An inspiring article about teen pop stars, media influence, and the importance of parenting. This explains why young talents tend to commit crimes and do immoral things. Is it because they have improper value towards money and life as well as too much freedom? (Purple Highlights)
Mom and Pop Culture
By Martha Brockenbrough
Special to MSN TV
Special to MSN TV
You have to feel sorry for Billy Ray Cyrus, who just emptied the entire contents of his achy breaky heart into a long interview with GQ magazine. Among other things, he said he regrets ever letting Miley star in Disney's "Hannah Montana" franchise. And he likens her unto Kurt Cobain and Anna Nicole Smith, both of whom met sad and early ends.
But you kind of have to wonder what took the guy so long.
Almost three years ago, MSN Movies ran a Mom and Pop Culture column I wrote that asked whether she was the next Britney Spears. At the time, her sexy image and public proclamations of virginity seemed at odds with each other -- or worse, a crass marketing ploy that made her seem safe to parents (she's a virgin!) while thrilling to kids (so shiny and pretty!). Britney had made the same virginity pledge and just a few years later, was living another kind of life entirely. And things only got worse for her from there.
About a year after the first Miley column, I wrote another piece outlining the many reasons she wasn't a role model: the cell phone panty shots; the YouTube video where she made fun of Disney rivals; the arguably racist slanted eyes she made in a photograph; her threat to "ruin" Radiohead after they opted not to meet with her at the Grammys; and somehow most offensive, parking in a handicapped slot when she was on a milkshake run.
A normal teen might do any one of these things. But all of them in rapid-fire succession made for a portrait of a teen out of control -- and this is just the stuff the public found out about.
Fast forward to today. Miley has turned 18. Her TV show is over. Her parents are splitting up. She's the subject of a running gag on "Saturday Night Live." She was caught on video smoking a legal hallucinogen, and now the people who love her most are starting to worry?
In Billy Ray's defense, he admits he made mistakes as a dad, especially in trying to be a friend to his kids. As he said to the magazine, other parents would warn, "You don't need to be a friend, you need to be a parent ... I'm the first guy to say to them right now: You were right."
Anyone who has kids takes after-the-fact realizations like this as a gut-punch. Every one of us makes the best decisions we can, and then spends the wee hours of sleepless night worrying about them. It must be a nightmare to wake up after all of that and realize that the central tenet of your parenting philosophy has taken your child to places you don't want her to go.
But he still doesn't get it. Not really. He also told the magazine that he performed on "Hannah Montana" "for peanuts." "I went from $12,000 a week to, after four years ... $15,000 a week. Hell, yeah."
It's of course true that the franchise and his daughter made a whole lot more money. But anyone who scoffs at $12,000 or $15,000 a week isn't living in the real world.
This point matters -- a lot.
When you forget that most people have to work a lot harder and be a lot more careful about their choices because the margin between survival and ruin is only as thick as the next paycheck, you also forget that actions have consequences.
This is also the kind of thinking that lets you excuse your child's bad behavior and bad decisions as youthful indiscretions instead of as big, fat warning signs. If parents aren't there dishing out actual consequences, how's a kid supposed to learn anything but that the normal rules of life don't apply?
Writing this stuff off as the folly of youth almost entitles kids to do things they know are wrong. What does it really matter as long as they can keep working and making millions?
And those millions do matter. We live in this strange time where young talent is dis-proportionally revered.
If you're 15, great-looking, and can sing and dance, there's a chance you could become a megastar before you get your driver's license.
But if you wait too long to reach for the brass ring, you might miss your chance. Heck, look at "American Idol." It took the show three years to raise the age limit from 24 to 28 -- as if the moment you turn 29, no one could possibly idolize you? And 30? Forget it.
This is crazy. And it's terrible for teen stars, who can reach the height of their earning power as they're sliding through the depths of their impulsive years.
It's no wonder so many of them end up with addictions, shaved heads and criminal records. If the entire world tells you you're the best thing ever, and if you're surrounded by people on your payroll who let you do whatever you want as long as you keep the paychecks coming, this is the most likely result.
What's unlikely to change things for Billy Ray Cyrus, though, is talking to magazines like GQ about all this business. Michael Lohan, who seems to send out weekly press releases about his daughter and her travails, hasn't managed to keep Lindsay Lohan from self-destructing. At various times, she even blamed her dad for her troubles.
There's a time and a place for parenting. The time is when your kids are kids. The place is at home -- not in the media. The media are not friends to celebrities, especially the young ones. The fawning press, the Barbara Walters "most fascinating" interviews, these are part of the problem. Same goes for the entertainment companies that create these publicity machines that shoot stars into orbit with little thought of keeping them in something resembling an atmosphere of sanity.
Here's hoping that whatever Billy Ray Cyrus fears most won't come to pass, and that Miley will emerge from this time ready to focus on her acting and singing, so that she can make the most of her talent and not just the most money. And now the rest of us can respectfully look away while this broken family does its best to heal.
