The ways we ruin our daughters

It's hard to know where to begin. Fresh off the heels of my rant about White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and his incredibly poor choice of words, I have to comment on a series of news articles that clustered together in the span of about 24 hours and all have to do with our culture and its regard for girls.

First, the darling of the Massachusetts conservative crowd, the One who some claim has the power to bring the Democrat-led Congress to its knees -- Scott Brown.

Brown, in his more youthful days, posed semi-nude for Cosmopolitan magazine -- that bastion of journalism that so keenly enriches the minds of young women ages 18-25. The more mature Brown, the one headed to Washington to slay the evil health care dragon, has been quoted in an interview with Barbara Walters as saying he'd leave it up to their discretion if his own daughters decided to pose nude for public consumption.

Nice. Always nice to hear a father support the potential objectification of his children. One has to wonder why the thought of millions of men ogling his girls -- and they would ogle -- doesn't send Brown screaming through the roof.

I hope the Brown girls have more sense than to follow in Daddy's footsteps on this one.

I'll move on.

Next, we have Hollywood actress and FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Dakota Fanning starring as the cocaine-snorting lover of 1980's rocker Joan Jett in the film "Runaways." Popular actress Kristin Stewart (Twilight et al) plays Jett. There's lots of drugs, sex, profanity -- the usual things that give a movie an R rating and a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Wonder how many Fanning fans, too young to fully appreciate what a hard life Jett and her girlfriend Cherie Currie lived, will think this film is great. Wonder how many mothers will take their daughters to see it.

Lastly, we have a new online video game that lets girls as young as FIVE try out different fashions and, er, career choices. Yeah, their avatar can flirt, shop, build a wardrobe, pick up clients at cocktail parties, and earn points to buy condoms and nipple tassels.

I am not making this up.

All a child needs to access this game is a little bit of know-how and a computer.

Makers of the game -- the name of which I don't even want to mention because they don't deserve any publicity -- say they are targeting girls in the 19-20 year-old range.

Like that's supposed to make parents feel better?

Do you really want your 19 or 20-year-old daughter role playing as a whore?

Mmm. Didn't think so.

And so it goes, dear reader.

The culture will supply whatever the culture demands. Collectively, it's time to demand something better for our daughters, something that encourages them in right paths, that builds their minds, that preserves their bodies and their health.

And something that leaves the drivel of Sundance, slutty video games, and freaky weird politicians far, far behind.