All hail the progressive social engineers!:
About Offsprung:
A new generation of parents is currently reinventing the very notion of parenthood, and, for that matter, of generations. Never before have human beings reproduced so interestingly, with such skepticism, and with such clever nicknames for their progeny. This important sociological development has only thus far been the subject of about 500 articles in the New York Times, and many far less important media outlets. That’s why we, a group of sexy and relatively clever parents, decided to start Offsprung Media.
— among whose contributors, remarkably, is conspicuously unclever non-parent Amanda Marcotte, who writes the blog column, “Unsprung: political writing for parents who don’t suck.”
Which (were “progressives” not so forgiving of the liberties they tend to take with conventional language usage) might more accurately be called “Unsprung: political writing for parents who don’t suck — penned by a non-parent who most decidedly does.”
I guess if you have to put up with breeders, you may as well train them to parent the way they should, ensuring a world where their offspring will conform to certain political and social imperatives. You know — so that they, too, can later join the ranks of the non-suckies, and in the interim, avoid the scorn heaped upon the irritating offspring of those who do suck.
Get ’em while they’re young, the thinking goes. After all, that’s what the Christians do — and by pre-Kindergarten, it may be too late.
As bumperstickerist quips in a comment:
On the plus side, when the kids of these self-aggrandizing reinventionists rebel against their parents, they’ll make Alex Keaton look like a Trotskyite.
Which got me to thinking: maybe we’re being a bit too hard on this kind of social experimentation. After all, if certain British doctors did not once ask, ‘what is this fungus?’, we would not today have penicillin, yes? [h/t Lt. Kinderman]. Because in fairness, if the antiquated mode of parenting that has given us the likes of Marcotte (who would presume, from a bold lack of experience, to direct our efforts) has indeed become the status quo, perhaps change is necessary.
Which is why I’m taking up the mantle of the sexy new parenting movement and doing my part to Stop The Sucking by acclimating my son to nannystatism early on, teaching him to reject it utterly. Which leads to some unconventional life lessons, sure — but ones that are nevertheless useful in the long-term, should our goal, as a truly liberal society, be the reinvigoration of the idea of individual freedom.
So for instance, on Saturday night, while we were having a few beers at a Boulder pub, I counseled my son thus: “if, while I’m off taking a piss, someone demands that you put out your cigarette, just pretend you don’t understand him. Afterall, you’re only 3, so you can always play the naivety card.
“And, should he become so frustrated that he tries to get forceful with you, just start screaming that the presumptuous perv tried to grab your pee pee.
” — Before you know it, 88 professors and a Boulder prosecutor will be vying for your life story.”
Cutting edge parenting, sure. But we must do our part, I think, to TAKE BACK THE COUNTRY FROM PARENTS WHO SUCK!
Now, all I have to do is figure out a way to graft some foreskin back on the kid, and Offsprung will be beating down my door trying to get me into the clever and sexy neo-parenting fold…
Great, another bunch of fucking assholes who don’t realize that there’s a time when you are supposed to stop trying to be cool.
They hired marcotte? Sheesh, why not bring on one completely unhinged decision-science prof?
An article in my local Sunday paper was pushing for mandatory pre-school. 13 years not being enough to throughly indoctrinate the young I suppose.
More Intelligent Designing the future from the party smarter than God.
I hate to break this to you, Jeff, but unless you do something progressive like go homo, you’re still going to suck.
BECAUSE OF THE PATRIARCHY!
Ken,
They hired marcotte? Sheesh, why not bring on one completely unhinged decision-science prof?
I hear Andrea Yates is available. Hey, as long as we’re thinking outside the box…
As far as I can tell from Marcotte’s article, the proper way to raise kids is to say "F***" and "Motherf***er" to them repeatedly. I feel like such a failure as a father.
c’mon guys! Why must you belittle her efforts to help the inflicted? It’s because she’s a woman isn’t it? BECAUSE OF THE PATRIARCHY!
I honestly had no idea that Marcotte was such a legend in her own mind….
I guess you haven’t been paying a lot of attention to her, then. Good on ya’.
Relative to what? Fungus? Good Lord, what a bunch of self-centered #$%*.
Maybe I should just check their site and do the opposite of what they preach with my own kids, hmmm?
Bah.
