Judge — April 1937 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

RADIO- And What to Do About It BY DON HEROLD LOT of the stuff that is passed out A on radio programs for children these days is exactly the same sort of blood-and-thunder clap-trap that we, as kids, used to slip out to the haymow or out behind the barn to read. I remember when V. Stropes’ window in Bloomfield was half full of Nick Car- ter and Buffalo Bill yellow-back five-cent magazines, and I used to think I was pretty wicked when I got hold of a copy. My 11-year-old dotter, Hildegarde, however, gets about two hours of this same kind of livid tish.tosh every day at our house, and I'm not big enough to stop it. At about five o'clock every eve- ning, Indians start their tom-toms in our living room, G-Men and bandits tune up their machine-guns, Daniel Boone and Renfrew ride again, Scoop Ward begins to gush his juvenile edition of the none- too-adult March of Time, horses’ hoofs resound down our halls, tensity and sus- pension tighten our throats, owls and coyotes howl, and we get a load of such outdoor, he-man palaver as “Why, you dog-goned, tarnation, old, schemin’, double.crossin’ snake - in - the - grass!" (Western terms of endearment.) And “$-h-h-h-h! Does that shot mean that our party is being attacked?” Each evening, Hildegarde leaves a dozen of her best friends hanging over cliffs or surrounded by redskins or trapped in some hair-raising predicament of one sort or another. The sponsor's announcer rubs in the excitement and sings the praise of Somebody's Vitamin X Marvel Bread. I'm wondering what all this will, in time, do to Hildegarde’s brain and nerv- ous system. (I know what it’s doing to mine.) So far, it shows no evil effects on Hildegarde, but I fear that several years of this kind of radio entertainment may produce a pretty jumpy generation out of my dotter and her friends. Either that, or they'll be so thrill-proof when they grow up that— I'd like to hear what some of our emi- nent child psychologists don’t know about this. 1 do know that most children in the world today are becoming either double. minded or half-minded, as the result of doing most of their home work with their radios going full-blast in their ears. I'm afraid that this may produce a race of scatter-brains, but who am I to say? I'm not even sure that a race of scatter- brains is undesirable; I'm p: disap. pointed in the generation to which I April 1937 belong, and maybe scatter-brains would be better than our kind of brains. At any rate, it's a subject for hours of discussion at parent tescnet meetings, where one mother's guess is as bad as another's, and where authorities on any subject invariably split their vote fifty- fifty. And, regardless of the verdict, the children will go on listening to the radio melodramas, just the same. A few times, when our radio has bro. ken down, I've hoped that that was the answer, but even Hildegarde has learned how to telephone a hurry call to Mr. Delson, our radio man. I'm thinking of making a deal with Mr. Delson. I'll pay him not to come! or T'll pay him to come and say “No x.” Personally, I don’t think the radio In. dians are as bad as the radio uncles. If Hildegarde runs the risk of high blood pressure listening to war whoops, she’s apt to get softening of the brain listen- ing to Uncle This and Uncle That. There's one obnoxious uncle who has put radio to its lowest perversion. He enters into collusion with parents to im- part moral precepts to his child listeners. “This is Eddie Brown's birthday, uh huh, Eddie Brown of Hackensack, N.J. Uh- huh, Eddie is eight years old today. That's fine, Eddie, but, Eddie, you must uit that bad habit of biting your nails. nd, oh yes, Eddie, I almost forgot, hah, hah, hah, hah, there's a present for you behind the piano—and don't forget to quit biting your nails.” I'd bite my hands off if my parents and any radio uncle ganged on me for that kind of dirty work at the crossroads. “Oh, dear me!’ the elephant said, only of course he said it in clephant Jan- guage,” is far worse than fifty redskins biting the dust. All this truck may be harmless enough to children, but haven't we parents any rights? Pity the day when earphones pes and loud speakers came in with a ng. (I notice that one radio company is bringing back something similar to the earphone and putting radio back to si- lence where it belongs. I've never been able to appreciate the necessity of two people listening to the same radio, any more than I would the necessity of two or more people having to read the same book at the same time.) “THe darling old male squealer, Alexander Woollcott, is back on the air, bursting with his enthusiasms and flushed with his whims. I welcome him with open ears, because he’s one of the few talkers in radio who thinks more than an inch deep or who gives us credit for more than 8-year-old intelligence. I was delighted to have Mr. Woollcott recently hop hob-nailed on one of my pet aversions . . . art museums. He had a gtand idea for distributing the Mellon art collection around all over the coun- try, one picture to Detroit and one to Nashville, and so on, and then keeping them moving around like chautauqua bell-ringers. I, myself, have long wished that some- thing might be done about art galleries. Maybe it would help if the art mu- seums would put hay on their floors about a foot deep. Yes, art in small bites might be better. Or maybe the museums could put paintings on trucks and take them around the streets and show them to the people. Advertisers might even pay for this serv- ice, and there could be signs (like radio announcements): “This painting by Rembrandt comes to you through the courtesy of the Eureka Apple Corer.” The average man now associates art with broken arches and aching insteps. [Nl throw this v1, But, Daddy, I Fj . N NX XN wart to hear what happens to Renfrew” t yy comicbooks.com