Year: 2004

Real friends are those who, when they support you, tell everyone so publicly, and when they don’t, tell you privately. This is a handy philosophy to have since it will save you the trouble of having many friends.

PAD

We just saw some of the footage with Steve Irwin and the baby, and Kathleen’s observation was that, crocs aside, she wasn’t thrilled with the way Irwin was holding the infant since he was apparently making no effort to support the baby’s head, which is–y’know–Rule One.

But now I’m thinking about the fact that Irwin is indeed in the entertainment business, and one wonders–presuming that the authorities told him never to do this again–just when it *is* both safe and permissible for an entertainer to start bringing his children into the “act.” Let us take as a given, just for the sake of argument, that one month old is just too ridiculously young for the child to be around crocs.

When *is* the child old enough? When *can* Steve Irwin bring his kid into the croc hunting fold and have it be “okay?” When the child’s a year? Five years? Ten? Or should it be mandated that no parent can expose his child to hazardous performing conditions (and that’s what this was: a performance. When you’re doing stunts and entertaining crowds, that’s a performance) if the child is under the age of consent?

Well, now you’ve got a really interesting situation, because there goes circus families. High wire acts, trapeze acts, teeter boards, knife throwing. We were just watching Cirque du Soleil on TV the other night and there were three Chinese kids whipping these incredible bolos around with remarkable dexterity…but what if one of them misjudges for a microsecond and concusses himself or one of the other kids? Yes, kids in trapeze and high-wire acts are in harnesses and there are nets…but harnesses and break, and if you land on the net wrong, you can still snap your neck.

Here there’s a whole movement to try and eliminate animal acts from circuses because it’s allegedly cruel to the animals, and I don’t recall any sort of movement to eliminate children from acts because it’s potential child endangerment.

With the authorities cracking down on the Croc Hunter…I wonder where the line is drawn. I personally am not at all sure.

PAD

People are comparing Steve Irwin’s carrying his month-old son tucked under one arm while feeding meat to a croc (Crikey!) to Michael Jackson’s dangling his son over a balcony.

There is no comparison. To Irwin, it’s the equivalent of “Take your child to work” day. He’s so confident that nothing could go wrong that he perceives no danger.

Except these are wild animals we’re talking about, something *could* go wrong, and he shouldn’t do it again because it’s just plain asking for trouble.

Michael Jackson, on the other hand, was just plain nuts. Bringing your month old baby along to your work environment, albeit a hazardous one, is simply not the same as dangling your infant over a three story drop just for laughs, and I’m still furious that the German police didn’t arrest him.

Jackson remains a frustration for me. I’ve always been a major proponent in separating the person from the art. I’m the first one to say that you shouldn’t allow personal antipathy to color your enjoyment of the work. But Jackson’s personal life, from his creepy facial metamorphosis to his horrific risk of that infant, has made it so I can’t even watch his older stuff which I used to enjoy a hëll of a lot. That bugs me, because I want to be able to hold true to the philosophies I espouse. But in his case, I really, really can’t.

PAD

The New Year came in quietly at Casa David. We did go to an early party at the local bowling alley which ran from 4 to 8 PM, which included disco lights and music. We were concerned that Caroline would be overstimulated by it all. Instead she found it all entrancing (except for the hour when she corked off). The only downside was our last game of bowling, when I opened with two nine-spares followed by three strikes in a row…and then they shut the lanes down right at 8. There’s nothing like being in the zone and having the game end five frames early.

We then went home, hung out, watched Cirque du Soleil on Bravo, ate some junk food, played Disney Uno, watched the ball come down in Time Square, and exhaled in relief that no one blew anything up there.

Hope everyone else had a safe New Year.

PAD