Curtis Dahlgren
Can you say "JADED," boys and girls? (a "best of")
By Curtis Dahlgren
"Anthony Flew, 81, has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe." – my column, 1/01/05
"EVER SINCE THE FIRST DAY YOU ENTERED 4-YEAR-OLD KINDERGARTEN, you have been given the impression that you are the world's most intelligent, the best-educated – the most highly evolved – generation in world history. WHAT A CROCK!" (from "The graduation speech you're not likely to hear this year" http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/dahlgren/050527
Some readers may have thought that column was unduly harsh. After witnessing a group of Wisconsin "high" schoolers the other day at a fast-food outlet at lunch time, I don't think so. I arrived just as the "bouncer" was shooing them off the parking lot after admitting a few of them inside for lunch. The girls were dressed like professional hookers and tossed a few F-bombs at the employee as they left. Inside the restaurant, I sat down at a table near two girls and a couple of boys. The 90-pound blonde was saying, "He is, like, so, like, hot!" The other girl said, "I thought you were going to wait" and the blonde says:
"I said I was going to wait until it was legal. I didn't say I was waiting."
I suppose this passes for "the new norm" in a respectable midwestern neighborhood. I'd hate to see a group of California teens out for lunch. There has truly been a role-reversal. The girls boast about their "conquests" with dozens of ears around them, while the boys sit there like castrated, like, bumps on a log, like, to be discarded like so many fetuses. About 30 years ago, I was sitting in another fast food store in the same chain, and two girls were loudly talking about babies they had aborted. "Mine would have been two now," one of them said, with all the sensitivity of, like, an abortionist flushing a baby down the toilet.
The post-war baby boomers, with the onset of rock music, was the generation that forgot how to whistle. The gen-Xerrs were the ones who forgot how to sing a melody. With rap "boom-boom" music now, generation XYZ has forgotten how tosmile! I didn't see a single smile on the faces of the group of teens I saw the other day.
"Stories of the strange and imbicillic":
In 2006, in Iraq, two tennis players and their coach were pulled from their car and shot by "insurgents" for wearing tennis shorts! No comment required, but I wonder if Islamist extremist forces have a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.
But meanwhile back in America, our teenagers seem to be trying so hard not to be accused of being the "Taliban" that the girls walk around in public with half of their private parts hanging out. Apparently, school administrators are too "open minded" to even say anything to the girls. If I were giving a commencement speech (haha), I would start out by saying, "Thank God for those caps and gowns. Because I know what you girls are wearing and it ain't pretty! If it weren't for the caps and gowns, we wouldn't have any discretion here." As I said in my first 'commencement address':
This country was founded by people who didn't "fit in"! The Puritans weren't"popular" in Europe. They weren't just "blowin' in the wind" like thistle seeds. They got to their destination. Look that word up sometime (it has something to do with destiny). After the pilgrims and puritans came the pioneers. The sons of the Pioneers climbed the Appalachians and the Rockies and the Sierras. Some of them didn't make it. But some of them made it all the way north to Alaska. Their conscience was their compass. They weren't watching Entertainment Tonight or American Idolatry. Or twiddling their thumbs on a smart phone. They were busy enough without those things. It was called SURVIVAL. And they didn't have social workers or psychiatrists, or name-brand clothing.
The offspring of today's politically correct helicopter-parents are now nicknamed "snowflakes" because they are hyper-sensitive to anything politically IN-correct (not to be tolerated in Academe). Our old school of "Sifting and winnowing" has been defined down to "Stifling and silencing" (quashing the controversial, the out-of-date, or even the "annoying"! ). YOU CALL THIS THE SURVIVAL OF THE "FITTEST"?
P.S. An article in the weekend Wall Street Journal claims that the I.Q. average is higher than it was 65 years ago. IF true, that's not necessarily adaptation; that's due to the mass-free market prosperity of our not-too-distant economy (better nutrition and health, etc.). I don't even accept the premise, because I know for a fact that there was a lot more common sense common back then.
Marquette Warriors coach Al McGuire said that everyone ought to go to college and then spend six months as a cab driver and six months as a bartender. It was a brilliant prediction:
Half of all college grads this year will end up tending bar or driving taxi.. Maybe there's still some HOPE for a change!
