A 10-year-old Makes a Death Threat Against President Bush

This is one of the saddest news I have heard recently:

A 10-year-old Atlantic City boy allegedly made a death threat against former President George W. Bush this week, sources say. The fifth grader, who attends Dr. Martin Muther King, Jr. School in Atlantic City, called the George W. Bush Presidential Library near Dallas, Texas earlier this week. The boy left a voicemail saying that he was going to kill the former president, sources confirmed to NBC Philadelphia’s Ted Greenberg.

I dislike former President Bush as much as the next person but it is tragic that anybody - let alone such a small child -  would make death threats against him. What's wrong with this boy's parents? I mean, obviously a 10-year-old child's only way of discovering that a former president is "bad" is from his parents. It isn't like such small boys would get together to discuss Bush's economic policies or the Patriot Act. Do the parents who have robbed the poor kid of his childhood realize what they have done? The boy has his entire life ahead of him to worry about politics. Shouldn't the eleventh year of his life be dedicated to worrying about whether he'll get a new bicycle for his birthday and whether his Little League team will win the season?

When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, my parents did everything they could not to rob me of my childhood by voicing their discontent with the regime in front of me. Now I know that they hated the system passionately. They abstained, however, from discussing their dissidence in my presence because they realized that this would be a burden too heavy for a child to carry. A 10-year-old doesn't understand the intricacies of our political reality. Many adults fail to comprehend them, so it's no surprise that a fifth grader would arrive at a conclusion that since Bush is bad he needs to be killed. 

I hope that the kid's irresponsible parents will realize what they have done and start controlling what they say in front of him.

"Gratification Disorder"

Reader Marina wrote the following comment to one of my posts:

There is little worse than these crazy mothers who have little else to do in their lives than to creep all over their children's lives, post countless pictures of them all over the net and inform the whole planet of every time the babies poop, have a fever or do something menial. I sometimes almost feel it should be illegal. Here is something else that blows your mind. As you know, some children start to masturbate as early as their toddler years. Well, guess what? Turns out it is a disorder with an actual 'scientific' name attached to it - Gratification Disorder! Get it? Gratification is a disorder! So, as I was trying to find some info about it online, I came across a psycho stay at home (of course) mother's blog, whose daughter has such disorder. Well, the crazy observes her daughter like a hawk and documents it all in the blog (http://gratification-disorder.org/)!!!!

At first, I  didn't believe that this was possible. But then I checked out the link, and it's all true. There are psycho quack "doctors" who diagnose what is a completely normal behavior in a child as a "disorder." Being gratified is a disease for them, so you can imagine the quality of these "medical professionals." There are also insane parents with no life of their own who - instead of trying to achieve an orgasm of their own for a change - engage in creepy voyeurism of their masturbating children. And then post detailed accounts of it online.

I'm rarely rendered speechless but in this instance I was. Are there any social services in this country at all? If this is not an occasion when they feel they need to interfere and prevent such an egregious instance of abuse, then I don't know what their mission is. This mother is literally trampling the poor child's sexuality into the ground. Imagine the host of medical and psychological problems the kid will experience when she grows up. 


Is anybody still wondering why there are so many adults who are incapable of experiencing sexual gratification? 

Cannibalizing a Child's Life

Have you noticed those creepy Facebook pages and Twitter accounts where women use pictures of their children instead of their own as avatars? I've always been completely creeped every time I would see a huge, bald head of a baby sending tweets couched in very adult language. Amanda Marcotte writes very well about this phenomenon:

This generation leaches itself of sexuality by putting the innocent face of a child in the place of an attractive mother. It telegraphs a discomfort with even a minimal level of vanity. Like wearing sneakers every day or forgetting to cut your hair, it is a way of being dowdy and invisible, and it mirrors a certain mommy culture in which its almost a point of pride how little remains of the healthy, worldly, engaged, and preening self.

Amanda believes that this happens as a result of 

this growing pressure for women to compete in the game of self-sacrifice and self-abasement to prove their motherly love.

I have to say that, as much as I like Amanda's article, I'm not sure she is right here. All this self-sacrifice is just for show. In reality, what such mothers do by assuming their children's identities is cannibalize those kids' existences. A child is denied any life of their own outside the all-consuming Mommy. She has appropriated the baby's life and will now live the baby's life instead of him or her. On the popular new show Toddlers and Tiaras we see parents who exorcise the frustrations of their drab existences by decking their poor toddlers in all kind of ridiculous adult clothes, covering them with make up, and exhibiting them to the public like little animated dolls. In the blogosphere, we read breathless accounts of parents who report ecstatically on how well they manage to control their children's every breath. On Dr.Phil, we hear how mothers of teenagers are praised for invading every inch of their children's lives.

Women engage in such cannibalizing efforts more often than men. This happens because women frequently renounce any attempt at having a life of their own. Carving out an identity, finding your place in life, getting people to value your contribution to the world is hard. It requires a daily effort at personal, intellectual, professional, and spiritual growth. Who needs all that trouble if you can simply cannibalize the existence of a small child who has no power to resist you?

Entitlement and Parents

I read the following comment at College Misery today that made my hair stand on end:

I recently learned my parents gave my younger brother $40, 000 so that he could buy part of a regional airport. These are the same parents who paid $50,000 less for my college education than they did for his, and who told me two years ago that there was no way I could live with them or borrow money from them since they didn't have any.

Some people's sense of entitlement is really scary. They forget that the moment when they reach the age of 18 their parents don't owe them anything any more. If your parents are willing to support you financially after that, that's great. They are not, however, obligated to do so in any way. They have the right to dispose of their money, the money that they made for themselves, in any way they wish, and nobody, in my opinion, has the right to dispute their choice and feel resentful about it.

If I were to discover tomorrow that my parents gave $40,000 to my younger sister so that she could buy an airport or anything else, I would be very happy on two accounts. First, that my sister had the money. And second, that my parents were in good financial shape that allowed them to make this kind of gifts to whomever they chose. As I was growing up, I was always told by my parents, "The only money that is truly yours is the money you made." This was a very valuable lesson as it taught me never to desire or begrudge anybody else's money.

Many people tend to see their parents as property that belongs to them and that has no life, will or desires of its own. Parents are people, too. They are responsible for their children's well-being until the children reach the age of majority. After that, they have no financial obligations to their children.