Sadness for Parenting

From CNN.com, by Sabrina James:

(Parenting.com) — Last night I sat down to watch the Oscar red carpet with my 6-year-old daughter Kaia.

She played dress-up with her American Girl doll while I followed the commentary on Twitter. “Look, Mommy! Julie’s all ready for the red carpet,” she exclaimed, showing off the updo she created for her doll.

She watched with mild interest until the moment we’d been waiting for arrived: Nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis appeared in a frenzy of flashing camera lights with her mom and sister in tow. “Look, Mommy, there she is! Look at her purse! It’s a puppy!” Kaia jumped up and down. “I want one of those!”…

Instead, last night, on her special night, she was subjected to the most distasteful showing of adult “humor” I have ever seen. It started with a “joke” by Oscar host Seth MacFarlane about how it will be “sixteen years before she’s too old” for George Clooney, but sadly it didn’t stop there. The popular satire site The Onion tweeted the following to its more than 4 million followers during the show last night…

Many online have tried to make this a race issue. Saying she was singled out because she’s a young black girl. I hope that’s not the case. To me, this has less to do with race and everything to do with the fact that we have stopped respecting the innocence of our children. We’ve become so desensitized by the “Toddlers and Tiaras” culture that we take hurtful aim at those who epitomize childhood as much as the fluffy puppy purses they carry on the red carpet….

I wish the headlines today were different. I wish we lived in a world where Quvenzhané could wake up this morning and search the internet with her mama to find herself on our best-dressed lists. To see celebrities like Oprah and Beyoncé, her biggest fans, rave about her.

Instead her family must hide the horrible truth from her — the truth that our media took a cheap shot at someone too small to stand up for herself or to even know what the word she was called means.