You might recall in my last entry I suggested that the best model for the ownership of sports franchises is for them to be owned by the municipalities in which they play. That way we wouldn't have this conflicting arrangement of a public good owned by a private entity that we have now. Well, guess who agrees with me? None other than The Salamander himself, Mr. Newt Gingrich.
It's an unexpected position from Newt, although maybe not; he was the guy who called out Mitt Romney during the Republican primary with quotes like
that sound more like things Ralph Nader would say than Newt Gingrich. I think Newt fancies himself some sort of anti-establishment free-thinker, ready to liberate us all with his sterling, unique intellect. And so he relishes grandiose pronouncements that will grab people's attention. That would be fine if he was actually a smart guy with good ideas. But I've seen him debate. He's not.
Anyway ...
So both the in-laws are in town now. It's nice. I still have to do the bulk of work with Lil' S, but it's easier as he gets more familiar with his Ava and Thaatha. He lets his Ava give him baths now, which is huge. The only thing is that I'm trying to teach him "no" and grandparents aren't the best at that. I'm worried he's getting spoiled. Apparently he's been having some behavioral problems at daycare -- taking toys away from other kids and throwing a fit when he doesn't get exactly what he wants. We've definitely noticed the latter at home. If you take away the lotion he's eating, he starts screaming; if you don't give him the cracker he wants, he starts screaming; if you don't carry him when he says "up", he starts screaming; if you try to interrupt his play to change his diaper, he starts screaming; if you zip up his jacket too high, he's start screaming. Any little thing that doesn't go his way causes him to scream. If it's just me I'm fine letting him scream, but the more adults around, the harder this is to do (he only needs one to give him what he wants, and he's already learning how to work it). Also, if I'm trying to get him to daycare because I need to be at a work meeting or something like that, I'm probably going to cave and just do whatever I need to do to placate him. Sometimes you don't have time to make a stand.
What he really needs is a little sibling to take away some of the attention. But until that happens, when S gets back we're going to have to come up with some sort of game plan to deal with his tantrums. I know he's still basically a baby and that's what babies do, but at least we can start planting seeds that bratty behavior is unacceptable. I really don't want Lil' S to become one of those annoying, spoiled little kids who feels entitled to things just because. In general, I think the "Participation Trophy Generation" thing is way overblown. A lot of it, in my opinion, is just old people acting like things were better and harder in their day (i.e., old people acting like old people). But that doesn't preclude me from wanting to teach my kid work ethic and gratitude.
On a similar note, I came across this article about the notion of "checking your privilege". It ran in Time, and it's been making the rounds on social media. If you don't want to read it, I'll give you the gist: It's a fired-up, white, male, 20-year-old Princeton student writing about how's he's fed up with people suggesting he's privileged. He's not going to apologize for it (who asked him to do so is unclear) because his grandfather was a Jew who endured serious hardship in escaping from the Nazis. If my recap seems incongruous, it's because so was his article. Time must really be struggling if they are willing to run such a terribly reasoned polemic just for the sake of getting clicks (any story that stands up for white people against the slightest hints of racism is guaranteed to get passed around by satisfied conservatives and outraged liberals). The article has no logical flow. Here is the best takedown of it I've read. But I have my own analogy; it fits in with my grand view on privilege and life in general.
Basically, we're all in a giant poker game. We all start out with a different number of chips (chips aren't just money in this metaphor, but any advantage you were born into), and we are all at a different skill level, and this skill level changes -- some people work hard and get better, some people don't and get worse. As the game progresses, on average, the good players do well, the so-so players do so-so, and the bad players do poorly. But it's not quite that simple. Because the chips were unevenly dispersed in the beginning, some mediocre players will always be ahead of some really good players and some bad players will be always be ahead of some mediocre players just because they started out so far ahead. And it gets even more unfair. There is an element of total randomness -- the luck of the draw. You could be the world's greatest poker player and start with a huge mound of chips and lose just because the cards didn't go your way. It's not very likely, but it's possible. Conversely, you can succeed just through dumb luck. But that's not very likely either. The vast majority of us end up where one would expect, probabilistically, given our starting stack and our skill level. But there are always outliers -- far extremes in either direction and everything in between. And that's life.
