For All The Parents
The number of friends of Silentio, it seems, is ever-expanding. While that doesn't mean more people are actually reading this blog that has become, for about two of you, a regular online haunt, it does mean that those two people are having kids at a rabbit's pace. Everybody I know, he says hyperbolically, is having kids. Where once I was attending weddings once a quarter, I'm now having to say Congratulations, your semen and your ovum were a match made in heaven. With this explosion of insemination blowing my friendships asunder in all directions, I dedicate this weeks' Mark Morford column to you:
The world, it is a teeming reeking cauldron of wicked malevolent demons, with sharp pointy teeth and filthy mouths and really impressive porn collections, and each and every one of them wants nothing more than to suck the juicy pith from your helpless innocent child like Donald Rumsfeld drains color from the sky.
It's true, isn't it? Senators believe it, the Christian Right believes it, the FCC believes it, half a million stunned nipple-horrified Super Bowl viewers who complained to the FCC believe it, the clenched morality police of this nation chant it like a mantra, John Ashcroft has it tattooed on his shriveled colon. This, after all, is the prevalent American view.
[. . .]
This is the mental image we are to believe, happening right this moment, across this fine nation: One hundred million honest, hard-working, sexually terrified parents are running around their homes with their hands to their heads, each thinking oh my freaking God what if our beautiful wee one just so happens to walk by the TV on his/her way to get an innocent glass of pure clean innocent Coca-Cola to wash down the pure innocent kiddie Prozac, and s/he just so happens to hear Tony Soprano call someone a "motherf-- " on TV? Why, our child, s/he would surely quiver and tremble and explode! Yes s/he would!
It's all about the kids, you know, and who will protect their so-called innocence, their nubile unfiltered dreams, and how, and with what sort of laws and guns and lawsuits and ridiculous fines and sneering Bible-thumping misguided misinformed self-righteous indignation.
[. . .]
This is what you are not to forget, ever: We are a nation wherein it is perfectly OK to show a dozen vaguely nauseating ads for erection pills and a hundred more touting the merits of slamming a sixer of Bud Light at halftime as you and your frat buddies ogle that chick at the bar as meanwhile the wife stays home and prances around the kitchen, high on the fumes from her new Swiffer WetJet. But a shot of a woman's breast? Inappropriate and traumatizing, pal. Don't like our hypocrisy? Move to France with the other perverts.
[. . .]
You know what scars kids? You know what traumatizes our youth and stabs at their innocent spirits like Dick Cheney thrusts at integrity? Kraft Lunchables, that's what. Drug-happy shrinks. Refined sugar. Abstinence-only sex education. Gutted school-music programs. McDonald's marketing gimmicks. Joe Camel's head shaped like a giant penis. Bovine growth hormones. Homophobic adults with guns. Rampant hypocrisy, like legal Zoloft but illegal pot, or being sent to Iraq at 18 but you can't have a beer until you're 21.
[. . .]
Try senators and FCC honchos and attorney generals and religious morality police who make life feel like a disease to be suffered rather than a pile of random messy bliss to be rolled around in.
Really, now, is there any scar more grievous than that? Anything more traumatic than teaching our kids that, no, you are not a healthy potent sexually burgeoning self-defined being of potential and love, but, rather, you are prey, ever put upon, ever under duress, ever meek and misinformed and ever requiring armed, patronizing protection. What a wonderful lesson.
Oh, and Pat (himself a parent-to-be), you'll be happy to note there is no registration necessary for this one.
|