April 19, 2015

Millennial moms and dads reversing helicopter parent trend?

We've covered this topic last year (here and here), but I'm starting to see hints of it in real life now.

Yesterday afternoon I stopped at a park to eat, and the picnic tables were near a playground, where about ten children were playing. If it had been just three years ago, every kid would have had a parent shadowing their tiniest moves, serving as their playmate rather than one of the other kids, and any time a child came near a stranger (whether a child or grown-up), the parent would swoop in to block the potential contamination / abduction / whatever they thought was going to happen.

I glanced over a few times out of curiosity about how ridiculous helicopter parenting has become this year. But I was surprised to only see one obvious helicopter parent among the ten kids -- one of those overly involved goofball dads who thinks his kid would rather play with a grown-up goofball than one of the other kids. Just let them play by themselves -- except this time they were!

There was a group of much older adults, probably the grandparents, and being early-mid Boomers they were hands-off just as they were when they were new parents. But where were the other hoverers and smothering mothers? One group of children looked to be semi-supervised by a teenager, but not by an adult. These were all white kids, by the way, not the Mexican kids who are allowed to go out and play by themselves. That really stood out as unusual.

Then as one mother was leading her son back to the car, he jumped up on a picnic table, walked to the other end, and leapt off. A helicopter parent wouldn't have allowed any of those actions to take place (jumping off a table = skinned knee alert), and would've flown into containment / safety landing mode right away. Not out of respect for public picnic tables in a public park, but because she'd be paranoid about her son's safety, and embarrassed from her son making her look like a negligent parent in front of the other parents, simply by letting kids be kids.

She didn't encourage his behavior; she just went along with it, apparently thinking "boys will be boys." No parent would've thought that in this situation just a few years ago.

Aside from the teenager, these children were all about 3 to 7 years old. Their parents must be in their late 20s and early 30s, i.e. Millennials. The nonchalant mom with the up-up-and-away son didn't look old enough to be a late Gen X-er.

The small sample size here is not a problem, since there has been almost no variation in the basic parenting style for years now. Any break from uniformly 100% helicopter parenting is highly out of the ordinary.

I've heard Millennials on the internet and on TV say they're going to be less hovering when they're parents, but had yet to observe it in real life. Now that their kids are old enough to be seen on the playground, you might start to notice a change back toward the good old days of hands-off parenting from now on.

Don't expect it to jump right to the '80s kind of environment, when children went to the playground with no adults at all. It'll be more like the late '50s and early '60s, when the Dr. Spock and drive-in cocooning trends were just beginning to loosen up.

I have no delusions about how hilarious it's going to be watching the Millennials attempt to raise children. But I am still glad that the community-fragmenting trend of helicopter parenting is finally going to come to an end, and that kids around the neighborhood will once more be part of an organic connected peer group, without having to route all interaction through their parental delegates.

60 comments:

  1. What effect is ever delayed child bearing going to have? I wish I remembered the page or the study, but it gave figures as to how much later people have been having kids over the last 15-25 years.

    If a now 35 year old women has kids within the next 1-5 years, during the transition away from cocooning, will her generational character still make her a smothering type even as the younger parents around her relax?

    I guess it's a question of innate character vs. susceptibility to trends. I guess it was easier to generalize about parents of young kids before about 1990 since back then women had most of their kids at a young(er) age.

    If a Greatest Gen mom had a kid at age 35 in 1955, was her parenting in the 60's all that different than, say, a 10 years younger Silent mom? I guess we'd need the memories of Boomers to really gauge that. Then again, Boomers (and especially early Boomers and late Silents) seemed to often detest their parents by default. Did they have more hostility towards Greatest Gen or early Silent Gen parents?

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  2. Striving related observations in this thread though most of the commenters are clueless about the fact that it is striving that's causing so many things to become a farce:
    http://www.unz.com/isteve/demographic-realities-of-the-publishing-biz/#comments

    "It’s the editorial offices that are heavily female. And as Ezra and a few others say, the editorial end of the business is *highly* dependent on families that supplement their offsprings’ incomes. (Many writers, especially of the literary sort, get family help too.) But that’s always been the case, as far as I know."

    Get a clue. As Sailer points out, the mid century publishing industry was a blast for regular guys. Why? Because in a low striving era like the mid century, you don't have elite parents trying to further gain status points by ramming their mediocre and dull wannabe elite daughters into college and then into "prestigious" fields and areas. The end result is that most of the talented men end up depressed and unfairly relegated to lesser labor. And of course, the real heavy lifting is done by men as usual. The less sexy tasks of sales and marketing are still handled by men.