Oh, just because Marcotte doesn’t have kids, that means she can’t have opinions about parenting? That would be like her saying if you don’t have a uterus you’re opinions on abortion don’t matter, or if you aren’t in the military you have no right to support the war. I mean, really!
Comments disabled, I see. Because dissent is the highest form of resisting conventional parenting. As is having a (non-)parenting blog with a DJ.
Oh, she’s entitled to her opinions, BHM. But it would be unwise to look to her for advice. That would be like a commander of an armored division asking Gandhi for pointers.
Thank you, Major John. I was wondering what would the effect on the relative cleverness be if we rolled in Stephen Hawking one day and Tom Arnold the next.
All these posts about Marcotte…..if I didn’t know better I’d say someone has a crush.
Dear Amanda,
Do you like Protein Wisdom? If yes, check this box. If no, check this one. Come see me after fifth period, I’ll be standing next the guy whistling at chicks with big hooters (his name is Dan…he likes you too!).
XXOOO,
Protein Wisdom
All these posts about Marcotte…..if I didn’t know better I’d say someone has a crush.
Does that mean you love Dubya, Timmah!?
In other news, this is an interesting parenting model. You could even call it progressive.
How wonderfully, indirectly self-referential, timmy.
Dear Jeff:
Do you have a man-crush on timmy? Check box A if yes, box B if no, or box C if a man-crush could be induced via a suitable financial transaction.
You know, Pablo, George is a funny, good looking guy. It would be more funny if you had suggested you or B Moe, since most gratuitous shots form me are directed at either of you two. C’est la vie, humor’s not you bag.
Slarti, my main man, that’s exactly what I thought one of you would say when the joke was taken too seriously. Kudos to you.
"C’est la vie, humor’s not you bag."
You could use a few lessons yourself, it seems. One half as clever as you think yourself to be, should be able to come up with something more original than the sadly lame "Jeff and Amanda sittin in a tree" quip that’s been used by generations of third-graders.
But then, asking for sophistication and wit from you in this particular case would be the equivalent of asking Barry Bonds what pharmecueticals he recommends.
While I agree with the implied sentiment, I should think Barry would really know his pharmaceuticals.
All these posts about Marcotte…..if I didn’t know better I’d say someone has a crush.
Honestly, Amanda is the gift that keeps on giving. Times may be tough with Rosie and Saint Cindy “gone” – but we’ve still got Amanda.
C’est la vie, humor’s not you bag.
One, you’re on the wrong thread. Two, get your dirty little mind off my bag.
I’m not a parent, nor sexy and only God knows if I clever so I have to ask, how do the sexy and relatively clever ones explain where Offsrung from two daddies come from?
What would you have thought one of us would say when it wasn’t taken too seriously? And how come your foresight isn’t a great deal more precise?
Possibly you just suck at this conservatives-are-so-predictable schtick.
I quit reading at “reinventing the very notion of parenting”.
Slarti, I wasn’t bashing you for noting it. I was commending you or, in the parlance of today’s youth, I was giving you props. I can’t exactly defend myself from that one, can I? [memo to self, next time you compliment a guy named for one of the characters in the funniest books of all times, try to more serious and less jocular.]
I understand Amanda is reviled. I think I visited her site once and I failed to see any rhyme or reason there, so I skedaddled. She’s a tiny fish in a large pond and Jeff and Dan are obsessed with her every move. Just seems strange…
What did Mandy say when I posted about "Offsprung"?
http://www.darleenclick.com/weblog/archives/2007/06/cognitive_disco.html
"Contrary to what you might think, my lack of devotion to male dominance in no way, shape or form means that I’m anti-family. There are a lot of families that are left out of the "family values" crap because their families are not structured around the idea that everything is about Daddy and his ego. Lauren and I are there to speak for them, politically speaking. The website is for people who abstain from the usual bullshit that gets shoved down your throat at parenting websites, which is why we were asked to blog there. " Posted by: Amanda Marcotte at June 12, 2007 11:59 AM
See? A family composed of Mom, Dad and kids, especially where Mom and Dad are married to each other, is all about "Daddy and his ego."
Never mind that Mandy hates opposite-sex marriage, considers pregnancy a "punishment", and she even describes cookbooks that offer recipes to feed four or more as kulturekampf; Mandy jumped at the chance to blog on an ostensible PARENTING blog.
Kinda like having David Duke post at a pro-Israel blog.
timb
That "tiny fish" was hired to be John Edwards webmaster, inspite of her abject Christophobia (and she blames the "right wing haters" for her firing, not her own writings).
