Terrible Editorials, Opinion Pieces and Letters to the Editor

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Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

This morning, a local talk radio fellow did a call-in piece on a recent published statistic that claimed a 64% increase in the number of children living with grandparents. Of course, he didn't bother to mention where the statistic came from or what "living with grandparents" included, so he launched into a diatribe that basically amounted to "kids these days."

And naturally, no mention at all of anything besides irresponsible kids that could be the cause of this, like for example underemployment and in-home care for the older generation by their children (the parents of these kids living with grandparents).

So I looked up the statistic / article when I got home. And sure enough Google found it (or a related article) in about two seconds...

http://blog.aarp.org/2011/07/27/caregiving-recession-likely-behind-64-rise-in-children-living-with-grandparent/

quote:

There are many different data sets we can look at regarding family living arrangements, multigenerational households and grandparents caregiving for grandchildren, but consistently they all show growth in recent years. The latest Census Bureau report on the topic once again confirms the increase in families bringing generations together.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released the report, Living Arrangements of Children: 2009, which indicated 7.8 million children live with at least one grandparent, more than double the 4.7 million children living with a grandparent in 1991 (a 64% increase.) The data are from the household relationship module of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Of those 7.8 million children, the majority (75%) are living in multigenerational homes, with at least one parent also present � about the same percentage as in 1991. That means about 25% are being raised by grandparents with no parents present.

Within racial/ethnic groups, the largest increase in children living with a grandparent over the past two decades has been among white children, with 5% of White children living with a grandparent in 1991, and 9% in 2009. Among Hispanic children, 12% lived with a grandparent in 1991, and 14% in 2009. Black children saw a similar increase, with 15% of Black children living with a grandparent in 1991 and 17% in 2009.

I was interviewed by the Washington Times about these new data, and I stressed the various reasons I believe these numbers have increased so significantly, including:

quote:

The aging of the population and increased need for adult children to care for aging parents, often combining households to do so � even when there are still children living in the home.

The recent recession and housing crisis has hit families across all socio-economic groups, with many young families turning to the grandparent generation for help.

Parents who aren�t capable of raising their children due to alcohol and drug abuse, mental illness and other problems that lead to child abuse and neglect.

The bad news: none of these problems are going away any time soon.

The good news: the generations continue to come together to cope with these challenges.

The American family may not look exactly like it used to, but � even when one generation is out of the picture � increasingly, another generation will step in to provide the family home a child needs.

Yet another example of omission so that some random bit of news fits the narrative of "things were better in the good ol' days when we read the Bible and people were hard-workin' Americans instead of lazy kids like today." It doesn't surprise me, but that kind of intellectual dishonesty still boils my blood. And yeah, I realize this is relatively minor compared to Cal Thomas. But still...

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 16:21

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 07:34

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Armyman25 posted:

What's funny is that multi-generational households used to be the norm. My great-great grandfather lived in my grandmother's home when she was a young girl. Unsurprisingly this was before the New Deal.

They still are in many parts of the world. Multi-generational households actually reinforce "traditional" values. I suppose we could argue about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but whatever it is, bitching about "boomerang" kids is a relatively new thing.

The conservative element can rarely see past the end of their noses, though, so I'm not really surprised.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 18:21

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Bruce Leroy posted:

It always seems like the people who believe those things about the "professional poor" or "welfare queens" are people who have never been poor and don't personally know anyone who is poor. They just hear these apocryphal anecdotes about poor people with iphones, new SUVs, etc. and think that these stories are not only true but represent how the typical poor person lives.

It doesn't help that the phrase "poor people" seems to evoke in these idiots some kind of Depression-era image of dirty people huddled in a squalid tin shack with a dirt floor and six children wearing diapers.

