Handy Manny's a Handy Sham!

Y'know, I was talking to my brother, John, the other day, and he was telling me that he was missing my rant posts on the blog. Since I actually work for my paycheck nowadays, I'm not home as much as I wish I was and I don't get to watch the kid shows with Cooper and Bear as much as I once did. That, unfortunately, diminishes my ability to find new material to rant and rave about.

Well, HALLELUJAH! Just so happens that this weekend, I found a show to rant about. It is, of course, a Disney show. Imagine that. Disney. The media conglomerate that claims to be about and for families, yet, all they're concerned about is their bottom line. Think about how much influence Disney (the corporation) yields on our children. Television shows such as Disney Channel (duh), ABC, ABC Family, ESPN (you've gotta be kidding me) and all the ESPN channels. Movies (which are usually pretty good). Satellite radio such as XM (I think they have a couple of channels there). Theme Parks (which, if they weren't so derned expensive for a family of four, would probably have ALOT more patrons...not that they're hurting or anything), and Lord knows what else they've got their little tinkerbells into. Hell, they've even got a partnership with McDonalds! Watch their channels, and they're pushing that crap on our kids...that's a post and a rant for another day.

So, the show I'm going to beat down today is Handy Manny. This show's been on the air for some time now. I remember it being introduced back in August just after we moved down to NC.

According to Wikipedia, "Handy Manny is a TV animated children's program launched in 2006, part of the Playhouse Disney morning block of the Disney Channel. The show features the adventures of Manny Garcia, a bilingual Latino handyman, and his talking tools."

Yup, that about sums it up. Let's start off with the obvious political incorrectness of this show. Manny is "a bilingual Latino handyman". Isn't bilingual Latino redundant? Hmm. Anyways...what I'm focusing on is the word HANDYMAN. Are you telling me that Disney would only greenlight a new kids show with a Latino in the lead role if, and only if, he was a blue collar worker...a handyman? If you've ever seen this show, Manny can fix anything. I've seen him fix the town's stoplight, I've seen him fix a watch, the TV, the fridge...man, you name it, our little stereotypical Hispanic can fix it. That's realistic, isn't it? I mean, doesn't every Hispanic in our country know how to fix anything and work with his hands and the only job he can get is to be a handyman, I mean, since he can fix anything, right? What's next? Landscaping Luis? He comes with a talking lawn mower and weed wacker, and his nemesis is Mr. Thurston, the rich snooty fella down the street that always bitches and moans about those derned immigrants?

And let's look at Manny even more. Put aside the fact that Manny's a blue collar worker, he's got the typical hispanic accent (voiced by That 70's Show's Wilmer Valderrama...guess he couldn't get any sugar momma from Lindsay Lohan when she dumped him so he had to go find a real job). AND Manny easily trips into speaking Spanish, completely forgetting that all his customers are Americans and can't speak Spanish, so he has to translate what he just said. Dora the Explorer he ain't. I mean, c'mon, if you're going to work in this country, shouldn't you be able to communicate with your patrons without slipping into your native tongue? Or is Disney trying to desensitize our children now so they'll not insist that English remain our national language? Hmm...sounds like a conspiracy to me.

So, as you can see, Disney has yet again outdone themselves with their, ahem, childrens shows. I can't wait to see what's next. Oh wait, I think Johnny and the Sprites is coming soon...a show about a 30-something man that moves to the wilderness and ends up befriending a bunch of muppet fairies. First off, what's he doing by himself in the wilderness? Only disillusioned mathemticians sending out mailbombs live in the wilderness like that (Grizzly Adams the exception of course) and let's not talk about the derned fairies. Lord knows what he's doing with them when the cameras aren't rolling.

And one last thing about being a parent in general. Last night, for the first time, we shut off a movie because it may have been too innapropriate for the boys. We turned off Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King. Cooper was watching it intensely, and Abbie and I concluded that he may have bad dreams from all those derned orcs. Funny how it changes as a parent.