The culture wars made their way to Dadwagon this week. Matt started us off by noting that the nanny state has brought toothbrushing training into public schools, and followed that post up with our first-ever Q&A: a lively conversation with Bill Martin, the Marxist professor who shares a name with (and therefore brought controversy to) the late author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Matt also took the elitist-seeming stance that his nanny doesn’t read Dadwagon, since he admitted that, although she doesn’t know it, she’s likely to lose her job soon. (He’s probably right that she’s not among our readers, because she speaks no English.)

Ted, no stranger to the war on obscenity, proclaimed his admiration for Penthouse Letters, and (in a theoretically related post) noted that it’s hard to chat up fellow parents without looking like he’s hitting on them. He also called out Matt on his attitude toward sleep training; you two should hug it out on your own time, mmmkay?

Nathan spent the week traveling, ending up in a small town in Northern California, so you can pretty much figure out his stance on the culture wars right there. But if you need further information, he informed us about the very first word spoken by his friends’ kid. (Hint: It’s not something Ned Flanders would appreciate.) On the other hand, he apparently doesn’t come from particularly elitist stock, judging by his family’s cross-generational affection for plate-licking.

As for me, I didn’t realize it as the week progressed, but apparently I’ve been consuming too much trash culture. Posts about manboobs, horrifying reality TV, Roger Federer’s parenting skills, and this unfortunate bit of Americana made it clear that I’d best lay off reading Us Weekly this weekend. I’m going to go ahead and blame lack of sleep for my newfound shallowness—an opinion that’s backed up by my Tantrum post on our family’s sleep-training approach (which is to say, we’ve rejected it).

We’ll be back Monday, more polarizing than ever.