A story from the President's State of the Union address that has received little press, but which raises the who issue of videos marketed for small children (especially those claiming to make kids "smarter"). This exchange made me smile wide.

http://www.slate.com/id/2158226/

Bush's Baby Einstein Gaffe
The president lionizes a mountebank.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007, at 6:56 PM ET


In his Jan. 23 State of the Union address (click here for the video), President Bush paused briefly to pay tribute to a few everyday American heroes who'd been brought to the Capitol to sit beside his wife during the speech. It's a State of the Union tradition that began in 1982, when Ronald Reagan saluted Lenny Skutnik, a federal employee who, two weeks earlier, had plunged into the icy Potomac during a snowstorm to rescue the survivor of an airline crash. For the succeeding 25 years, every January some hapless White House functionary has been called upon to find a few new heroes to park next to the first lady in the House visitor's gallery. The supply was bound eventually to run a little thin, but whoever chose Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Co., should have done a little more research.

There she was, sitting with Wesley Autrey, who leapt in front of a New York City subway train to rescue a complete stranger, and Army Sgt. Tommy Reiman, who repelled an enemy attack in Iraq with two legs full of shrapnel and bullet wounds in his arms and chest. Aigner-Clark's presence was, to say the least, incongruous. Here is how Bush summarized her achievement:

After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children's videos in her basement. The Baby Einstein Company was born, and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. In November 2001, Julie sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company, and with her help Baby Einstein has grown into a $200 million business. Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America. And she is using her success to help others—producing child safety videos with John Walsh of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Julie says of her new project: "I believe it's the most important thing that I have ever done. I believe that children have the right to live in a world that is safe." And so tonight, we are pleased to welcome this talented business entrepreneur and generous social entrepreneur—Julie Aigner-Clark.

That's high praise for a businesswoman who (if I may be permitted a cynical moment) gave not a dime either to Bush or to the Republican National Committee during the last four election cycles.* What is Aigner-Clark's achievement? She got rich marketing videos to infants. No one told the president, I presume, that this profit-making scheme ignores advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics that children under 2 years of age shouldn't watch TV. One recent study went so far as to suggest, plausibly, that too much TV at so early an age can be a risk factor for autism. (See the Oct. 2006 Slate piece, "TV Might Really Cause Autism" by Gregg Easterbrook.)

Baby Einstein is part of what Alissa Quart, in an August 2006 piece in the Atlantic ("Extreme Parenting"), called the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex, an industry that preys on the status anxiety of neurotic parents who, until Aigner-Clark and others told them otherwise, didn't sweat the meritocratic rat race until it was time to place their pint-sized strivers in preschool. That changed in the mid-1990s, when Don Campbell, extrapolating wildly from earlier research involving college students that, Quart writes, has never been duplicated, trademarked the slogan "Mozart effect" and used it to market classical-music CDs for infants. Aigner-Clark followed suit with her Baby Einstein videos in 1997.

"Essentially," Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan Lynn told the Chicago Tribune "Media Mom" (and occasional Slate contributor) Nell Minow in December 2005,



In May, a child-advocacy nonprofit filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about Aigner-Clark's creation, alleging that claims made on the videos' behalf (example: With Baby DaVinci, "your child will learn to identify her different body parts, and also discover her five senses … in Spanish, English, and French!") are deceptive and false. Filed with the complaint were letters of support from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "The reality," wrote the American Academy of Pediatrics, "is that parents play the videos to give themselves some time to do other household chores, like cooking dinner or doing laundry. However, they shouldn't be led to believe that it helps their baby."

There's a sucker born every minute, but only a select few get to be president of the United States.

Clairification, Jan. 25: As usual, my problem isn't that I'm too cynical but rather that I'm not cynical enough. A reader alerts me that although Julie Aigner-Clark didn't contribute to Bush or the Republican National Committee during the last four election cycles, her husband and business partner, William E. Clark, gave $5,150 to Bush and the RNC during the 2004 cycle.



http://www.slate.com/id/2158738/

Baby Einstein Replies
An e-mail from Julia Aigner-Clark, and a reply.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007, at 8:23 PM ET


Dear Timothy,

To be fair, you neglected to mention [in "Bush's Baby Einstein Gaffe," Jan. 24] the $200,000 that I've donated to The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (every penny of profit made by The Safe Side), the donation of a child safety program to every school district in the state of Texas, and the nearly $2 million dollars I've personally invested in educating kids on how to stay safe. Apparently, the $5,000 that my husband donated to a Republican Senator (not Bush) takes precedence.

But I'm sure you consider yourself fair and balanced? Oh--and you might fact-check to determine which videos were produced by me prior to the sale of Baby Einstein to Disney. I didn't make Baby DaVinci, nor did I make any of the claims that you referenced in your article.

And I was raised a Democrat! Imagine that.

Have a great day.

Julie Aigner-Clark

Ms. Aigner-Clark is the founder of Baby Einstein, which she sold to the Walt Disney Co. in 2001. President Bush touted her accomplishments during the "heroes" portion of his 2007 State of the Union address (click here for the video).




Dear Julie,

1.) I never said your husband donated $5,000 to Bush in 2004. I said he donated $5,150 to Bush and the Republican National Committee. That is a matter of public record.

