Head Strong: With video rampant, you'll be the butt of the joke forever
2.08.09
Michael Smerconish
My dad will never forget a telephone call he received from Mr. Roberts, the vice principal of Holicong Junior High School in Buckingham, Bucks County.
"Walt, we're suspending Michael from school for having exposed himself," said the exasperated vice principal during my eighth-grade year. Mom told me that dad, himself a longtime school guidance counselor, almost had a heart attack envisioning that I'd dropped my trousers outside of homeroom. Years later, she admits they were quietly relieved when they learned I'd "flicked a moon" in gym class.
Of course, back then it wasn't funny. I have a distinct recollection of cleaning the garage on my day off.
My school was state-of-the- art when it opened in the early 1970s. The morning announcements were delivered via closed-circuit cable TV instead of the customary public-address system. One day the video squad was recording my gym class. That's when I mooned the camera.
I guess you could say I was ahead of my time. I got tripped up on tape back in an era when the only video game was Pong.
The temptation is to say that kids today do boneheaded things we would never have done. I disagree. We did - OK, I did - plenty of stupid things back then, too.
What changed? E-mail, texting, and video and camera phones have ended the era of deniability. Events that would once have faded with human memory are now permanent. Which is perhaps the greatest bit of wisdom a parent can offer these days.
Michael Phelps just learned that lesson. So, too, did Prince Harry and the multitudes caught up in something called "sexting."
Phelps was forced to apologize for his "regrettable" behavior after a British tabloid printed a photo showing the 14-time gold medalist clutching a bong during a November party at the University of South Carolina. Phelps isn't at risk of losing his medals, nor is his swimming career in peril. But his lucrative endorsements - and his wallet - stand to take a hit (pun intended).
And last month, Prince Harry embarrassed the royal family when a series of video clips surfaced in which the prince mocks his way through a fake phone call with the queen, calls a fellow soldier "our little Paki friend," and tells another that the towel he was wearing made him look like a "rag-head."
Not that the rich and famous are the only ones who have to worry about youthful intexcretions. A survey of more than 1,200 young people, ages 13 to 26, released in December found that one in five teenagers have sent or posted sexually suggestive images of themselves for someone else to see. That percentage jumps to one-third of young adults, between 20 and 26.
The study also found that about 40 percent of teens surveyed had received racy texts or e-mails originally meant for someone else. Almost 30 percent have seen a suggestive image not meant for them. Fifteen percent of teens who have sent some sexually suggestive media - whether it be a text, e-mail or image - did so with someone they had never met in person.
I recently spoke with Bill Albert, director of programs at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the organization that released the survey.
"Technology isn't the problem here. It is young people making very bad decisions," he told me. "Technology is of course enabling it. And I think we as parents have taken this blind route in saying, 'I don't understand this technology. I don't know what Facebook is. I have no idea how to take a picture on a cell phone.' I think those days are over. This is just something that parents have to acquaint themselves with."
No doubt there's truth in that. But to me, the more urgent problem is that kids and even twenty-somethings don't realize how this could impact their lives years down the road.
Consider how Dick Arbiter, former press secretary for Queen Elizabeth II, sought to contextualize Prince Harry's kerfuffle: "Harry is not the same man as he was three years ago," he reportedly said. "You don't think when you are shooting a video."
Well, kids better start thinking - whether they're shooting a video, posing for a picture, or sending an e-mail. Sure, too many young people are making stupid, shortsighted decisions. But that's nothing new.
What's new are the places they'll go and the people they'll see once they hit the "send" key. They have no idea - and there's no waiting for it to blow over. Once it's out there, it "lives on in perpetuity," Albert told me.
I'm glad cyberspace and cell-phone images weren't around when I was a kid. It was enough that Richard Nixon and I had something in common. We both should have burned the tapes.
Michael Smerconish's column appears Thursdays in the Daily News and Sundays in Currents. He can be heard from 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him via www.mastalk.com