Saving children from entertainment Dan Frazell, a Bangor, Maine, Police Department member, says parents need a wake-up call (photo by Tina Gohr). A Maine officer tells parents how to handle today's sex- and violence-filled entertainment media By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle When Dan Frazell, a community relations and D.A.R.E. officer from Bangor, Maine, visited Green Bay this weekend, he went to a local park to play tennis with a friend. He was surprised when several teenagers showed up at the park with their own volleyball net and started to play. He was surprised because, as a drug abuse education officer, he's used to kids soaking up the lyrics of drug- and sex-filled rap songs, recounting the latest deeds of the foul-mouthed kids on "South Park" and coming to school bleary-eyed from overnight video game sessions. On Sunday, he lectured on the issue to a small group of parents at St. Norbert College's Bemis International Center in a presentation sponsored by Brown County Crimestoppers. He emphasized the importance of parents having some idea of what their kids were listening to, talking about and absorbing. "None of us want to distance our children or invade their privacy, but we don't want to lose them, either," he said. He provided several examples of raw content in the media, and suggested that one couple that had brought younger family members leave. Many of the examples were from television and music. A shot from the Comedy Central show "Crank Yankers," which features puppets and raw humor, was shown next to a "Sesame Street" segment, showing how young people could be attracted to the cruder show, which included footage of puppets looking like the Muppets' Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy having sex. "Kids learned their letters and numbers from watching this," Frazell said of the "Sesame Street" clip, then pointed to the "Crank Yankers" images. "They aren't going to learn from this?" He spent much of the three-hour presentation discussing the slang used in rap music to refer to sex, violence and drugs, and urged parents to study up on rock stars and their lives. "They'll listen to you if you know what you're talking about," Frazell said. Frazell noted that Eminem, one of the top rap stars, had faced several court hearings for assault and lawsuits from his own mother for verbal abuse. "If he was really as 'in-your-face' as his image, he would have gone in there in his baggy outfits and flipped the judge the bird," Frazell said. "He was wearing a suit and tie. ... he's a hypocrite." He said the allure of the easy sex and big money on display on such shows as MTV's "Cribs" was a powerful draw to young people. And he emphasized that all the information in the world wouldn't keep kids from what might be bad for them. "When kids get to a certain age, they make choices," he said. "Things like D.A.R.E. give you a good foundation to build upon." He compared the world parents grew up in to that facing today's youth - only three TV channels, music on 8-track tapes, no VCRs or video games. By contrast, he mentioned one fifth-grader in a class he worked with who watched MTV whenever he was home, and taped it during his sleeping and school hours to watch on the weekends. What has also changed, Frazell said, was the message of the music. "Rock in the 1980s was wild, but it was mostly life-affirming," he said. "Today's rock and rap is filled with hatred and violence."