How Hannah Montana taught us about Ozzy Osbourne

When I'm in the car I play a simple game with the kids. When a song comes on the radio, I ask them the name of the artist, and if it's one they're familiar with, the name of the song too. I figure it's never too early to start their pop culture education.



So the other day I was in the car with YaYa when Crazy Train came on. I asked her the name of the artist, and as expected she didn't know. I answered Ozzy Osbourne, figuring tossing in the name Randy Rhodes was probably too much detail. She asked who he was.

"I think you've seen him before," I said. "You know those World of Warcraft commercials where the guy says he's the prince of darkness?"

"No," she said.

I was stumped for a second.

"Wait," she said. "Isn't that the guy on Hannah Montana?"

"What?" I said. I was confused. "No, he isn't on that show."

"Not, like, him, but the guy Jackson dressed up as that one time?"

Jackson, of course, is Hannah Montana/Miley Stewart's brother on the show, played by 32 (!) year old Jason Earles. And sure enough, it came to me: in an episode where Hannah is trying to avoid a music critic, her brother dresses up as Ozzy to distract him.

And you know what? It was a pretty dead-on imitation.

"Yeah, you're right," I said. "He was pretending to be Ozzy. That's the guy."

"Oh," she said. "He seemed cool. He talked funny though"

There you have it. The tools of education are everywhere, even in a ridiculous skit on a Disney Channel sitcom.