(her) saying, "that's awful!"
and not... that's .. like .. awful!

:-\ufffd

Note too, that a regular comic in the paper has taken on the prevailing attitude of the school masses towards Special Ed kids. Lynn Johnston, For Better or Worse. Hmmm - maybe yours have been reading that recent sequence?

IMO one of her strips is usually more sentient than any whole day of commercial 'children shows'/ marketing fillers. She regularly takes on ethical issues as ~ whether [and How ??] to report a fellow worker stealing from employer.

(As-if the FCC were ever actually holding any of these broadcasters to their contract (for all that free public bandwidth) to provide anything like intelligent children's content.))

Underscores -- if'n ya want al punte political or social commentary in any meeja: the Comics is where to look first. 'Course ya still gots to fight to keep Zippy over treacly Family Circus. (We lost that one in SF Chron)

moi