Or something.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2011 22:23

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

some rear end in a top hat posted:

6. THERE�S A REMOTE CHANCE THAT INDIANS WERE NOT LIVING IN A HIPPIE COMMUNE WHEN WE GOT HERE
The accepted narrative for Native Americans is they were all playing Ring Around the Rosie until we blew germs on them and they all fell down. Though he had a helluva time getting it published, Lawrence H. Keeley�s War Before Civilization debunks that myth. The book describes common traditions such as mutilating a body AFTER it was killed to ensure the victim was doomed in the afterlife. We learn of mass graves with hundreds of scalped cadavers a good half-century before Columbus got there. Indian traditions have many wonderful traits, but let�s grow up a little and allow for the possibility they were simply incompatible with the modern world. For Christ�s sake, when we got here they hadn�t even invented the wheel. (Full disclosure: I�m allowed to consider this because the mother of my two children is a Native American.)

This one just cracks me up. None of these ever is all that intellectual, but wearing my archaeologist's hat, this one is so off base.

The "accepted narrative" hasn't been mainstream for decades. Keeley's book was published in 1996, and it was coming on the heels of at least two decades of strong evidence contrary to the "noble savage" perspective. Archaeologists are the ones who found that evidence and presented it to the public, for gently caress's sake.

The "modern world" in the mid-16th century wasn't really all that modern. And some Native Americans had wheels (the Maya made toys with them), but with no large domesticable creatures to use as draft animals, I fail to see how wheels would have provided much benefit to them.

The best, though, is the "not racist" tag at the end.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2012 14:48

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

G.W. Bush was basically a legacy president who got himself elected based largely on his name. Not unlike how he got through the rest of his life.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2012 13:19

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Not to flog a dead horse, but these kinds of casual misunderstandings are what contribute directly to intentional or unintentional racism and arguments that the Native Americans were somehow more "primitive" than the Europeans.

Install Gentoo posted:

Not for small loads. Like I said, wheelbarrows and handcarts are completely useful with only human power, even today! Rickshaws too. It's undoubtable that given enough time the native americans would have developed small, man-powered, wheeled transport. It would merely have required developing sturdy enough axles and wheels.

History matters, and this is a prime example of how.

The wheels on Mormon handcarts were the end result of centuries of technological advancement resulting specifically from the development and use of wheels on vehicles pulled by draft animals. They would not have been possible if the Mormons had been forced to use anything like early wheels (wooden disks).

Lacking domesticated draft animals, the trajectory of development of wheels light and strong enough to work efficiently on handcarts - and more importantly, to work more efficiently than the travois, baskets carried on the back on even on the head, or a variety of other ways of transporting things - didn't exist in the New World. There was simply no impetus to develop wheels for transportation at any point, and so that is an area of technology that was under-utilized.

And to remind you that the wheel and axle were independently developed in the New World, here:

Apologies for the derail.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2012 13:31

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Jastiger posted:

It doesn't mean those items listed in that sentence are the ideas themselves. I think anyone reading the context of the letter would know that I meant the ideas they had on the topic of womens suffrage, Native American lands, etc. meant that their particular ideas are anathema. They didn't put it in the drat Constitution.

Actually, I came to post the same thing.

The guy responding was out of line and crazy, but your letter could have used revision. As it is, your phrasing suggests that women's suffrage, Native American lands, and taxation are anathema to modern American values and are repulsive. I'm not sure how Native American lands are anathema to anything. And the other two are exactly the opposite of what you mean.

Clarity... always clarity. Your reader should never have to sit there and think, "Okay, I guess I know what he meant here."

And writing an unclear letter just makes it that much easier for people to dismiss you as not knowing what you're talking about.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2012 01:53

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Bruce Leroy posted:

Terrible article, but I don't think I could put it better than the following comment from the WSJ website:

You guys realize that the author is a former labor and employment lawyer, and everything about that piece is satire.

It's not good satire, but those opinions are deliberately absurd.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2012 13:13

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

HMDK posted:

Just like there's no longer any reason to call Poe, this vein of politics is mined dry of absurd parody. Because who the gently caress can even tell anymore?

It's the main reason why, sometime around 2001 or 2002, I stopped reading the Onion with any regularity. Nevertheless, I don't think a attempt at a satirical poke at corporations on the WSJ page really qualifies as a "terrible editorial [or] opinion piece."

# ¿ Sep 2, 2012 13:43

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Nenonen posted:

He's got a point, I remember how God punished Sodom and Gomorrah by raising the prices of corn and soybean to record heights!

