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YouTube beating? The Beave wouldn't do it

By Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler and David Norrie, tbt* columnists
In print: Friday, April 18, 2008

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ADVERTISEMENT Life lessons, brought to you by the cast of Leave it to Beaver.

He said

Call me old-fashioned, Shannon, but can I recommend we bring back Leave It To Beaver?

I caught a rerun recently and I realized, as much as we joke about how corny the show is and the innocence of the time, we can learn a lot from the past.

In this episode, Beaver was catching hell from his brother, his parents and his school, all because he made a silly face in the class photo. Big deal, right?

His father was called into the principal's office and the family was up in arms over what we'd call, by today's standards, some trivial B.S.

June Cleaver says to Ward, "The school feels parents should be responsible for the behavior of their children."

My Lord, what genius! And remember, she was talking about making a face in a photo, not kidnapping and assault.

I mean, let's use our imaginations for a second and put 1950s Beaver in 2008. Picture Beave and five or six of his friends locking another kid in a room and beating him or her senseless for half an hour, as happened in Bartow recently.

Unfortunately this "thug mentality" has spilled over into the female mindset, which I find disgusting. There is nothing attractive about a girl fighting another girl, regardless of who started it.

Is this 50 years of progress?

She said

Dave, as nice as it would be, I think we (meaning society) have gone way too far to ever go back to anything like Leave it to Beaver.

As laughably corny as that TV classic is, I agree it would be nice.

But considering the Jerry Springer dysfunction that we've grown so accustomed to, it just seems like the best we can hope for is Roseanne or Married with Children.

I mean, what teacher wouldn't rejoice if the worst offense of her most "problematic" student were mugging for the camera?

Instead, they're getting cursed at — by both the kid and the parents, if the parents are even around.

And yes, the kid is just as likely to be female as male.

I can't really see Ward and June Cleaver telling Beave's teacher to shove it up her arse. Or threatening to sue her for mistreating their child or giving him the wrong grade.

Teachers, the good ones, should be knighted or given sainthood, given all the crap they put up with.

And some people should never be parents. Some kids, meanwhile, are just plain obnoxious brats. Beyond the help of "etiquette school" or Miss Manners.

Maybe the best we can hope for is a happy medium between the Beave and Beavis or Bart Simpson.

Oh, and about girls fighting. Does that apply to mud wrestling? Because something tells me you'd think that was hot.

Just a hunch.

— Got a topic you'd like to see Shannon and David debate? Send it to tbteditors@tampabay.com.