Posted on 10/07/2001 11:29:49 AM PDT by NYCVirago
Thoughts that first ran through my head, all garbage now, like scorched paperwork over the harbor: Wow, it's going to be hard to repair those tall buildings! Couldn't Clinton just be president again? I mean, really, that whole election thing was fun, but the real guy is alive, he's healthy, can't we just sort of slip him in there? One of those buildings couldn't actually fall, could it? Could it? There were people on those airplanes! We just watched a lot of people die! Gore would be fine, just fine.
My breath stinks. Didn't brush my teeth. The people on the floors above the fire. God. The Pentagon, that's like the ultimate symbol of something: fortress, geometry. Somebody really hates geometry today. Penta-gone. Traffic's going to be a drag. There are people in the Pentagon. There's really a LOT of people in the World Trade Center. It only looked like a small plane because you can't credit the scale. It was a big plane. It's still there, behind that cloud, it's an optical thing.
Only one tower, gosh, that's going to look weird! I'd take George Senior. I'd take Nixon. I'd take a player piano, a balloon animal, a windsock. But no, this sophomore Virginia Woolf crap is a failure, another blasphemy and a total waste, I can't go on with it, very sorry. Write that one yourself.
We'd abided so long in our shimmering impassive skins, sealed like airplanes ourselves, stationary airplanes: climate-controlled, with weather and pestilence and human frailty all sheltered inside. More than just the world's largest filing cabinets, my other and I were bodies undertaking a long consideration of space, ticking off earth-rotations, swatting birds. When after so very long the new body entered mine I was accepting, more than I might have predicted. Though I shivered I tried to permit myself to learn what it had to teach me, this intersection of presences. Beside me was another struggle with the same knowledge: two brides, two grooms. But the marriages were brief. The lesson opaque. No, J.G. Ballard crap isn't going to do it either, exaggerated empathy for the machines and buildings won't help anything, won't get me out of what I'm still trying not to feel.
I was invited to Turin, Italy, last spring for a citywide book festival. As I was driven from the airport to the hotel by my Italian hosts, I laughed at the billboards for the festival, which were visible everywhere in the city: They showed a face with eyes closed, pushed deep into the spine of an open book, as if to sniff or lick the joint of pages.
"I guess that's the way to get Italians interested in books," I joked. "You have to suggest they're something to eat or fuck." Yesterday, here in Brooklyn, I walked into my local bookstore and talked with the owner, my friend Henry Zook.
"People are reading," Henry said hopefully. When I asked what they were reading, he said, "Nostradamus, and books about germs." Myself, I wanted to buy every book in the store and stack them into a windowless castle for myself, I wanted to stroke their papery bodies, I wanted, a little, to burn the store down. Language is metaphysics, and I hate metaphysics today. I hate the religious and philosophical lies which estrange me from the immediate life in favor of lost or imaginary kingdoms and gardens, in favor of paradisiacal or hellish afterlives, all lies. Today I want to eat and fuck.
Jonathan Lethem is a science-fiction and crime-novel writer who returned to his native Brooklyn after living in the San Francisco Bay area for a decade. His latest novel is Motherless Brooklyn.
"An article like this is the logical result of living a meaningless, pleasure-driven life for decades."
What happens when a teen sees a "bad" word?
They become slightly more like to use it themselves. After all, a national, widely-circulated, "respectable" publication just used it.
I have a problem with that. I would hope you do too. Comprende?
Should we start a list here at this site? There's been a ton of bad writing on that subject, but I think this essay takes the cake. This guy makes Maureen Dowd look erudite.
To pursue your line of thought:
I don't want my kids to see any more examples of filth and foul-mouthed language than they already see. Mushrooms are kept in the dark and fed manure. Since my kids AREN'T mushrooms, I don't want them to be fed any manure. They aren't in the dark, either; they know there's plenty of evil out there, and they know (usually) that the less of it they experience while they are young, the better off they will be, and the better they will be able to deal with it when they run into it.
During the rebellious years (13-16 or so), every time they see profanity accepted makes it that much more likely that they will internalize and accept it. Once they're past the rebellion stage (16-18, depending), they can see crap like this and recognize it for the ugliness that it is.
Too bad you can't comprehend this.
