Are You There America? It’s Me Dad
Dear America,
Have you wondered how the generation that experienced childhood during the Great Depression, then marched off uncomplaining to battle fascism in Europe and Asia, could return home victorious and proceed to give birth to the generation that invented long-haired dudes, acid trips, countless sentences that ended with the word “man,” divorce, Woodstock, free-love communes where boundary-less kids grow up parent-less, abortion, bell bottoms, more acid trips and riots? How on earth did that happen? Have you ever wondered?
Have you wondered how the generation that experienced childhood during the Great Depression, then marched off uncomplaining to battle fascism in Europe and Asia, could return home victorious and proceed to give birth to the generation that invented long-haired dudes, acid trips, countless sentences that ended with the word “man,” divorce, Woodstock, free-love communes where boundary-less kids grow up parent-less, abortion, bell bottoms, more acid trips and riots? How on earth did that happen? Have you ever wondered?
Well, here’s an idea: PTSD and a booming economy.
Between 1941 and 1946 a country with just under 140 million inhabitants sent just over 16 million of them off to war. Millions of them (mostly men) — before returning home to start families — watched their buddies’ heads get vaporized by German artillery or they doggy paddled helplessly while their pals were severed in two by sharks after leaping into the Pacific Ocean because a Japanese Zero had just plowed itself into the stern of the USS We’re All Gonna Die!
Anywho, those same PTSD’d gentlemen who were raised on diets that at times included delicacies like dad’s-leather-belt-soup married women who had grown up eating water for breakfast. But the economy they raised their children in was dramatically different, it must have felt like a dream to a deprived generation to be now flush with jobs and cars and calories. Instead of digging for roots their children could play baseball, or dolls, or ride bikes… you know, be kids. Mom lived in gratitude for well-fed children and dad felt like if mom was happy and he could just forget about the time in Normandy when he had to stuff Private Billingham’s intestines back into his abdomen, then his work was done. What more could anyone want from him? Under these circumstances, the parents assumed that the kids — having everything a kid could possibly want — could take it from there (you can hardly blame them) and the kids assumed that their parents were a bunch of dull, uncommunicative stiffs (you can hardly blame them.) Although clearly not everyone’s childhood matched that description, the not uncommon disconnect between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers helped create the conditions that drove a good chunk of Boomers to underrate the value of the nuclear family, and opt instead to spend their adulthood “finding themselves.” Often, they found themselves smoking pot and being promiscuous. At varying levels, each successive generation has felt a responsibility to prove the Boomer’s rebellious instincts right and their own grandparents or great-grandparents wrong. Pop-culture continues to litigate the issue today, nowhere more aggressively than on Chelsea Handler’s Netflix series Chelsea, which will mercifully air its final episode this week.
Miss Handler is the poster celebrity and current torchbearer for the Families-Suck movement that began in the 60’s. Not only did she achieve literary fame in 2005 by documenting a long string of vapid, one-night-stands, but part of her current schtick includes releasing Public Service Announcements with titles like Kids: They’re Not That Great and Marriage: You Can Say No. One of her Kids PSA’s begins with her walking down the hallway of her home with a joint in her hand, teaching viewers that “When you have kids you can’t just walk around your house in the middle of the day smoking weed, but that’s exactly what I’m doing, walking around the house smoking weed.” And how is she able to do it?
“Because I’m childless.”
Where the Kids skit is theoretically humorous her Marriage PSA fails to clear even that very low bar, derailed at its onset by a tremendous dose of illogic.
Anywho, those same PTSD’d gentlemen who were raised on diets that at times included delicacies like dad’s-leather-belt-soup married women who had grown up eating water for breakfast. But the economy they raised their children in was dramatically different, it must have felt like a dream to a deprived generation to be now flush with jobs and cars and calories. Instead of digging for roots their children could play baseball, or dolls, or ride bikes… you know, be kids. Mom lived in gratitude for well-fed children and dad felt like if mom was happy and he could just forget about the time in Normandy when he had to stuff Private Billingham’s intestines back into his abdomen, then his work was done. What more could anyone want from him? Under these circumstances, the parents assumed that the kids — having everything a kid could possibly want — could take it from there (you can hardly blame them) and the kids assumed that their parents were a bunch of dull, uncommunicative stiffs (you can hardly blame them.) Although clearly not everyone’s childhood matched that description, the not uncommon disconnect between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers helped create the conditions that drove a good chunk of Boomers to underrate the value of the nuclear family, and opt instead to spend their adulthood “finding themselves.” Often, they found themselves smoking pot and being promiscuous. At varying levels, each successive generation has felt a responsibility to prove the Boomer’s rebellious instincts right and their own grandparents or great-grandparents wrong. Pop-culture continues to litigate the issue today, nowhere more aggressively than on Chelsea Handler’s Netflix series Chelsea, which will mercifully air its final episode this week.
