A Mickey Mouse Education

In the Style section of the Saturday, June 21, 2008 edition of The Washington Post, the lead story, written by Laura Yao, is a fluff piece on 15-year-old Demi Lovato, star of Disney's latest made-for-kiddivision pabulum, Camp Rock. For those of you clueless as to what Camp Rock is, it's the place where you spend your summers during High School Musical, unless you need to go to Crooner Summer School, or your Dad makes you work all summer at his Hip Hop Hardware Store.

Lovato is another in a long line of Village of the Damned-like child stars churned out by the Disney Pop-Grinder, and when features like Yao's mention previous Disney successes such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, et al., they always neglect to mention those near-misses who weren't so lucky (or determined) to make it, and whose forfeited souls now heat the outdoor pool at the Grand Floridian.

The article itself is forgettable, but I'll let Yao slide because the assignment seems to have played like one of those painted carnival cut-outs, where the bodies of cartoon mermaids or monkeys in suits on roller skates are missing their heads, and people stick their faces in the holes where the heads should be; only here, the body is that of a generic pop tart, and the interchangeable head is Lovato's. Take a picture, kid. It'll last longer.

While Camp Rock is nothing more than cheese puffs for children's minds, aspiring hope-to-be's might glean a few things from the Post piece; an education on how they should NOT behave if they find themselves on the brink of stardom (and if not stardom, at least on the brink of being voted Most Popular). There are some hidden lessons there, too. From the the article:

Lovato's apparent maturity is born of experience in learning how to deal, as the kids say. In middle school, Lovato says, "I went through a really hard time at school with girls bullying me. I blamed it on myself at the time, but looking back I guess it was out of jealousy." One day, upset and frustrated, she called her mother and said, "I want home school." The next week, they were out buying home-schooling materials.

WRONG LESSON 1 - HOW TO DEAL (as the kids say): At the first sign of trouble, immediately phone the one-woman SEAL team known only by a palindromic codename - MOM - to extract your blossoming diva butt from the harrowing crisis of being assaulted by Middle Eastern ter...I mean, middle school bullies. THE HIDDEN LESSON: Withdrawing from middle school before completing the education can be seen as defeatist, and might embolden the bullies.

WRONG LESSON 2 - HOW TO HANDLE YOUR PEOPLE: First, ignore all manners. Manners don't put faces on lunch boxes. Second, ignore the fact that the person you are bossing around is the person who made you...not your career, but your actual physical self. Third, keep it simple. All you need is a noun, a verb, and a subject (namely, something you covet). "I want home school." "I want car." "I want boy." "I want girl." "I want boob job." THE HIDDEN LESSON: Just because you suspect that when mom looks at your baby pictures she only sees a little naked dollar sign on a bearskin rug, doesn't mean she actually sees that, thus giving you the right to treat her like some lowly groupie...although she probably does see the dollar sign.

Again from the article, which quotes Lovato on the subject of being a role model to girls (barely) younger than she is:

"The way I want to be a role model is not by not making mistakes."

That is not a typo. The irony here, of course, is that she makes an egregious grammatical mistake in stating that she doesn't not want to not be the one not being a role model by not not making mistakes...or not.

WRONG LESSON 3 - CONSIDER WHAT YOU SAY: It's no secret that you have the shelf life of a loaf of bread, and every career move you make is in the interest of grabbing as quick a buck as possible, before the next 15-year-old soon-to-fade kicks you to the curb and you find yourself taking Vicodin with shots of tequila...and you're 19. What you don't want is to be perceived as having the intelligence of a loaf of bread. THE HIDDEN LESSON: Your lips are like your legs: consider the consequences of opening either too recklessly.

Of course, I wish nothing but the best for...what was that girl's name again?