there and they just want to blame all of this stuff on you again.’ I’m staying out of it.”

He says he isn’t on regular speaking terms with his daughter. “You know, it seems at this point there’s not a lot that I can say she doesn’t already know,” he says. “And of course I’ve sent her the texts of ‘I’m here if you need me,’ ‘Always still love you,’ those kind of things.”

Uhhhh……because nothing says “I’m truly concerned about your well being” like a text message. 

Look, folks, sorry about this post, I’m sorry for being snarky, but I have 5 daughters, I have a young son, and while I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, at least I know that putting a very young person on a massive pedestal with all the adulation and fame and money the world can provide is not a way to raise a happy, well adjusted adult.  It’s a way of misery, as we have seen demonstrated time and again with “child stars” whose later lives are nothing short of disasters.  Very few are able to make it through this.  And this scourge, this desire for “fame” even to the point of sacrificing one’s fundamental dignity, is spreading through our culture.  It’s a cancer.

And it won’t stop with this latest disaster.

Billy Ray Cyrus’ youngest daughter, Noah.  I pray for all of them, I really do.