© Curtis Dahlgren
June 3, 2015
"Anthony Flew, 81, has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe." – my column, 1/01/05
"EVER SINCE THE FIRST DAY YOU ENTERED 4-YEAR-OLD KINDERGARTEN, you have been given the impression that you are the world's most intelligent, the best-educated – the most highly evolved – generation in world history. WHAT A CROCK!" (from "The graduation speech you're not likely to hear this year" http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/dahlgren/050527
Some readers may have thought that column was unduly harsh. After witnessing a group of Wisconsin "high" schoolers the other day at a fast-food outlet at lunch time, I don't think so. I arrived just as the "bouncer" was shooing them off the parking lot after admitting a few of them inside for lunch. The girls were dressed like professional hookers and tossed a few F-bombs at the employee as they left. Inside the restaurant, I sat down at a table near two girls and a couple of boys. The 90-pound blonde was saying, "He is, like, so, like, hot!" The other girl said, "I thought you were going to wait" and the blonde says:
"I said I was going to wait until it was legal. I didn't say I was waiting."
I suppose this passes for "the new norm" in a respectable midwestern neighborhood. I'd hate to see a group of California teens out for lunch. There has truly been a role-reversal. The girls boast about their "conquests" with dozens of ears around them, while the boys sit there like castrated, like, bumps on a log, like, to be discarded like so many fetuses. About 30 years ago, I was sitting in another fast food store in the same chain, and two girls were loudly talking about babies they had aborted. "Mine would have been two now," one of them said, with all the sensitivity of, like, an abortionist flushing a baby down the toilet.
The post-war baby boomers, with the onset of rock music, was the generation that forgot how to whistle. The gen-Xerrs were the ones who forgot how to sing a melody. With rap "boom-boom" music now, generation XYZ has forgotten how tosmile! I didn't see a single smile on the faces of the group of teens I saw the other day.
"Stories of the strange and imbicillic":
In 2006, in Iraq, two tennis players and their coach were pulled from their car and shot by "insurgents" for wearing tennis shorts! No comment required, but I wonder if Islamist extremist forces have a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.
But meanwhile back in America, our teenagers seem to be trying so hard not to be accused of being the "Taliban" that the girls walk around in public with half of their private parts hanging out. Apparently, school administrators are too "open minded" to even say anything to the girls. If I were giving a commencement speech (haha), I would start out by saying, "Thank God for those caps and gowns. Because I know what you girls are wearing and it ain't pretty! If it weren't for the caps and gowns, we wouldn't have any discretion here." As I said in my first 'commencement address':
This country was founded by people who didn't "fit in"! The Puritans weren't"popular" in Europe. They weren't just "blowin' in the wind" like thistle seeds. They got to their destination. Look that word up sometime (it has something to do with destiny). After the pilgrims and puritans came the pioneers. The sons of the Pioneers climbed the Appalachians and the Rockies and the Sierras. Some of them didn't make it. But some of them made it all the way north to Alaska. Their conscience was their compass. They weren't watching Entertainment Tonight or American Idolatry. Or twiddling their thumbs on a smart phone. They were busy enough without those things. It was called SURVIVAL. And they didn't have social workers or psychiatrists, or name-brand clothing.
The offspring of today's politically correct helicopter-parents are now nicknamed "snowflakes" because they are hyper-sensitive to anything politically IN-correct (not to be tolerated in Academe). Our old school of "Sifting and winnowing" has been defined down to "Stifling and silencing" (quashing the controversial, the out-of-date, or even the "annoying"! ). YOU CALL THIS THE SURVIVAL OF THE "FITTEST"?
P.S. An article in the weekend Wall Street Journal claims that the I.Q. average is higher than it was 65 years ago. IF true, that's not necessarily adaptation; that's due to the mass-free market prosperity of our not-too-distant economy (better nutrition and health, etc.). I don't even accept the premise, because I know for a fact that there was a lot more common sense common back then.
Marquette Warriors coach Al McGuire said that everyone ought to go to college and then spend six months as a cab driver and six months as a bartender. It was a brilliant prediction:
Half of all college grads this year will end up tending bar or driving taxi.. Maybe there's still some HOPE for a change!
© Curtis Dahlgren
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