A 'Kid Nation' Under Siege
People hysterical over the alleged child endangerment issues surrounding the production of Kid Nation—CBS's reality TV show/summer camp/Lord of the Flies hybrid where each episode ends with one child being giving a $20,000 gold star and another being devoured by his or her more socially manipulative castmates—persist in stirring up trouble for this Fall's upcoming breakout hit.
In this MSNBC clip, OK! magazine's Child Welfare Correspondent briefly discusses the controversy, noting an on-set accident in which a contestant was burned while cooking. (Do these media nannies think that delicious bacon was going to fry itself? And good thing no one told them about the bleach-in-the-coke-bottle thing.) But perhaps the most misguided of the accusations of neglect raised is that the children weren't going to school during the 40-day shoot; when the show finally airs and the public gets to see the poignant scene in which the first kid to suggest daily math class is placed in the stocks in the town common and pelted with rotten fruit amidst taunts of being a "Poindexter," they'll understand the lack of tutoring was just a rational function of their Junior Utopia's self-governance.