Free market v. free will, I guess? Or something.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2012 15:33

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Mr. Funny Pants posted:

I prefer, if you had one dollar for every dollar in the national debt, you'd have 1.3 trillion dollars.

Hey, kids: if you took the annual budget of profligate spender and general all-around socialist Barack the Islamic Shock in dollar bills and put them end to end, it would be equal to the distance of 263 round trips to the moon!

# ¿ Nov 2, 2012 00:58

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

No, but that kind of useless analogy seems to be the go-to.

I recall a similar one showing bales of $1 bills, on pallets to show how much money Wall Street had or something.

Frankly, I think a much more useful metric would be... how many students could you send to Harvard, full-ride for 4 years, for the price of a single F-22 Raptor?

720+.

Somehow those kinds of comparisons never get out. I wonder why.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2012 01:52

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

In the space of two paragraphs, she goes from "a subculture of men who don't want to get married because 'women aren't women anymore'" to "the destruction of the relationship between the sexes."

Jesus, what crap.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2012 00:05

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

VideoTapir posted:

Or you could do what the Republicans clearly want you to do, and expose your infirm relatives on a mountaintop.

Even that could be hard to do in Appalachia. Mountaintops are becoming rarer.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2012 11:37

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Only in the fevered, deluded brains of the right wingers in this country is it a terrible thing for PSY to have been critical of the US after members of its military ran down a little girl in his country and got off free and clear.

If these idiots can't figure out why the rest of the world might be pissed off at us for just going around doing whatever we want... I can't even finish that. How can people be so goddamned stupid and blind?

# ¿ Dec 13, 2012 21:54

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

VideoTapir posted:

If his idiocy is so pervasive, another example should be easy to find. Maybe then we can all share in the private laugh you're having with yourself.

Having read several of his other pieces in the last few minutes, I'm left with the view that he's not an idiot, but his pieces are fluff with very little substance. He seems not to support anything he says very well, if at all, and falls back on "I think" or variations on that way too much for my taste.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2013 01:41

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

I guess I'm not surprised Ray Stevens - who was popular with my grandparents more than twenty years ago - is a conservative spouting the same old tired points (teleprompter, golf).

# ¿ Jun 22, 2013 11:37

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Most small town newspapers seem to print at least one of these every couple weeks. It used to drive me nuts when I was a kid, and I even wrote responses a couple times (that were printed).

Personally, I think the papers print these just to troll their readers.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2013 19:23

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

I refuse to believe that Harry Binswanger is not a troll.

There's no way that (or his other editorials) can possibly be real. Is there?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 19:11

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Xyven posted:

He literally has an article defending insider trading

This is a guy who, 284 years ago, would not have understood that Jonathan Swift was a satirist.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 20:20

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Bel_Canto posted:

Tom Lehrer did once quip that "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

I've heard it said before, and I said it myself once, that the reason I stopped reading the Onion was because the joke headlines started to bleed into the actual news cycle.

I still haven't gone back to the Onion for that reason.

Then again, I think *everyone* at pretty much every time period has made a similar complaint about political satire, so...

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 23:07

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

Y-Hat posted:

Is it OK to post Thought Catalog garbage here?

Being Privileged Is Not A Choice, So Stop Hating Me For It

For the first couple paragraphs, I actually thought, "this isn't so bad." I could have written them, they more or less described my college and graduate school experiences (at least until my PhD). My parents helped me with tuition, and I came out of my BA and MS debt free.

Believe me, I know how fortunate I was.

Then I got a little further into the article. As has already been said, if this was a troll, it was well done.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 11:41

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 07:34

Walter: Jul 3, 2003; We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/college_isn_t_for_everyone_let_s_stop_pretending_it_is.html

Christ, this is bad. Having worked in college advising, I tend to agree that college is not necessarily the best track for everyone. But that is where my agreement with the author of this turd ends. Rather than suggesting some kind of solution, the article basically seems to just say, "Well, have fun being poor and uneducated, kids."

# ¿ Mar 20, 2014 14:37

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