Watching Tom & Jerry in Baghdad

So I heard this report/ interview on NPR earlier today that struck me funny. The lead in, and the earlier teasers, kind of implied it would be a more dramatic, insightful story about these kids and the experiences they were missing thanks to the war. The host was talking with a mother in Baghdad about the necessity of keeping her kids inside for safety reasons. She said that she was scared to take them to the park, and then she said something very near to: "they do their homework... then they have their Playstation and like to watch satellite tv... they like to watch Tom & Jerry." Wow, um, that sounds rough. Isn't that essentially the same thing American kids choose to do after school?

Maybe we are exporting American style democracy to Iraq... from the bottom up. Changing the attitudes of adults is hard, but if we're willing to wait a generation maybe we can build a bridge by way of video games, junk food and television. We just have to keep the war going long enough to force these kids to stay inside until they're fully indoctrinated.

Anyway, I'm not trying to discount the point this story is trying (and failing) to make, or to diminish a very real and highly anxious situation for this (and many other) mothers in Baghdad. Clearly kids in Baghdad are kept inside for safety reasons and, unlike here in the U.S., they often don't have the choice of going outside to play if they want to. And the same story did make mention of the fact that these particular kids had seen someone murdered in the street, and that their father had been killed. But the net effect of this story, for me, was a feeling of irony... and I don't think that's what the writer/ producer/ host had in mind.