She’s a bellwether of Leftist/Vagina Warrior elitism … all gonads, little thought, and a refusal to take responsiblity for her own mistakes.
You might think of her as a babble fish, actually.
Or you might think of her as pretty much bat-shit crazy. And therefore a reliable source of material.
oh good lord…. I finally waded all the way through Mandy’s dreck
and how the word "rapper" when said by a non-leftist is "code word" for "nigger"
"See? By using a non-taboo word, Murchinson gets to be a giant racist, but he gets away with it by hiding behind the cloak of civility. "
Mandy really is a cunt.
I like the Babble fish. thats’ gold.
OT, Slarti, did you see the movie? I thought Doug would have enjoyed it had he lived to see it. Personally, I’ll always the BBC TV series, but I did enjoy watching Arthur and Trillian on the big screen
If they ever decided to teach kids to read, the process would be much faster.
I liked both of them, timmy, in different ways. I didn’t care too much for the big screen Zaphod, but he was not totally bad. The POV gun, on the other hand, was sheer genius. And the Vogons were done well.
The BBC series, having been first, yes. It’ll hold a place in my heart that DiLaurentiis’ Dune never will.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to resurrect that whole image.
I thought the movie was fun, but I went in knowing it was going to be somewhat of a "reimagining." Which is to say, I knew it wasn’t going to be the "real" Hitchhiker’s Guide, any more than the current SciFi "Battlestar Galactica" wasn’t going to be like the one I remembered. Fortunately, since the new version of "BSG" is better than the original, I was able to approach the new "HHG" with an open mind. In the end, though, like you I prefer the original "HHG."
Look, these are the folks who teach their children to pull out Bongs for Jesus banners at their high school functions. Get over it, be willing to restrict their stupidity, or adopt a libertarian attitude that adopts their values while protesting them.
Get over it, be willing to restrict their stupidity, or adopt a libertarian attitude that adopts their values while protesting them.
Freedom includes the liberty to make an ass of yourself. You don’t have to adopt their values to support their right to express them. As Voltaire was parphrased:
Comment by Attila (Pillage Idiot) on 6/25 @ 10:37 am #
As far as I can tell from Marcotte’s article, the proper way to raise kids is to say "F***" and "Motherf***er" to them repeatedly. I feel like such a failure as a father.
Next time I’m asked to pull out before the big splash, "no-way motherfucker! I’m proper Dad material. Don’t you read the fuck’n internets!"
As a parent who (perhaps flatters himself that he) doesn’t suck, I find this whole Marcotte thing somewhere between offensive and laughable.
Why are we to believe that parental non-suckitude should be joined at the hip with the kind of hacky, predictable leftism that otherwise exists only in less-ambitious college newspaper editorial rooms? Or is it just that the intended audience of this little anthology defines non-suckitude as a refusal to drop their puerile adolescent approach to all things and join the adult world?
Plus, she doesn’t even have any kids. WTF?
I am, just, uh, speechless. That’s NOT a joke. That’s what you’re telling me. The level of detachment from reality that those people are experiencing, borders on clinical.
Shockingly insane.
Good point, Jesus. My default position on parenting is that, in fact, I do suck as a parent. Everyone does, until they’ve (like my mother) raised six children (expelled with near-Irish frequency: six birthdays in a span of six years, 2 months) in a relatively incompetent fashion (meaning: we all lived, but we weren’t all well-adjusted wonder children), and then made a name for themselves as a parenting instructor.
Really. You can’t make this shit up. The funniest part of it is, I have absolutely no doubts that my mom is a wonderful parenting counselor. Even if she only learned from some of her mistakes, she’s wise beyond the ken of new parents.
And, in her defense, it’s not as if we didn’t present certain unique and near-simultaneous (not to mention, constantly adaptive) challenges. In fact, I’m considering asking for a cut of her fees, because I helped shape who she is now. But then she’d be asking for a cut of MY pay, which is a considerable amount more than she makes, so I keep quiet.
But again, I think we pretty much all suck (to varying degrees) as parents until a decade or two after the last kid has moved out of state.
#7:
As far as I can tell from Marcotte’s article, the proper way to raise kids is to say “F***” and “Motherf***er” to them repeatedly.
Wait…you mean that was *her* in the opening scenes of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?”