It has never been easy to be a child star, but as an article in Thursday's Globe and Mail argues, today's teen actors are facing increasing scrutiny about their sex lives. It points to the media's fascination with the romantic lives of, among others, Emma Watson of "Harry Potter" and "Heroes" actress Hayden Panettiere as evidence of our growing obsession with teen stars' virginity. The article suggests that this development came in the wake of "Olsen Twins Countdown" (the Web site dedicated to counting down to the "Full House" stars' 18th birthday) and Jamie Lynn Spears' recent pregnancy. But it may have more to do with the fallout from her older sister's early branding strategy. As the recent (jaw-dropping) Rolling Stone profile of Britney points out, in the late '90s, manager Larry Rudolph turned her supposed virginity into a key part of her marketing plan -- as the "teenage Lolita of middle-aged men's dreams."

Spears was paraded around talk shows, discussing her virginity and, as the profile suggests, laying the groundwork for her eventual collapse. Jessica Simpson developed a similar look-but-don't-touch persona, and as they reached stratospheric popularity, Spears and Simpson managed to be both wholesome and sexualized -- a dichotomy that made it acceptable for prepubescent girls to show off their stomachs, and may have set a dangerous precedent for a new generation of teen stars whose entire life, including their sex life, has, without their consent, become a part of their public persona.

Has there ever been a debate moderator as puerile, as relentlessly focused on trivia, as dogged in his pursuit of the "gotcha" moment as George Stephanopoulos? I sincerely doubt it.

Aided and abetted by comoderator Charlie Gibson, the host of This Week chewed up nearly an hour of clock time probing, poking, and prodding the Democratic candidates on such nano-topics as "Bittergate," the tired Reverend Wright fracas, why they won't commit to a hypothetical joint ticket, and on and on -- long before the first substantive question, on Iraq. (Of course, it was asked by one Mandy Garber of Pittsburgh, not by either of the moderators.)

Not until 9:04 p.m. ET was there a question about the economy. Something is very wrong with the priorities of the U.S. television media.

What the show grasps is that private corporate and public institutional managers both employ “quality” in an Orwellian register in which a “quality process” is one of continuously increasing workload and continuously eroding salary and benefits, with a single, doltish mantra employed everywhere — in police departments, in social services, and school systems, just as on college campuses: the perpetual command to “Do More With Less.”

As Time magazine television critic James Poniewozik observes, what this actually means “is doing less with less and cutting corners to make it look like more.” Hence the need for assessment instruments that everyone inside an organization understands to be trivial and easily spun to nearly any purpose by agile institutional actors.

Q: One study you wrote about even suggested that having your kid stare at a wall -- if you could get the child to do that -- would actually be better for him than watching TV. Why is that?

A: In this study, they had kids doing various sedentary things, and the kids who watched TV burned fewer calories than they did doing any other sedentary activity. Maybe it has a sedating effect on your metabolism.

There are multiple ways in which TV may contribute to obesity. There's the fact that you're not burning calories. There's the fact that children and adults tend to eat unconsciously while they're watching TV, if they have food or drink in front of them. And there's the fact that there's a lot of advertising on TV so you're constantly getting cues to go get a snack or go get a soda.

And I even read one study that said when people eat lying down they tend to feel less full, and they tend to go on eating longer. A lot of kids snack lying down while they're watching TV.

The biggest problem with the transition to digital television in the United States is that the Federal Communications Commission under the Bush administration has locked the public out of the process of determining what those benefits might be. What's more, yesteryear's Republican-controlled Congress set the rules regarding this transition. Thus the public interest obligations of digital broadcasters remain undefined and insufficient money has been set aside for the digital conversion.