Natural Resources

Chuck E. Cheese's, the arcade/pizza restaurant chain popular for children's birthday parties, has a marketing slogan: "Where a kid can be a kid." It's a nice, simple phrase that punctuates its TV ads. And it's highlighted by contrast when the ads appear on the children's network Nickelodeon.

It's not that that Nick has replaced "Sponge Bob" or "Fairly Odd Parents" with adult programming - Nick's entertainment fare is still fun and silly. It's that Nick has launched "The Big Green Help," a multimedia campaign that encourages the network's young viewers to become junior environmentalists, and major finger-waggers. "Nickelodeon's Big Green Help is all about helping YOU find simple, positive ways to protect the Earth every day," explains the home page on Nick's Web site.

The Big Green Help is filled to the brim with throbbing dance music, bright colors (green most prominent, of course), grinning teen celebrities and feel-good phrases, Nick is indoctrinating kids into the secular cult of environmentalism, and it wants them to indoctrinate you in turn.