Think of all the things that make people really cool, like playing guitar, or breakdancing, or skateboarding. Babies can’t do any of that. What are babies good at? You might say to me, “Turning into an adult?” And I’d reply, “Thank you for engaging in this conversation, Imaginary Friend, but unfortunately you are a dumb asshole. ‘Turning into an adult,’ why, that takes forever. I could be good at fucking anything if it was all I had to focus on for 18 fucking years.” So I ask again, what are babies good at? They run around with their dicks out, they have weird, undeveloped little bodies, they all look like what would happen if Winston Churchill started melting. Then, of course, they present legitimate problems, such as overpopulation, deforestation, global warming, and refusing to skateboard even when I put them on the board.
Random solicitations from blogs I’ve never heard of don’t usually end well, but I was glad that Beth Winegarner dropped me a line about her new blog Backwards Messages. It has a very specific raison d’blog, namely, it’s all about knocking down the preposterous arguments that people make about how heavy metal or the occult or Wicca drives people, particularly teens, to do insane things.
Her post yesterday looked at the Limbaugh-fueled hysteria surrounding the photo of Jared Lee Loughner’s creepy little garden display, shown here. It’s a poor attempt at an altar, if that’s what it is, says Winegarner. And it seems like she would know (she does say things like “Vodun-inspired paths”, whatever that may mean). But rather than diagnose the shrine, she has another legitimate question:
The larger question is: even if Loughner was exploring the occult, what does that have to do with his alleged shooting rampage? There is no known pagan or occult practice that calls for homicide in this manner (or most any manner). Does this scene tell us anything about Loughner as a person? Not really, unless being either a lazy occult dabbler or someone who makes Halloween decorations and then doesn’t clean them up afterwards really says anything. The most we can say about the “twisted shrine” is that it adds to Loughner’s emerging image as an aimless young man. Having a skull and some candles doesn’t make him any more evil, or any more capable of mass murder, than Martha Stewart or even Alice Cooper.
I’m not big into the occult, or Wiccans, or D&D, or even vegans, personally. But in terms of deleterious effects on our youth, I’d put it below almost every one of the major religions. And as far as music goes, anyone who ever introduced an album as evidence for the prosecution should serve a term in hell listening to Pat Boone for eternity. If you need proof that it’s a good cause, knocking down accusations of Satanism and Ozzy Osbournism, just check out the remarkable documentary Paradise Lost about the terrifying trial of three outcast teens accused of a Satanic triple murder in West Memphis.
So nice job Beth. You’re doing the Lord’s work. Or the devil’s, depending on your point of view.
Some years back I attended a graduate school lecture with my then-girlfriend (whom I would later marry and have JP with) on Asian-American pyschology. To be clear: I don’t mean the mentality of Asian-Americans, but rather, the study of psychology in Asian-Americans and the development of ethnically specific treatments.
The lecturer, a prominent researcher, related an anecdote that has always stuck with me. He was trying to describe the nature of the Asian mind, and his example was of two students who had attempted to get into his class after the registration period. The first student, who was white, had somehow managed to call him at home; worse yet, this kid hadn’t asked if he could be included in the class, he had demanded it, somehow implying that he was doing the professor a favor by studying with him. The other student, an Asian-American, had politely showed up at the professor’s office hours and begged. The Asian-American student was accepted into the class, and the white kid wasn’t.
What this had to do with cognitive behavioral therapy in Asians is beyond me. But it always struck me that the professor had decided that being an asshole in the mode of the white kid was an ethnically unsuccessful life tactic, while being polite (and successful) was Asian.
There is, of course, doubt as to whether the professor’s point holds water on its face: it seems to me that in many cases the more aggressive, pushier student often outdoes the polite beggar. If that’s true, then, the Asian kid succeeded only because the professor liked this sort of approach. Other professors—Asian ones, too—might have reacted differently. What’s more, when my ex was a teacher’s assistant in grad school, we got late-night, aggressive calls from students of every ethnic description. Similarly, you could imagine that being nice works better than being rude, even across ethnic lines. Regardless, the professor had asserted with a straight face that a pattern of behavior distributed pretty evenly throughout society was specific to a single social group.
I offer this in the context of Yale Law School professor Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” Not only does Chua believe that being awful to your children provides the greatest chance of their future success—she insists as well that doing so is inherently Asian. It’s a funny thing to lay claim to as an ethnic characteristic—we’re bigger dicks than you, white boy (and other colors and genders of boy)—but there it is.
I’d like to consider the efficacy of such an ethnic stereotype. Chua seems a fairly high-functioning sort. It’s not easy becoming a Yale Law School professor, I imagine. She must be smart and hard-working (her parents must have really thought she was garbage). As such, it’s not that much of a surprise that her children have wormed their way into the elite as well. Whether her success, and the success of her children, has anything to do with the fact that she’s a raving bitch (and her husband is a total pussy), is unclear. It could just be that she’s smart, the kids are smart, and dad is a pussy.
From time to time, a narrative of the United States falling behind emerges, in education, often, but also in economics, technology, business, military aggression, and any number of other realms. We Americans are always on the verge of extinction, these truly are the worst of times, and sooner rather than later, the U-S-of-A is going to be number two, and then where will we all be?
I don’t really know if any of that is true (except in the sense that all empires decline) but I will conclude with this statistic (from Harper’s Magazine) that explains a bit of the mentality of Chinese women currently. You decide if it could stand in for an ethnic stereotype that Ms. Chua would also claim:
Date on which the Xinglong Big Family Mall in Shenyang, China, opened a “venting store” for women: 3/8/10
Minimum amount of spending in the mall required to enter the store and destroy household furniture and electronics: $6
So a send-up of horrible momblogging is low-hanging fruit, but I dig this mockery on Urlesque because it’s not afraid to get weird. Behold the World’s Worst Mommy Blogger (a Parody), written by Tess Lynch, cooing over her newborn.
I love to look at Little Harrison while he’s sleeping. I just think…he’s so small, so perfect, and so innocent. His little tiny fingers swatting at his eyebrow tape, little precious digits smearing the mustache we drew on his upper lip, tiny lipsticked mouth making all sorts of different expressions like the most miniscule drag queen.
I just sit there for hours, my finger pushing his nose to the side, reapplying his eyeliner, singing him my favorite Kate Bush tracks. I wonder what he dreams of: probably just my face, telling him all about the faults of his siblings and of all the things I gave up to become a mother. We got him the silliest mobile that explains how chickens are processed!
