DADWAGON

A further thought occasioned by last week’s Tantrum, about posting photographs of your kids online. Over the weekend, I shot my usual dozens of photos of pure toddler adorableness. Last night, when my wife’s parents came by, I was showing a couple of them to my approving father-in-law. And he remarked, while chuckling, “This is the most photographed child since Prince Charles.”

Is he right? I’m not sure. I suspect, though, that many children born after the advent of the digital camera are photographed to a degree nobody would have imagined possible before. (Except maybe a professional photographer’s kids.) Banging off a couple of hundred frames in a day is not only far from unusual; it’s essentially effortless. Many of this weekend’s pictures came from a sunny-day visit to the Central Park Zoo, and I saw literally dozens of parents with their DSLRs, firing away nonstop. An onslaught of megapixels must have resulted from that one day, and every day like it.

I wonder how much of this documentation will survive. My own childhood image bank is contained in a few albums and a couple of shoeboxes, plus a neat little rack of Super 8 films. Later kids probably have a stack of camcorder tapes. Digital media are simultaneously easier to make and easier to discard, and obviously if a parent’s un-backed-up hard drive crashes—or he or she just isn’t archivally inclined—that’ll be that. But setting aside extreme losses like that (which are akin to a flood in the basement or fire in the attic destroying those shoeboxes and albums), I can’t help thinking that every kid born after 2000 will go through life with a gradually growing digital life bank, one that’ll eventually grow from photos and videos to school-related materials and eventually e-mails and Tweets and Facebook updates and whatever appears in that vein ten years from now. No wonder the Library of Congress wants to save all of it: It documents everyday life, just as, say, letters sent home used to. Everyone will grow up with a bigger and bigger hard drive full of one’s own life, and that Achilles’ heel—backing up—will be taken over by some version of cloud computing. It will all be accessible in an instant.

Which is good, because I am so sleep-deprived these days that my memory is going to hell.

I have seen some strange things this week—a Geronimo statue shaped like a sex toy, a hotel so shabby it seemed haunted—but nothing quite as wrong as the children’s book for sale at the Briarwood Country Club in Sun City West, just outside of Phoenix.

I was there to interview J.D. Hayworth, the Republican gunning for John McCain’s Senate seat. It was a $16-a-plate lasagna luncheon fundraiser for the Arizona Federation of Republican Women, and yes, on the table in front selling “Republican jewelry,” there was a stack of copies of a children’s book about politics.

It was written by a local writer. Topic: Republicans and patriotism. And though I can’t remember the name exactly, it might have well have been called “Democrats Are Douchebags.”

It featured a grandma (it was written for the elderly, country-luvin’ Sun City West crowd to give to their grandkids) nicknamed ‘Ree. Because she’s a REpublican. And every page was filled with earnest scenes of good Americans—planting gardens, saluting flags—and text about how Republicans love their country. It wasn’t just about America, mind you, or neighborliness. It was about partisan politics, every word ripped from an RNC memo.

“What exactly is the right age for kids to be reading about party politics?” I asked the woman selling the brochures and books.

“Three,” was the answer. “Or maybe four. No, I think three.”

Oh. My. God.

I have nothing against books depicting scouting and church-going or whatever else you think a hale citizenry should do. But partisan politics is filthy. It is a slimepit, a den of fornication, prevarication, and earmarking. Even if I vote for Democratic politicians, it doesn’t mean I want them around my children. Same with Republican politicians. Don’t let them kiss your babies and don’t read your babies books about them.

Lest anyone doubt that politics is an ocean of ick, consider the case last month of Roy Ashburn, the Republican California state senator who was fiercely gay and fiercely anti-immigrant, before he was caught drunk-driving just after he left a gay bar with some Latino man-candy. Are you gonna put that in a kids’ book?

Listen: One’s politics should reflect his values, not the other way around. Teach your kids your values—whatever they are—and let their politics flow from that when they’re older.

As it is, I think this a horrible idea for children’s literature—and I’m the DadWagoner who had a kiddie book about weed in his office. What a sad prospect for the next generation—that they, even more than baby boomers or ourselves, would grow up learning that that dividing line between good and evil is the Congressional aisle?

If there’s anything we here at DadWagon must concern ourselves with, it is our incredible fame and the corresponding impact it will have on our children, spouses, and Western Civilization. Let us consider this week on the site in the context of those weighty matters.

The Tantrum, as is often the case, was the inspiration for our analysis of complex issues. Should we allow the noxious glare of our flaming famey fameball-ness (to coin a phrase) to singe what little hair our youngsters have?

Matt, predictably, seems to think so. Then again, he sees nothing wrong with using images of his daughter to make a bad joke a point about popular culture. Heavy is he who wears the crown of fame. Christopher, however, thinks differently. His child should not interfere either with his renown or his work. Nathan, meanwhile, wanders the desert, playing journalist and fleeing ghosts. He thinks that his fame is good for children. His wife does not. Theodore was too stoned to mount much of an argument one way or the other. Unlike the straw that stirs the drink, he is the confusion that puzzles the reader here at Dadwagon.

Lest we forget:

• Christopher won an award and we posted an image of a peepee.
• Matt was bitchy.
• Theodore was a stinker.
• Nathan wished he was David Halberstam.

Have a nice weekend. Or don’t. Your kids will still need to be fed, dressed, and entertained.

Now the cutting begins. The opening at the tip of the foreskin is stretched and held open, usually with surgical clamps. Then the doctor or mohel makes a snip up the center of the foreskin with a pair of surgical scissors, peeling the two halves back to make a flat sheet of skin.

So wrote ‘wagoneer Christopher Bonanos in last fall’s “Anatomy of a Circumcision,” an article that earned him (and his employer, New York Magazine) a National Magazine Award last night. Chris (that is, the magazine) went home with a elephantesque statue; the rest of us, meanwhile, will go home today with nightmarish visions filling our heads and, possibly, sudden eruptions of vomit filling our mouths. Congratulations, Chris! Please find something more palatable to win awards with next time, okay?