Her Ladyship

Notes from the gutter.

Monday, October 23, 2006

A plea to parents and guardians

If you really feel you must learn immediately about defense contractors' misbehavior in Iraq by going to see "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," and canNOT wait for the DVD, then for the love of all that is holy LEAVE YOUR FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AT HOME.

Friday we went to a screening sponsored by the Green Party of the documentary (done by the same guy who ripped Wal-Mart and Fox news a new one) and I guess we got what we paid for. It was free.

Now, if you know a little bit about what's been happening in Iraq, you might already know that private companies have lost employees to insurgents (remember the four guys from Blackwater whose charred corpses were strung up in the streets two years ago?) and that they've been caught up in some nasty allegations regarding interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib. So perhaps after second thought, you might decide that your PRESCHOOL-AGE DAUGHTER shouldn't be exposed to sights like that.

Even if you didn't know, and all you knew that it was a free movie about the war in Iraq, perhaps you should realize that it borders on child abuse to expect a FOUR-YEAR-OLD to sit through a documentary. I wouldn't even place my bets on expecting a child that young to make it through a Disney movie in the theater, and those are designed specifically to target the young-uns.

To make matters worse, the guy refused to shush his daughter, allowing her to comment about everything - keep in mind there are maybe 20 seats in the theater, so no noise goes unnoticed - and then he left her to go run an errand or god knows what. All I know is that she was placed in my row next to a stand-in who was unable to get the little girl to stop whining, "I want my daddy. I want my daddy. I want my daddy." After about 10 very long minutes, he came back and collected her. Finally. Undoubtedly so he could head off to his big Parent of the Year award ceremony.

(Oh, and the documentary was very interesting but I think not as good as his other pieces. They could only get a few truck drivers and translators to speak about the abuse of contracts there. Although one egregious example: they were charging the government $100/bag of laundry, and still not getting the clothes clean. For more info, go to: http://iraqforsale.org/.)

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