‘Idol’ an oasis of clean amid a cesspool on TV

By Jack Sheehan

Sunday, April 27, 2008 | 2 a.m.

This is not an easy admission to make, but I’ll do it anyway. The one can’t-miss, required-viewing television show in the Sheehan household every week is “American Idol.”

Our family in the past two years has planned Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the springtime around this pop-culture phenomenon for several reasons, not the least being that it provides incentive for our kids to finish their homework before 8 p.m., under the threat of missing their favorite show. But the most pertinent is that “Idol” is the one show we’ve found that appeals to all four of us, from age 9 to the old geezer in the tribe, namely me. It is also about the only post-dinnertime TV show where something graphic or disturbing to young children doesn’t pop up without notice.

Any news show you turn on is liable to smack you between the eyes with daunting tales of pedophilia or campus shootings or sexual abuse or Internet cruisings by perverts. The tabloid shows, which seem to occupy the bandwidth on every other channel, are moronically dedicated to reporting the misadventures of Britney or Paris or whichever celebutante recently filmed a sex tape with her boyfriend of the week.

One tabloid show called TMZ, which I’m aware of only because we see the final two minutes on Fox while awaiting the beginning of “Idol,” even celebrates the behavior of paparazzi who stalk pseudocelebrities, trying to catch them picking their nose in a restaurant or groping someone not considered to be their significant other.

The stuff that beams out to all of us on at least a fifth of the 500-plus channels available in this present-day cable broadcast world presents an avalanche of overtly adult viewing material that is way beyond the scope of preteens. We believe our kids deserve at least a few more years of innocence before plunging headlong into the stark realities of the modern world.

I can’t even watch golf tournaments these days without fear of a Viagra or Cialis commercial intruding with warnings about who to call in the event of a four-hour erection. I know if that happened to me, I’d be bragging about it to all my buddies from college, but it’s a different matter when the subject comes up while my 12-year-old son and I are having a lively conversation about how soon Tiger will pass Big Jack’s record for major championships.

The living room suddenly gets real quiet when these incessant reminders about sexual inadequacy are aired, and how one of these pills gives a man 36 hours to “get ready.” As a father, I’m forced to wonder by my boy’s silence just how much he knows about all these grown-up affairs, and whether it’s time we had the Big Talk.

The Big Talk is something my own dedicated father never quite mustered up the courage to have with me, perhaps because he was too Catholic and too conservative, or perhaps because he knew that my neighborhood cronies were worldly beyond their ages and that I would uncover the facts of life soon enough on my own. Sure enough, I came to learn the essentials from the gutter, and that has twisted my attitude toward procreation ever since.

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As trivial as it appears on the surface, I can debate with you whether Australian rocker Michael Johns deserved to be voted off “American Idol” before Oregon cutie Kristy Lee Cook, or which of the two Davids (Archuleta or Cook) deserves to win the title and the recording contract for Season Seven. (Personally, I thought Carly Smithson, the heavily tattooed Irish lass, had the best voice of the bunch, but Simon Cowell had it in for her. It seemed every week, as she belted out a song sounding like the next Celine, he told her she dressed poorly or missed the bar set by the original recording artist. And the voting public clearly takes its cues from the Brit with the bad T-shirts and rectangular haircut. Carly got axed Wednesday night.)

Although there is no issue about what we’ll tune in to at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, another issue entirely is who will have control of The Box.

The Box is not the television set, but rather the black remote control unit that was designed by God to fit neatly into a man’s hand. It’s obviously not designed for children’s hands because it requires two of them to adequately operate it. And there’s something inappropriate about The Box in a woman’s grasp, because in our household whenever I request that my wife turn up the volume, The Box seems to fly out of her hand and directly at my forehead.

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I would offer that parenting today comes with far more cautions than when my parents miraculously led me through the minefields of temptation. I’m sure my mother’s biggest fear in the ’60s was that she would find an issue of Playboy stuffed under my mattress. (I had a far better hiding place.)

Nowadays, the caution flag for parents goes up not only with television, but the myriad dark places easily found on the Internet, and even in text messages on cell phones.

Both of our kids carry phones as a security measure, but wouldn’t you know our 9-year-old daughter recently received on hers a barrage of commercial messages about how to cure sexual dysfunction.

So for now, we’re staying close to “American Idol” and the innocent virtues of young people with artistic ability trying to forge a career in entertainment. And because our kids appreciate that they were born in a gambling town, and that moderate gambling and gentlemen’s bets aren’t harmful, they’re giving me even money that David Archuleta wins the title.

I’m taking the rest of the field.

Jack Sheehan’s column appears every other week.