When You Wish Upon A (Family-Friendly) Falling Star

Two of the most fascinating rock-history books I've read lately have to do with the illustrious history of one of the most debauched, bad-reputation bands in the history of the music industry, the Rolling Stones. The first, "Old Gods Almost Dead," was written by Stephen Davis, and traces the forty-year history of this gang of drug-addled villains who just happened to be one of the most musically influential groups ever. The second, "Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones," by Robert Greenfield, paints a detailed picture of the band's maddest period, the heroin-infused sessions that inspired the epic double album mentioned in the book's title.

When you read these books, it's easy to form some quick opinions about the band, and the rugged, insane gang leader at its core, Keith Richards. The first opinion is undoubtedly a sense of relief that you were not actually there with the band. The second opinion, which should be far stronger, is that those guys, and Keith Richards especially, were lucky to survive their own fame and success.

I found myself thinking about Keith Richards a lot yesterday, especially as the news about Lindsay Lohan emerged across the various media platforms yesterday. It's weird that there are even parallels to be drawn between Richards (a notoriously drug-and-alcohol addicted guitarist and primary songwriter for the Rolling Stones who, as the stories have it, was prone to nodding off in a heroin haze onstage in the 1970s) and Lohan (who emerged onto Hollywood's radar by starring in a family friendly remake of "The Parent Trap" as a 10 year old), but they're there. The mere fact that Lohan's arrest on Tuesday is her second substance-abuse-related incident in three months, and comes on the heels of her second stint in rehab this calendar year, hint very obviously at somebody overwhelmed by substances and addictions beyond her control.

And so it is, and here we are, drawing these sad parallels.

Sadder still, in my opinion, are the bubbles of naivete that are bursting in the hearts and tween and teen girls and boys across this nation, from coast to coast. I don't blame Keith Richards for this, and I certainly don't blame Lindsay Lohan. Neither was the first actor or musician to dabble in drugs, and neither will be the last.

Honestly? I don't even blame anyone connected to the drug world? Me, I blame the Disney Channel.

In 1997, the Disney Channel underwent a paradigm shift of sorts. It was during this year that the folks at Disney unloaded their first salvo in a war of "family-friendly" programming that was simultaneously aimed at their cross-channel rivals Nickelodeon and at a generation of parents dealing with a world which was, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, "57 channels and nothing on."

In 1997, the Disney Channel unveiled a lineup that they called "Zoog Disney," a block of programming which included shows like "Even Stevens" and "Lizzie McGuire" and were a subtler brand of children's television program than the channel had previously presented to the public - these were shows that aired in prime-time, and focused on a demographic who had outgrown overt kid's programs like "Sesame Street" but were not quite ready for the raunchiness of prime-time network programming. The Nickelodeon network matched this with programming like "The Amanda Show" (featuring Amanda Bynes), "The Nick Cannon Show," and "All That." Both networks provided marketing pushes for major pop acts of that era, which were generally squeaky-clean acts like NSync, the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears.

The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon became an empire of culture, one that became validated as its influence spread to the music industry and other television channels. It's hard not to see one of the great late-1990s cultural signifiers, MTV's "Total Request Live With Carson Daly," as anything other than an extension of this culture, as it offered up the same bands and talents as the kid-oriented shows on the aforementioned channels.

However, it was as Disney and Nickelodeon became proprietors of culture instead of programming, that the plot got lost. A major reason that parents found these channels appropriate for viewing was because they presented kid-friendly shows; then, the paradigm shifted, and all of a sudden, they were in the business of presenting kid-friendly kid stars.

The streets of Hollywood are littered with the burnt-out chassis of so many kid stars. Some, like Danny Bonaduce and Leif Garrett, are barely surviving as people. Others, like Macaulay Culkin, are occasionally working in the industry. Few, however, have made the leap from child star to successful adult star - most flame out.

Watching the recent escapades of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears has been like watching a slow-motion trainwreck - to the point where getting caught with cocaine or behaving bizarrely at a photoshoot don't seem surprising, but inevitable. For those of us who have seen episode after episode of "VH1's Behind The Music" or "The E! True Hollywood Story" these seem like utterly plausible conclusions.

However, there's a true sadness there - for so many, people like Lindsay Lohan were marketed not just as actors and characters, but as role models for living in a heavily sanitized version of a teenaged life. And no matter how much we want someone to be a role model, it's not something that's easily lived up to. At the very least, Lindsay Lohan will never be seen as a positive role model again.

My hope is that the parents out there who have used the programming on Disney and Nickelodeon will maybe turn those channels off. Reality can only be sanitized for so long before it becomes overprotection, and can be combated by spending quality time with your kids.

Otherwise, and this isn't too much of a stretch given these channels' tendency to fetishize and idealize their stars, these parents might as well be pointing to a picture of Keith Richards and saying, "hey, you can be that someday."