2.) I applaud your charitable contributions. I don't rate them up there with leaping in front of a subway train to rescue a stranger, or repelling an enemy attack with two legs full of shrapnel, which is what two of the other honored "heroes" (seated with you beside the first lady in the House visitor's gallery) did. But they're generous contributions. You can afford them.

3.) I'm glad to learn that you no longer owned Baby Einstein when the video Baby DaVinci was marketed with the outrageous claim, "[Y]our child will learn to identify her different body parts, and also discover her five senses … in Spanish, English, and French!" That claim is one basis for a consumer complaint filed against Baby Einstein with the Federal Trade Commission last spring—a complaint that includes letters of support from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

But another basis for the complaint (see p. 7) is the name of the company itself, which was bestowed on your watch:



A footnote cites a 1946 decision, Jacob Seigel Co. v. F.T.C., which "held that a product's name can play a role in implying a claim."

There is no evidence that parking a child under the age of two in front of a video—any video—will make him smarter, and there's some evidence that it may do him harm, which is why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against it. By all accounts, what Baby Einstein videos are really good for is distracting the baby while Mom or Dad sneaks off to take a shower. I'm a parent myself, and I well remember those moments when a baby could feel like the commandant of a particularly inhumane prisoner-of-war camp. (No, you may not go to the toilet! I don't care how long you've been waiting!) But you didn't market these videos under the brand name Baby Hypnotize or Baby Chloroform. You marketed them under the name Baby Einstein. That's deceptive.

What's more, your disassociation from marketing practices undertaken by Walt Disney Co. after you sold Baby Einstein strikes me as disingenuous. You may no longer own the company, but President Bush said in his speech that "with [your] help Baby Einstein has grown into a $200 million business." That suggests that you maintained a role in the company after you sold it. Your picture appears beside the words, "Our Founder," on a Baby Einstein Web page. And that's you in a QuickTime video on that same Web page touting the videos. "We use art to teach color to children in really fun, silly ways," you say. Not "We used to teach color in really fun, silly ways, before those unscrupulous hacks at Disney took over." And in what sense can a video really "teach" an infant anything? What evidence do you have that anything is being learned, other than an early attachment to the TV screen?

4.) You may have been raised a Democrat, but you are now being used by Republicans. Don't mistake the president's mentioning you in his speech as anything other than condescension—a condescension of which Democrats are equally capable. If President Bush cared at all about the issue of child development, then someone on his staff would have taken the five minutes necessary to discover that prominent medical professionals consider the business you founded to be a scam. (For that matter, if President Bush cared at all about the issue of early child development, then he wouldn't have let Head Start funding lie flat during the past five years. But that's another story.) The White House's choosing to spotlight your accomplishment was surely meant to demonstrate its commitment to children, to families, and to all those other womanly good feelings it fears that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D., Calif., taps into with female voters. But in failing to perform even rudimentary research on what it is Baby Einstein actually does, the White House ended up demonstrating the precise opposite. The fact that this screw-up attracted less attention in the press than the president's absent-mindedly referring to the "Democrat" rather than the "Democratic" party further shows that President Bush's indifference to these "women's" issues is widely shared in newsrooms.

Cheers,

Timothy Noah

*detour alert*

from whence does "pwns" or "pwned" come? was "owns" or "owned" insufficient? it seems to be an interwire-exclusive phenomenon.

sorry to take away from such a treatise, but i've always needed this particular itch scratched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwns

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pwn

from what i understand, it stems from a misspelling some years ago on a message board that other people found funny and then it took off from there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwned

on topic, i really had no idea this industry even existed and have to say that the founder's response didn't address any of the original articles main points (that the videos don't do any good, etc.). i tend to infer that that means that she doesn't have any good explanations. lazy parenting-enabler!

so, while i agree that this lady doesn't deserve to be held up as some kind of hero - it's stupid to paint her as some kind of evil villain. any parent willing to take even the slightest amount of time to understand effective parenting knows about the pediatrician's recommendation against allowing kids to watch television before age 2.

At the same time, any parent who has one of these videos (and every parent I know has at least one of them) can tell you that they are a God send when you need 20 minutes of peace away from your children.

Baby Chloroform indeed!

we were actually really good about not allowing our first to watch any television before 2 years of age. it's much more difficult to do with two of them now because the younger one is naturally drawn to it. we don't have any Baby Einstein vids but do DVR Sesame Street, Dora, etc.

and yes, the 20 minutes of peace is indeed an alluring thing. i'm much more likely to allow it than my wife, although i'm even disturbed by how utterly hypnotized they are by it all (although i suppose i look the same way when watching a football game). we try to limit to no more than 30 min a day.

Entrepreneurs, soldiers, and everyday Americans saluted for courageous heroism and contributing to the culture. Welcome to America, 2007.

I'm not sure what you're driving at with this. It states in the article that the practice of recognizing the "heroes in the gallery" as they have come to be known, has been done by presidents for roughly 25 yrs or so now. Reagan started it and it caught on. Its like the equivalent of your local affiliate ending their news broadcast with a "human interest piece" Same concept.

Point is that the "heroes" are usually more than rich campaign contributors, or even rich philanthropists.

My kid likes Seinfeld.

Well, yeah. That's the point of the article. But I don't get that from G_V's post. It sounds like he's got a problem with everybody that was in the gallery as a "hero"

Probably because "hero" wasn't followed up with "of the People's Revolution".