The kid who wrote the terrible article for Time seems like a pretty good "life player" (logic isn't his strong suit, but he got into Princeton so he must have something going for him). He also -- just by virtue of being white and male in a society that (at the very least) still has residues of racism and patriarchalism -- started with more chips than, say, a black female, all other things equal. That's just a fact. And now when people point this out to him, he's saying, "Yeah, well, my grandfather survived the Nazis, and he passed a bunch of chips down to me." Great. Irrelevant, but great. This kid still started with more chips than most people of color and women in no small part because he's white and male. That's really all the Privilege Police is saying. I don't really get what the issue is.
This is yet another reason why I could never be a conservative. I just don't understand why it's so difficult for conservative white men to say "Yeah, I had and will continue to have advantages in life because of my skin color and sex."* Conservatives always want to be the victims -- the war on Christianity, the assault on traditional marriage, redistribution, reverse racism, class warfare, the liberal media, etc., etc. -- even though, by and large, they're old, rich, white, American men -- one of the least victimized group in the history of modern civilization.** It's a very weird pathology; one that I cannot comprehend. Many conservative mindsets I disagree with, but I understand. This is one I can't even understand.
Well, I'm not going to try to figure it out tonight. It's late, and there is still a crossword puzzle I want to do.
Until next time ...
*I can think of a number of instances in which I've likely been given the benefit of the doubt because I was white. Once I was with some people who went on a vandalism tear. I was just a spectator, but I was there. The cops caught us, but they let me go with little hassle. Actually we all got off relatively easy. If the circumstances were the exact same, but we looked like NWA circa 1987, are things so easy for us? I seriously doubt it.
**Even Ann Romney on the campaign trail tried to claim she and Mitt were once poor because their dining table was an old door (an old door, I tell ya!), omitting the fact that Mitt's father George was an incredibly wealthy GM exec and former governor of Michigan. There might have been a time when Mitt and Ann didn't have a ton of spending cash, but how far were they really going to fall with the Romney safety net under them?
It's an unexpected position from Newt, although maybe not; he was the guy who called out Mitt Romney during the Republican primary with quotes like
"Now you have to ask a question - is that really, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that in fact somehow a little bit of a flawed system? And so I do draw distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and then leaving a factory that should be there."
that sound more like things Ralph Nader would say than Newt Gingrich. I think Newt fancies himself some sort of anti-establishment free-thinker, ready to liberate us all with his sterling, unique intellect. And so he relishes grandiose pronouncements that will grab people's attention. That would be fine if he was actually a smart guy with good ideas. But I've seen him debate. He's not.
Anyway ...
So both the in-laws are in town now. It's nice. I still have to do the bulk of work with Lil' S, but it's easier as he gets more familiar with his Ava and Thaatha. He lets his Ava give him baths now, which is huge. The only thing is that I'm trying to teach him "no" and grandparents aren't the best at that. I'm worried he's getting spoiled. Apparently he's been having some behavioral problems at daycare -- taking toys away from other kids and throwing a fit when he doesn't get exactly what he wants. We've definitely noticed the latter at home. If you take away the lotion he's eating, he starts screaming; if you don't give him the cracker he wants, he starts screaming; if you don't carry him when he says "up", he starts screaming; if you try to interrupt his play to change his diaper, he starts screaming; if you zip up his jacket too high, he's start screaming. Any little thing that doesn't go his way causes him to scream. If it's just me I'm fine letting him scream, but the more adults around, the harder this is to do (he only needs one to give him what he wants, and he's already learning how to work it). Also, if I'm trying to get him to daycare because I need to be at a work meeting or something like that, I'm probably going to cave and just do whatever I need to do to placate him. Sometimes you don't have time to make a stand.
