I must admit that I, like many parents, have been guilty of eyeing cute, fashionably tattered/stained jeans for my young daughter. I have purchased clothes from Nordstrom that lasted barely long enough for me to see her in them before she grew out of them, and shoes that sparkled and lacked any element of practicality. Let me follow that up by saying that nearly every item I purchased was on clearance at a mere fraction of the original cost, often not spending more than seven or eight dollars. For jeans I went as high as $30, but that was a rare occurrence.
This all comes about because I was flipping through msnbc.com entertainment and saw what I am certain was intended to be a cute photo montage of Suri Cruise and her extravagant clothing. It was labeled “Suri Cruise carries an $850 purse!” Something about this immediately rankled me. I understand that there are many out there who can afford to shop in such a manner, but the question still remains, “Should they?” When these children who grow up in such climates of excess and extravagance are unleashed upon the world, who will they be, Charlie Sheen or Prince William? Certainly there is a spectrum of people who fall from the “Have” tree and actively seek out to help those of us clawing at the roots of the “Have Not” shrub. But there are far too many children that I see out there in the world carrying their Louis Vuitton purses wearing $150 jeans, who spend their days indulging their senses, texting their friends and ignoring the plight of their fellow man.
The result of these excesses is an entire generation that has been spoiled rotten. And when I say rotten, I mean ROTTEN. A young man recently kicked in the head of a little girl who objected to his dating her young friend. He got mad, so he decided to kill her. Our children are growing up in a world where absolutely everything is objectified, even people. People exist as ethereal avatars on screens and as a result there is no real substance to the connections being formed. If anything, the real connections and relationships are with the technology meant to be a portal of communication. It is so easy for them to harass, embarrass and otherwise torment other people because they don’t have to look them in the face when they do it. When the torment moves to the physical world there is already an established disconnect (which is so firmly entrenched) that they may as well be pushing buttons on their cell phones. In the case of the young girl in Boston, who was tormented endlessly until she hanged herself in her closet, the young girls who were responsible for the harassment bragged about it, and laughed. Those young women are now charged in her death. What do the parents have to say of their ill-bred spawn? According to the New York Daily News one of the mothers (Angeles Chanon, mother of Sharon Chanon) said this, ‘’’(Sharon) exchanged a couple of words with her," Chanon told the Boston Herald. "Phoebe was calling her names. They're teenagers. They call names." Chanon insisted her daughter never "physically assaulted" Phoebe, no matter what the District Attorney says.
"I know she knows better than that. I wouldn't accept that," she said.”’
Your daughter was part of a campaign that bullied a young girl to death. For the fun of it. You are right, she did know better than that. That is why she has been charged with murder.
It is a slippery slope folks. When our children grow up getting everything they want without the benefit of working for it, and are rarely or inconsistently punished for their wrongs, what more can you expect? I have no doubt that even now, as these kids face serious charges that will impact the rest of their lives, they still don’t really care that Pheobe Prince is dead. And they don’t care that they contributed to her death. Can you imagine what is going to happen when this generation of children has their own children? Heaven help us all. I’ll be sleeping with a gun and one eye open.
F. Bear Slippers
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