Are you sure about this? I don't think that holds true under most circumstances. I'll go even further and say if you are shielding children from something they definitely WILL "run into later" (like seeing bad words, or knowing there ARE bad people out there) you are doing more harm than good. I would've hope a good parent would know that, comprende?
How convenient that you ignore the risk of exposing kids to things before they are mature enough to properly handle and evaluate it. I erroneouly thought that this might be a meaningful consideration for you.
Since you question the validity of trying to minimize kids' exposure to certain things until they're old enough to handle it, let's take it to the extreme:
- Have one kid exposed to pornography and vulgarity 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week from age 12-16. (By the way, there are laws against this for a reason.)
- Have another one study the Bible and read the great works of Western Civ 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Who's likely to turn out to be the better person?
Oh, and why wait til the kid's 12? Why not expose them to filth and porn from age 7-8? Are you going to pretend it doesn't matter? Look around. It does.
Look around is what I do. I had lots of friends, in my youth, that were shielded from anything and everything that their parents would consider harmful to their psyche, and almost everyone of them has some kind of addiction to some form of what they were shielded from. One has still not gotten over the strip club thing (going on ten years), I on the other hand was intrigued for a few months then got over it. Another is on his second marriage and can't see a pretty girl and not hit on her, and being a good looking guy assures him of a fresh catch pretty much every time he wants "it". He is the first to admit his addiction to sex. Another turned to drugs as soon as he got away from his parents and I only see him very rarely and it's not pretty. All three have alcohol problems.
My mother and father never really shielded me from anything, and I have avoided all of those pitfalls. I'm not saying it is good to force negative thoughts and images on your children, in fact I'm sure that WOULD be even MORE harmful than shielding them. But if a child senses he is being kept from something, I have observed that that child will seek out those things at the earliest opportunity, and have a much harder time getting over their dabble in the dark side.
I've also noticed that the best Christians, I've come in contact with, are the people that haven't been brought up as practicing Christians, lived the dark side and have seen the error of their ways, sought out Jesus and were born again. The people that were raised in a strict religious household are the one's who sneak/cheat around on their wives and still call themselves Christians.
That's what I see when I "look around".
Are you a parent? (yes, I am) BuhBye.
Yes, I am a parent of a daughter (16) and son (12).
Their mother deserves almost all the credit for who they are. She has "controlled" what they are allowed to see on TV for years, and has explained why some channels and programs are off-limits. Now the don't even think about channel-surfing (because they understand why they should avoid a lot of what's on). They certainly know evil is out there, and hear plenty of foul language from other kids at our supposedly all-American junior-high and high schools. They can only access the Internet in a "common" area. They aren't shielded because they're told what's out there and why a lot of it is bad. They (usually) trust that their mother is looking out for their best interests.
My daughter has independently concluded that she doesn't want to live away from home during at least the first couple years of college because she has seen what has happened to a lot of kids who have gone away and ruined themselves. I don't have a problem with that; it strikes me as a pretty mature decision.
Knock on a ton of wood, they're wonderful kids. The disagreement I have with your "it turned out OK" approach is that I don't think kids can afford to "dabble with the dark side" any more; they have to learn to stay away from it (and internalize why they're staying away, not just avoid it out of fear of parents, although fear isn't all bad). It's a LOT darker, scarier, and more dangerous, and percentage of kids who don't return from the dark side, or come back severely damaged, is unacceptably high.
Well, it turns out we agree more than I thought. When you said you wouldn't allow your teens access to Free Republic simply because of a single word within a posted article I was under the impression that you were either, A) not a parent and just imagining a sterile environment for your future offspring, or B) are a parent that is soooooo insecure about how you've prepared your children for the bad elements that they will certainly come into contact with, that you would go to any length to shield them from all unpleasantness by keeping them from coming into contact with other less shielded children, or not allowing them to view a political web site because an occasional bad word may be uttered. But you admit that you are not either of the two (A or B) when you told me you children attend school (I'll assume public) without parental supervision. Even though you know they are subject to a much more harsh environment each day when they attend school.
I have NO problem with your parental abilities, I just took offense at your unwarranted shot at Free Republic. But I can't for the life of me figure out why you would subject you children to schooling away from home but not allow them to view my favorite web site. I would (will) jump for joy if (when) my girls (9 - 11) wanted to join this great community of like-minded conservatives. The way I'd see it is, if they came upon an offensive word or two after reading twenty articles it would be 18 steps forward. You know?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.