What he really needs is a little sibling to take away some of the attention. But until that happens, when S gets back we're going to have to come up with some sort of game plan to deal with his tantrums. I know he's still basically a baby and that's what babies do, but at least we can start planting seeds that bratty behavior is unacceptable. I really don't want Lil' S to become one of those annoying, spoiled little kids who feels entitled to things just because. In general, I think the "Participation Trophy Generation" thing is way overblown. A lot of it, in my opinion, is just old people acting like things were better and harder in their day (i.e., old people acting like old people). But that doesn't preclude me from wanting to teach my kid work ethic and gratitude.
On a similar note, I came across this article about the notion of "checking your privilege". It ran in Time, and it's been making the rounds on social media. If you don't want to read it, I'll give you the gist: It's a fired-up, white, male, 20-year-old Princeton student writing about how's he's fed up with people suggesting he's privileged. He's not going to apologize for it (who asked him to do so is unclear) because his grandfather was a Jew who endured serious hardship in escaping from the Nazis. If my recap seems incongruous, it's because so was his article. Time must really be struggling if they are willing to run such a terribly reasoned polemic just for the sake of getting clicks (any story that stands up for white people against the slightest hints of racism is guaranteed to get passed around by satisfied conservatives and outraged liberals). The article has no logical flow. Here is the best takedown of it I've read. But I have my own analogy; it fits in with my grand view on privilege and life in general.
Basically, we're all in a giant poker game. We all start out with a different number of chips (chips aren't just money in this metaphor, but any advantage you were born into), and we are all at a different skill level, and this skill level changes -- some people work hard and get better, some people don't and get worse. As the game progresses, on average, the good players do well, the so-so players do so-so, and the bad players do poorly. But it's not quite that simple. Because the chips were unevenly dispersed in the beginning, some mediocre players will always be ahead of some really good players and some bad players will be always be ahead of some mediocre players just because they started out so far ahead. And it gets even more unfair. There is an element of total randomness -- the luck of the draw. You could be the world's greatest poker player and start with a huge mound of chips and lose just because the cards didn't go your way. It's not very likely, but it's possible. Conversely, you can succeed just through dumb luck. But that's not very likely either. The vast majority of us end up where one would expect, probabilistically, given our starting stack and our skill level. But there are always outliers -- far extremes in either direction and everything in between. And that's life.
The kid who wrote the terrible article for Time seems like a pretty good "life player" (logic isn't his strong suit, but he got into Princeton so he must have something going for him). He also -- just by virtue of being white and male in a society that (at the very least) still has residues of racism and patriarchalism -- started with more chips than, say, a black female, all other things equal. That's just a fact. And now when people point this out to him, he's saying, "Yeah, well, my grandfather survived the Nazis, and he passed a bunch of chips down to me." Great. Irrelevant, but great. This kid still started with more chips than most people of color and women in no small part because he's white and male. That's really all the Privilege Police is saying. I don't really get what the issue is.
This is yet another reason why I could never be a conservative. I just don't understand why it's so difficult for conservative white men to say "Yeah, I had and will continue to have advantages in life because of my skin color and sex."* Conservatives always want to be the victims -- the war on Christianity, the assault on traditional marriage, redistribution, reverse racism, class warfare, the liberal media, etc., etc. -- even though, by and large, they're old, rich, white, American men -- one of the least victimized group in the history of modern civilization.** It's a very weird pathology; one that I cannot comprehend. Many conservative mindsets I disagree with, but I understand. This is one I can't even understand.
Well, I'm not going to try to figure it out tonight. It's late, and there is still a crossword puzzle I want to do.
Until next time ...
*I can think of a number of instances in which I've likely been given the benefit of the doubt because I was white. Once I was with some people who went on a vandalism tear. I was just a spectator, but I was there. The cops caught us, but they let me go with little hassle. Actually we all got off relatively easy. If the circumstances were the exact same, but we looked like NWA circa 1987, are things so easy for us? I seriously doubt it.
**Even Ann Romney on the campaign trail tried to claim she and Mitt were once poor because their dining table was an old door (an old door, I tell ya!), omitting the fact that Mitt's father George was an incredibly wealthy GM exec and former governor of Michigan. There might have been a time when Mitt and Ann didn't have a ton of spending cash, but how far were they really going to fall with the Romney safety net under them?
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