This was in the Washington Post Health section today.

The Seattle team surveyed more than 1,000 families in February 2006 and found that infants between 8 and 16 months who regularly watched Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby videos knew substantially fewer words -- six to eight out of 90 -- than infants who did not watch them, according to parental reports. The deficit, which increased with each hour of video viewing, was not seen among babies who watched other programming, such as "Sesame Street" or "SpongeBob SquarePants" or adult shows such as "Oprah."
-"Wishful Thinking," Washingtonpost.com

In other words, if you let your baby watch TV, at least let him watch Oprah, because those Baby Einstein videos apparently do more harm than good.

The study found two other shocking (to me) things: 1 out of 5 children under two has a TV in his or her room, and some of the babies in the study were watching 4 hours a day of these "educational" videos.

B doesn't watch any TV and we plan to keep him away from it until he's at least two years old, following the AAP's advice. That said, I totally understand how you might have to put your baby down in front of a DVD for 15 minutes now and then if you really need to, say, shower or cook dinner. But 4 hours?! That's just criminal.

<Insert clever joke about President Bush honoring Baby Einstein founder Julie Aigner-Clark in the State of the Union Address, and how many words President Bush has at 738 months.>