Miss Handler is the poster celebrity and current torchbearer for the Families-Suck movement that began in the 60’s. Not only did she achieve literary fame in 2005 by documenting a long string of vapid, one-night-stands, but part of her current schtick includes releasing Public Service Announcements with titles like Kids: They’re Not That Great and Marriage: You Can Say No. One of her Kids PSA’s begins with her walking down the hallway of her home with a joint in her hand, teaching viewers that “When you have kids you can’t just walk around your house in the middle of the day smoking weed, but that’s exactly what I’m doing, walking around the house smoking weed.” And how is she able to do it?
“Because I’m childless.”
Where the Kids skit is theoretically humorous her Marriage PSA fails to clear even that very low bar, derailed at its onset by a tremendous dose of illogic.
The opening scene has her explaining how she was hungry for Thai food and so she ordered Thai food. “I can do that sort of thing” she states, “because I’m not married. I didn’t have to politely ask my husband ‘What do you want to eat tonight honey?’” As if marriage is an institution exclusively controlled by ISIS with input from the Saudis. “I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want” she declares (no doubt hundreds of millions of enslaved, married women envy her freedom to order takeout from a fast food joint.) Liberated Chelsea goes on to explain how she can stay at parties however long she wants and then bed “some mysterious drifter who looooves Thai food,” all because she had the courage to say no to marriage. Other Chelsea PSA’s contain similar masterpieces of asininity:
Regarding the he’s-not-bringing-joy-to-anyone line, I believe her.
Fortunately though society does not value its institutions by what they fail to do, we value our institutions by what they can do. When Lebron James steps onto the court you can pretty much bank on half of his shots not going in (he’s 50.3% over his career.) Has his failure rate hindered his earning capacity? Only a moron would enter negotiations for Lebron’s contract thinking that the baskets he missed could be leveraged against him. Likewise, only the thoughtless leverage things like the divorce rate to lampoon marriage.
Speaking of lampooning things, I would like to take this opportunity to lampoon Chelsea’s application of Samantha-Jones feminism. (Samantha Jones is a fictional character from Sex And The City who gave up on relationships so that she could have “sex like a man.”)
Ladies and gentlemen, Samantha Jones is a liar. In general, it can’t be done. But even if it could be done, there is nothing empowering about promiscuity. In fact, although I can’t prove it, I suspect that aspects of modern feminism were invented by a cabal of unattractive dudes who weren’t good at lying but wanted to have tons of commitment-less sex. They spread a rumor that the surest way for women to achieve equality and signal strength was by transforming themselves into parking stalls for male libido; and to their utter amazement, some women believed them! Within a couple of decades packs of degenerate beta-males the world over could be found strafing their respective cities with the copulatory munitions that previous generations of females had reserved for the wealthy, the dependable or the gorgeous.
Comrades, transactional, substance-less sex can only be found in the shallow end of human sexuality’s swimming pool. Yes, it’s part of the pool, but it’s the section of the pool designed specifically for people who don’t know how to swim yet. Exploration of the deep end of the pool, that stretch of watery terrain that allows you to actually explore sex’s purpose, requires a level of commitment to your partner that we always associate with marriage. Unless couples bind themselves to one another through sickness and health, poverty and wealth, they remain sexual neophytes. They remain Chelsea Handlers: people’s whose horizontal lives are nothing to write about.
As for the inconvenience of children, that’s real. Children are incredibly inconvenient. I should know. I helped to create five of them. Unless you are the type of person who loves not getting a full night’s sleep, adores messes, excrement, urine, vomit, crying, whining, repeating yourself, being interrupted and ignored, you will find child-rearing incredibly inconvenient.
So what?
Congratulations Chelsea, you made fun of the fact that raising kids is hard work. And millions of viewers — check that — thousands of viewers laughed. But what was your point? Defeating 20th-century fascism was also hard work? Becoming one of the highest paid female comedians of all time was hard work. Does the fact that a feat is difficult to accomplish make it worthy of satire?
