IF there is one place where the culture wars seem to be reaching a truce of sorts, that place is the battlefield of childhood. Just about everyone, aside, perhaps, from the producers at MTV or the "creatives" who design blood-spattered video games, is fed up with the entertainment-industrial complex and its nefarious grip on their children. They are disgusted by mass culture’s "wardrobe malfunctions," not only the ones they see on TV, but those in their children’s closets. They are exhausted by the incessant whine of "gimme" that sours every family outing. So vulgar and so insidious is the commercial culture that surrounds children that it has prompted even some progressive academics to experience nostalgia for childhood past.