Watch What Your Servants are Teaching Your Children

Not too long ago I heard a story. An old man said to a young boy, "There are two wolves inside you. One is evil, one is good, and they are fighting for control of you."
The boy asked, "Which one will win?"
The old man answered, "The one you feed."

It reminded me of something I read by St. John Chrysostom. He told parents to make sure that household servants are not a corrupting influence on children. When I read it I felt confirmed in our decision about no television in our house.

But today, I wasn't fast enough in turning off the radio. Anselm heard about what happened at Virginia Tech. I was busy making lunch and didn't even notice that he was sitting at the table with his mouth open, shocked by what he was hearing. He asked me in disbelief, "People kill themselves?" I said, "sometimes".
"What happens to them?"
"I think they go to Hell because they have given up all faith and have turned their backs on life, the greatest good thing God gives people."
I turned off the radio. I wish I hadn't been listening.

Peggy noonan wrote about the media and its influence on children.

Think of it this way. Your child is an intelligent little fish. He swims in deep water. Waves of sound and sight, of thought and fact, come invisibly through that water, like radar; they go through him again and again, from this direction and that. The sound from the television is a wave, and the sound from the radio; the headlines on the newsstand, on the magazines, on the ad on the bus as it whizzes by—all are waves. The fish — your child — is bombarded and barely knows it. But the waves contain words like this, which I’ll limit to only one source, the news:
. . . was found strangled and is believed to have been sexually molested . . . had her breast implants removed . . . took the stand to say the killer was smiling the day the show aired . . . said the procedure is, in fact, legal infanticide . . . is thought to be connected to earlier sexual activity among teens . . . court battle over who owns the frozen sperm . . . contains songs that call for dominating and even imprisoning women . . . died of lethal injection . . . had threatened to kill her children . . . said that he turned and said, “You better put some ice on that” . . . had asked Kevorkian for help in killing himself . . . protested the game, which they said has gone beyond violence to sadism . . . showed no remorse . . . which is about a wager over whether he could sleep with another student . . . which is about her attempts to balance three lovers and a watchful fiance . . .
This is the ocean in which our children swim. This is the sound of our culture. It comes from all parts of our culture and reaches all parts of our culture, and all the people in it, which is everybody. . .

(Read her whole article here.) She was writing in the context of the killings at Columbine. But the excerpt above seems applicable to Virginia Tech, and Abu Ghraib, and even my own life. I know that in my own life 5 - 10 hours of television almost everyday when I was growing up almost ruined me. Pro-wrestling, and Star Trek, and Dirty Harry taught me that violence solves all problems. M*A*S*H, Happy Days, and the Love Boat taught me that women were for my pleasure.

A few days ago when I took the DVD of the movie Happyfeet (its about anthropomorphized penguins on the make) out of the computer and Anselm protested because it was a present from his Granny I felt kind of bad. I felt like every kid in America has seen this movie. My Mom paid good money for it. Was I being too cutious? Until I read Ms. Noonan's words I thought, maybe, I was being too protective. But now, I am convinced, I did the right thing. I was starving the evil wolf.