Although I could write for decades on the unparalleled magnificence of the well-formed nuclear family, for brevity’s sake I’ll cut to the chase. When I die a vast brood of humans whose veins carry my blood will mourn my death. If they are at my bedside I will look at them and see myself, not just in their features, but in their characters. I’ll note their eyes and noses, and their honesty, diligence, and compassion. I will also see the reflection of my wife, a reflection that will ripple through our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The two of us shunned the shallow end of that pool that Chelsea and others wallow in and opted instead for an inconvenience-filled life that, on my deathbed, will fill my heart with a contentment that the word “joy” fails to adequately describe.
If Chelsea’s PSA’s are any guide, when she dies she will be surrounded by marijuana, vodka, the paid help, Netflix and a dog whose affections will be immediately transferred to whoever continues to feed it.
America, those are your choices. Don’t be stupid.
Sincerely,
Dad
- “Once you have a child you never get to make another choice again.”
- “Kids can’t do anything fun.”
- “I get to sleep until however late I feel like because I don’t have any $*&%@+! children.”
Regarding the he’s-not-bringing-joy-to-anyone line, I believe her.
Fortunately though society does not value its institutions by what they fail to do, we value our institutions by what they can do. When Lebron James steps onto the court you can pretty much bank on half of his shots not going in (he’s 50.3% over his career.) Has his failure rate hindered his earning capacity? Only a moron would enter negotiations for Lebron’s contract thinking that the baskets he missed could be leveraged against him. Likewise, only the thoughtless leverage things like the divorce rate to lampoon marriage.
Speaking of lampooning things, I would like to take this opportunity to lampoon Chelsea’s application of Samantha-Jones feminism. (Samantha Jones is a fictional character from Sex And The City who gave up on relationships so that she could have “sex like a man.”)
Ladies and gentlemen, Samantha Jones is a liar. In general, it can’t be done. But even if it could be done, there is nothing empowering about promiscuity. In fact, although I can’t prove it, I suspect that aspects of modern feminism were invented by a cabal of unattractive dudes who weren’t good at lying but wanted to have tons of commitment-less sex. They spread a rumor that the surest way for women to achieve equality and signal strength was by transforming themselves into parking stalls for male libido; and to their utter amazement, some women believed them! Within a couple of decades packs of degenerate beta-males the world over could be found strafing their respective cities with the copulatory munitions that previous generations of females had reserved for the wealthy, the dependable or the gorgeous.
Comrades, transactional, substance-less sex can only be found in the shallow end of human sexuality’s swimming pool. Yes, it’s part of the pool, but it’s the section of the pool designed specifically for people who don’t know how to swim yet. Exploration of the deep end of the pool, that stretch of watery terrain that allows you to actually explore sex’s purpose, requires a level of commitment to your partner that we always associate with marriage. Unless couples bind themselves to one another through sickness and health, poverty and wealth, they remain sexual neophytes. They remain Chelsea Handlers: people’s whose horizontal lives are nothing to write about.
As for the inconvenience of children, that’s real. Children are incredibly inconvenient. I should know. I helped to create five of them. Unless you are the type of person who loves not getting a full night’s sleep, adores messes, excrement, urine, vomit, crying, whining, repeating yourself, being interrupted and ignored, you will find child-rearing incredibly inconvenient.
So what?
Congratulations Chelsea, you made fun of the fact that raising kids is hard work. And millions of viewers — check that — thousands of viewers laughed. But what was your point? Defeating 20th-century fascism was also hard work? Becoming one of the highest paid female comedians of all time was hard work. Does the fact that a feat is difficult to accomplish make it worthy of satire?
Although I could write for decades on the unparalleled magnificence of the well-formed nuclear family, for brevity’s sake I’ll cut to the chase. When I die a vast brood of humans whose veins carry my blood will mourn my death. If they are at my bedside I will look at them and see myself, not just in their features, but in their characters. I’ll note their eyes and noses, and their honesty, diligence, and compassion. I will also see the reflection of my wife, a reflection that will ripple through our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The two of us shunned the shallow end of that pool that Chelsea and others wallow in and opted instead for an inconvenience-filled life that, on my deathbed, will fill my heart with a contentment that the word “joy” fails to adequately describe.
If Chelsea’s PSA’s are any guide, when she dies she will be surrounded by marijuana, vodka, the paid help, Netflix and a dog whose affections will be immediately transferred to whoever continues to feed it.
America, those are your choices. Don’t be stupid.
Sincerely,
Dad
