I know, you’ve got to be thinking that title is pretty hypocritical of me. You can tell by my writing style that I’m a fatso. But don’t worry; it’s just a provocative title to grab your attention. While Fat Children are involved in today’s complaint, it’s not them that I actually dislike, it’s the completely health-insane and overly litigious society we live in that I’m fixin’ to bitch about.

What, then, am I talking about? What does a lawsuit-happy populace have to do with overweight kids? For starters, how about the grisly murder of Cap’n Crunch. That’s right, the Cap’n Crunch we know and love will soon be but a distant memory. Oh, sure, he’ll still appear on the boxes of the cereal that bears his name. But gone will be his commercial adventures and wacky-fun website. This is all because of an agreement between eleven big food companies saying they won’t advertise unhealthy products to children under twelve. It’s a voluntary piece of self regulation in theory, but it’s not as if these companies don’t want to advertise to kids. They’re just so fearful of our nation’s nonstop frivolous lawsuits and of unfair regulation from our already overbloated and nosy government that they’re forced to take this action, and we’re being deprived of awesome commercials as a result.

Remember when television ads for products that only a kid could love were actually aimed at kids? When McDonald’s commercials featured Ronald McDonald with a bunch of talking Chicken McNugget puppets extolling the virtues of barbecue sauce? Nowadays, it’s a rare thing indeed to find a McDonald’s ad that actually features the famous clown, and when it does eating fast food is the absolute last thing on his mind. He’s usually pictured roller blading or snowboarding or being so x-treme to da max, with so little emphasis on food, that you almost forget what company he’s actually the mascot for, and you begin to wonder, with thoughts of John Wayne Gacy sashaying merrily through your mind, why this clown has just decided to start hanging out and doing sports with this group of young, interracial kids. This is ridiculous. Just let kids enjoy the commercials by having them full of shiny cartoon characters the way they were in my youth. And it’s not just commercials that are going away. Other companies have agreed to limit tie-ins between their junk food and popular children’s franchises. This, I’ve no doubt, means we’ll soon see a day when there is no longer any such thing as macaroni and cheese shaped like Ninja Turtles or Spider-Man fruit snacks. And that, if you ask me, is the worst offense of all, because eating macaroni and cheese shaped like Ninja Turtles was probably the finest experience of my youth. When it comes down to it, children under twelve can’t drive and they don’t have any money, so advertisements for unhealthy foods are not and will never be the problem.

And while we’re on the subject, why these regulations that require Saturday morning kids’ programming to be educational? Educational, pah! Children should be treated just the same as adults when it comes to television, I say; sometimes it’s time for them to learn, sometimes it’s time for them to watch a cat search for its own flatus on Ren and Stimpy. If everyone is constantly talking down to children, preaching at them in an “I know more than you, so you must always learn from me” way, they’re gonna get turned off of learning real quick. Children need to be ceaselessly bombarded with education and learning no more than adults do. They go to school five days a week to learn things, let them have Saturday to themselves to eat all the sugar they can and watch fighting reptiles or a half-robot detective or a masked superhero duck without forcing them to recite the multiplication tables while they’re at it. If a kid wants to learn on a Saturday, he’ll watch The Magic School Bus, if not he’ll watch Cowboys of Moo Mesa. The point is, he should have a choice. If he makes the less educational choice, so what! On Monday he’ll be back to school and they can indoctrinate and further make him an automaton there.

I remember childhood as being a whole lot of fun. I only hope the current crop of children will be able to say the same.

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