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Nov. 24, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran : The Atheists' unintended gift
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 6, 2006 / 13 Tishrei , 5767

TV Karts just what the glazed-over ordered

By Lori Borgman

Lori Borgman
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Apparently, the pimp-my-ride craze is now hitting grocery carts. A New Zealand firm is test-marketing brightly colored plastic shopping carts designed for children. Each cart seats two, has a top-load overhead storage bin and comes with small a DVD player in the dashboard. The TV Kart, which resembles a cage (one would hope that is purely coincidental), offers Barney, The Wiggles and Bob the Builder.


Children are now able to watch television from the comfort of home, in the car on the way to the grocery store, while at the grocery store, in the car on the way home from the grocery store, and once again when finally back at home. If you could rig a pulley from the refrigerator to the living room, the little darlings might never have reason to leave a sitting position.


Technological wonders aside, we must ask, is this a good thing?


Avid football fans might shout "Yes!" but these are children we are talking about, not armchair quarterbacks.


A grandfather in Atlanta, where the carts are on trial, told National Public Radio that he loved the TV Kart because it keeps his grandson quiet. Yes, silence is golden, but increasingly, it appears to be a rather constraining world in which to be a child. Sit still for your Baby Einstein, mommy needs to talk on the phone. Sit still for your Sesame Street hour, mommy needs to work. Sit still for Barney, mommy needs to grocery-shop.


It was on trips to and from the grocery store that our youngest learned to read. She followed the song lyrics that came with a Randy Travis tape. Sure, her early vocabulary included words like heartache, railroad, whiskey and lonesome, but the point is that kids can learn a lot without their faces glued to screens.


There are many things for children to learn at the grocery, and not just about fruits and vegetables, colors, counting, unit pricing and how to find the expiration date on yogurt.


Average children with normal energy levels can learn things like self-control: "Do not touch another thing. I'm not going to tell you twice."


Or concentration: "Do not move - do you hear me - do not move a muscle." Physical coordination: "Stand right there and keep both hands on the cart." Delayed gratification: "We do not open food in the store and eat it."


Consequences: "If you jab your sister again, you're going to be very sorry."


We now have televisions at the gas pump, televisions in restaurants and airports and televisions dangling from the ceilings of the mega-marts. We are raising a generation of children that think life happens in front of a 15-inch screen or on a wall-size plasma. Before long they will be demanding to TiVo life and play each day back without commercial interruptions.


The $1,500 carts, which shoppers can rent for $1, are being tested by chains in eight states. Capco, the manufacturer, claims the carts can net stores thousands of additional dollars from customers who spend more time shopping. That's hard to believe in an industry with such a narrow profit margin.


But, of course, they also claim the carts will keep kids quiet. And they might. But there is more to being a kid than sitting quietly in a trance-like state, glued to a moving picture on a tiny screen.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Lori Borgman is the author of , most recently, "Pass the Faith, Please" (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) and I Was a Better Mother Before I Had Kids To comment, please click here. To visit her website click here.

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© 2006, Lori Borgman

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