Talk Show America has been giving public education a royal chewing out lately, sinking its sharp little teeth and claws into what it considers political correctness in the schools: outrage has been aired, for example, regarding the adolescent female who got popped for sneaking a Midol into a drug-free zone, and those two little kids (in different states) who were sent to pre-school prison (without possibility of parole) for inappropriate smooching. By and large, our audio-based cultural conservators disapproved of these punishments. Of all the professional yakkers I heard, only Dr. Laura Schlesinger (aka Dr. Laura) considered the punishment of the teenage girl with the forbidden substance (aka Midol) to be just. Dr. Laura's logic? Rules are rules; once the fabric of social order is rent, we'll have diabetics, asthmatics, pre-menstrual girls and crack addicts altering schoolroom moods at random, causing their beleaguered instructors to flounder in their efforts to get them all on the Internet (aka The bridge to the 21st Century). We can't let that happen. Nobody's talked about the role of lawyers in all this, but wasn't it just last year that some Midwestern Mom sued a five year old boy for harassing her daughter? Faced with the threat of the dread "frivolous lawsuit" (aka The toll plaza on the bridge to the 21st Century), what are schools supposed to do? Lawyers must soon be a necessary presence in the PTA; children will soon be isolated in protective body armor and forbidden to interact with anything but their multimedia workstations. And frankly, how else will the little tykes get ahead? Talk radio has also made much of the baseball player who spit in an umpire's face, following a call the player did not find fair. The player was suspended by the baseball powers-that-be, but the suspension was deferred until after the play-offs, making the suspension more or less an unpaid vacation. This did not make the umpires happy. They threatened to strike, but were prevented, once again, by the baseball powers that be. I guess the umpires are just supposed to take their Midol and shut up. So what do we have here? We have children who are punished for acting too much like adults, and a grown man who isn't punished for acting like a nasty child. You know what? We may have a major paradigm shift here, right smack in the middle of the passing lane on the bridge to the 21st Century. It used to be that our nation considered the sparing of rod to be the moral equivalent of spoiling child. Well, try to find a rod in a modern class room. A gat or a shiv, yes, but a rod? Dead as the hula hoop, my friends. The only punishment tool available to the modern teacher is the "time out" by which rowdy toddlers are banished from the group to contemplate their inappropriate behaviors. And what is a time-out? Isn't it a suspension (aka unpaid vacation )? Some want to create permanent time-outs for our more thuggish offspring, or even for those polite offspring in this country illegally. But for now the punishments are reserved mainly for children who display overly-adult conduct- - kissing, shooting, grumbling, attempting pain relief and so forth. Yet, at the same time, grown-ups are actively encouraged to act like children. Dennis Rodman and Madonna get paid big bucks for playing dress up. Sure, we make fun of them, but they're laughing all the way to the bank. All lawyers involved in the O.J. trial are making a pile writing easy-to-read best sellers wagging fingers at others. They're whiners, little bratty tattle-tales. President Clinton criticized a bill even as he signed it! Isn't that having your pork and eating it too? Senator Dole prepared for his election debate by lying around in the sun for a week. Getting a tan and doing your homework are not equivalent activities. Senator Dole also recently referred to President Clinton as a "bozo," aka a clown, a jolly painted figure who has been terrifying children for generations. This is name-calling, a childish trait. The signs are everywhere. If 12-year-olds like rap music, they're considered anti-social gangstas. If adults like rap music, they're considered sophisticated music critics. We "surf" the Net-- hardly grown-up behavior! If we were truly adults, we would examine the Net, analyze it, and form tentative conclusions. Instead we drift aimlessly from site to site, like babies confronted with shiny objects. Economically, we're moving from actual cash to cybercash (aka play money). We save the good toys (Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem) for ourselves and make our children wade through boring interactive encyclopedias while isolated in protective body armor. How selfish, how childish. Worst of all, our weakwilled parental unit (aka the federal government) is toying with the idea of having the private sector co-manage our national parks. I've seen the equivalent happen locally when a Silicon Valley company helped bail out our baseball stadium, in exchange for which, it changed its name from Candlestick Park to 3 Com Park. You just wait. We'll have Starbuck's Grand Canyon, Walt Disney Presents: Yosemite! and Time/Life/Turner/Warner/HBO/Viacom's Redwood Experience (aka Northern California). We used to be able to play in our own back yard, now we 'll be allowed to play in theirs. We'll soon become a nation of virtual 12 year olds, sitting on a chest bulging with toys, saying to the world: : "It's mine, but you can have some."

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