It's easy (and accurate) to pick on the spate of "celebrity" (or used to be) mothers who write books chock-full o' "parenting" and "lifestyle" advice, usually nonsense about vaccines and toilet training. Mostly these things are just the artifacts of a desiccated cultural landscape, where wealthy, pampered dingbats can preach to the peons about lives of "simplicity" and such.
But what we really should be curious about is, what sort of moron purchases and reads these things? Who are these simpletons out there that think Jenny McCarthy has better ideas about how to raise their children than, hell, just about anyone else on the planet? How does the chick from Clueless show up on the short lists of mothers and mothers-to-be (not to be overly sexist, but I promise you, right here, right now, that no man on the planet is buying any of these books) as a repository of sound advice?
Seriously, now. The problem is not solely that this "advice" comes from people who have, for the most part, lived cosseted lives away from the working-two-jobs-to-survive, one-paycheck-from-the-street reality that most people live. It's that "living well," contra received dingbat wisdom, really does cost more. Good food and good health care, the immediate vitals, cost more. All the ancillary things that add to a quality of life -- roads, schools, jobs, activities, etc. -- those things cost more, because you get what you pay for.
This is what happens when you have a population that is willfully illiterate and innumerate. There are too many people who can no longer parse statistical data, tell it apart from mere anecdata. There are a preponderance of folks out there who cannot critically think, who are simply too lazy to read up on how many different ways the "anti-vax" legends have been debunked.
Worst of all, this is what happens when you have a swath of people out there who can barely find their intemellectual asses in a dark room with both hands and a flashlight, but will hang their hopes and opinions on someone they've heard of, some D-lister who was on that show a million years ago, or who used to be famous for showing her tits. (Five years ago, my response to Surgeon General McCarthy would simply have been, "shut up and take your top off," but she's been so heavily sculpted and botoxed at this point, it would be like looking at a plastic fuck doll.)
Really, much to the chagrin of this bullshit "parenting and lifestyle" industry, you do not need a parenting book at all. Maybe good old Dr. Spock if you really must, but so much of it is just common sense. Apparently Voltaire was an optimist on that count.
Having children is one of the things humans do better and more than just about anything else they do; rearing children is simply a matter of considering their interests at the same or higher level than your own. Looking to some useta-be-famous name for help is just a failure of attention and thought.
But what we really should be curious about is, what sort of moron purchases and reads these things? Who are these simpletons out there that think Jenny McCarthy has better ideas about how to raise their children than, hell, just about anyone else on the planet? How does the chick from Clueless show up on the short lists of mothers and mothers-to-be (not to be overly sexist, but I promise you, right here, right now, that no man on the planet is buying any of these books) as a repository of sound advice?
Seriously, now. The problem is not solely that this "advice" comes from people who have, for the most part, lived cosseted lives away from the working-two-jobs-to-survive, one-paycheck-from-the-street reality that most people live. It's that "living well," contra received dingbat wisdom, really does cost more. Good food and good health care, the immediate vitals, cost more. All the ancillary things that add to a quality of life -- roads, schools, jobs, activities, etc. -- those things cost more, because you get what you pay for.
This is what happens when you have a population that is willfully illiterate and innumerate. There are too many people who can no longer parse statistical data, tell it apart from mere anecdata. There are a preponderance of folks out there who cannot critically think, who are simply too lazy to read up on how many different ways the "anti-vax" legends have been debunked.
Worst of all, this is what happens when you have a swath of people out there who can barely find their intemellectual asses in a dark room with both hands and a flashlight, but will hang their hopes and opinions on someone they've heard of, some D-lister who was on that show a million years ago, or who used to be famous for showing her tits. (Five years ago, my response to Surgeon General McCarthy would simply have been, "shut up and take your top off," but she's been so heavily sculpted and botoxed at this point, it would be like looking at a plastic fuck doll.)
Really, much to the chagrin of this bullshit "parenting and lifestyle" industry, you do not need a parenting book at all. Maybe good old Dr. Spock if you really must, but so much of it is just common sense. Apparently Voltaire was an optimist on that count.
Having children is one of the things humans do better and more than just about anything else they do; rearing children is simply a matter of considering their interests at the same or higher level than your own. Looking to some useta-be-famous name for help is just a failure of attention and thought.
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