Posted on 05/27/2009 11:25:34 AM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
The dolls are high, but they are high quality. I doubt the manufacturer could turn a profit and sell them for much less. All my girls are too old for them now, but my youngest had one of the knock off dolls that a competing company made. I think we paid about $40 for it.
For a Christmas or Birthday main gift, I don't have a problem with them. One of these days, though, they'll be playing with their ten Barbies, and you'll realize you spent a couple of hundred on Barbie stuff.
I can’t believe your kids are in college already, time really flies! Great to hear they are doing well, though.
My daughter had one of those dolls a long time ago, it was a very nice doll, I’m sure it’s still probably around the house somewhere...she’s heading for grad school in the fall. Son is now practicing law.
Actually, the “melting pot” was a liberal concept, as the old elite wanted the ethnics to be either deported or kept in their “own” neighborhoods back in the day.
You forget the fact that 1. Jews have a purchasing power disproportionate to their numbers and 2. the top market for American Girl dolls is in the NYC area. They aint exactly opening up American Girl stores in Harlan County, Kentucky. Be kinda cool to have a Scots Irish Redneck American Girl, though.
We love AG dolls, especially the accessories! That being said, my daughters first AG was the American Indian colored Bitty Baby. This was a gift not long after 9-11, that poor doll was labeled “the Taliban baby” by my dear husband and it never got another name.
So's our #1 son! He'd been at a small firm in Boston doing Trademark Law, but was laid off in January. His fiance was also employed at a small firm, but got fired; she didn't like the guy she was working for anyway. ;o) So she opened her own firm, and Paul joined her. They have a nice little office in Central Square in Cambridge.
...whatever. Again, kids used to just play with rather ordinary things and make up whatever they wanted in a spirit of fun, now it’s all about diversity, ethnic pride, and so on. Never about what unites us though - always the differences are emphasized. Somebody a few post up went on about how the doll was historically accurate and that it reflected Russian-Jewish immigrants who had suffered pogroms at the hands of Cossacks. That’s exactly my point. It’s not a fun toy...it has to be an ethnic teaching lesson replete with victimhood mentality. I think it’s lame, and that’s my opinion.
Agree with you at #68, but think that your #67 is nothing but feel-good revisionist history. Read what the mass media said about Irish, Polish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants back in the day. The WASPs didn’t exactly want us melting into a pot. BTW: The “melting pot” concept was indeed first popularized by secular Jewish liberals.
Excellent that they’ve opened their own office! Best of luck to them!
The term ‘melting pot’ may be relatively new, although that’s debatable, but the concept of one people isn’t. I’m not denying that our culture has been dominated by Anglo-Saxons, that each successive wave of immigrants hasn’t been discriminated against, my point is that each wave of free immigrants has been forced, in the fullness of time, to assimilate. The byproduct has been a uniquely American people, based on the Anglo-Saxon model, and there were efforts early on to create such a people - particularly with regard to things like linguistics. That Webster’s dictionary we all use is an attempt at a Federal Style of English, something that would negate the differences between English/Scottish/Irish English-speakers and create a basis for a universal dialect free American English. The concept of our creating a new ‘race’ of people, an American race, is also well stated in period works. American history is filled with such attempts, so while it may seem revisionist because it hasn’t always been successful, I don’t think it’s fair to deny the impulse or attempt.
Wow! You must read a lot of Chaim Potok’s work. Sounds just like something he would write. Makes you want more...;)
The basic premise of much of what I write is that what binds us together as human beings is a longing not for "fairness" or "equality" (as radical socialism falsely promises) or "order" as worse ideologies preach, but for the chance to peaceably and productively savor our time on earth in the company of those we love, and to leave behind a legacy of which they might properly be proud.
Happy New Year.
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