    And this isn't even really pertaining to the fact that people of all kinds are scheming and backstabbing to get more money and status.

    Between the ruthless greed of all and abuse of privilege and resources by the rich, no wonder so many people hate so many aspects of the modern workplace.

    The mid century did certainly have woman workers, but typically they did what they were qualifed to do and they worked respectfully and for necessary and wholesome reasons. Their wasn't an entitled attitude of "well, I want a big fancy job as a snotty 23 year old because I paid for it and I expect it. And once that job or any other job is mine, it's mine indefinitely and unconditionally. I don't care what anyone thinks. I'll have a family 20 years from now, don't want anything impinging on my precious career".

    Several posters also noted the increasing dominance of conglomerates over the last 20-30 years. Of course, greater monopolizing is a classic sign of striving as those who lead (and those who wish to lead) these companies seek to further boost their status by swallowing up more and more properties. And the creation of mega-zombie companies allows for the creation of fatuous make work jobs for fags, uppity blacks, and riot grrl females LARPing as America's best and brightest.

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  3. Helicopter parenting was a legitimate response to a real problem for four reasons.

    First, the decadent, hyper-sexualized world that the Boomers created was dangerous for children. I understand that statistically, it was not that dangerous; crime has fallen; child molesters are rare, etc., etc. But people don't assess risks based on statistics. They assess risks based on instinct. When I drive to work, I see a world SOAKED in decadent, hyper-sexualized Boomer culture. The Billboards along the route I take promote shows like "True Blood" and "Dexter." These billboards are placed in areas where children can see them. When the Boomers' parents were driving to work, the popular, heavily-advertised TV shows were things like "Bonanza" and the "Andy Griffith Show." In 1960 no one would have dreamed of putting up a billboard showing someone holding a knife dripping with blood anywhere near a school. Today the whole culture is marinated in that garbage. Heck, in the 1980's Hollywood was producing movies like "Porky's" which actively tried to get teenagers to have sex!

    To be fair, I think the culture isn't quite as debased as it was in the 1980's. You don't see nudity as much in movies any more, and Hollywood isn't actively trying to corrupt the young any more. But things are still nowhere near as wholesome as they were in the 1960's, not even close.

    Second, even if you are reasoning statistically, child molesters aren't that uncommon. I've known 3 or 4 people who were molested as kids. Our wedding photographer and his bother were both molested as kids. One of the guys I knew in Boy Scouts didn't actually get molested, but an adult leader came onto him; he got arrested. Our kids' Catholic school feeds into a particular high school. One of the teachers just got arrested on child porn charges. There was a USC professor in the neighborhood where my kids' Boy Scout troop was located who just got convicted of child molestation, he'd travel to Thailand and the Philippines to have sex with boys. Of course all of the above molesters were Boomers.

    So child molestation is a lot more common than other forms of violence like, say, murder. I've never known anyone who has been murdered. I've never known anyone in a gang. I've only known one person who has smoked crack. But child molesters aren't that rare, there is a real reason to be fearful of them.

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  4. Second, I agree that statistically, the world isn't that dangerous. But when you are talking about your children's lives, the potential damage is great while the inconvenience of helicopter parenting is slight. Let my son walk to school and see him abducted and murdered by a pervert -- the worst outcome that could possibly happen -- or spend 20 minutes driving him to school? I'll choose driving him to school every time. The way I see it, I endure a minor inconvenience and he stays safe. It's well worth it.

    Third, we have a first-mover / free-rider problem here. In the neighborhood we live in, there aren't a lot of kids or stay-at-home moms. It's not like it was back in the 80's where kids are everywhere, you can tell yours to "go play," there is always a baseball game down at the park, and the whole neighborhood is full of moms making Kool-Aid and cookies. If I sent my kids to the park by themselves, at ages 10 and 12, they'd be the ONLY ONES out on the street walking to the park alone. They'd be TARGETS for any Boomer sex offender driving by. Again, do I think that they'd actually be molested if they walked to the park by themselves? No, I recognize that statistically such things are rare. But why take that risk? I don't want them getting hurt so I'm not taking any chances.

    No one is defending the more ridiculous forms of helicopter parenting like accompanying your kids on job interviews. And I do recognize that there are many downsides to helicopter parenting - it inhibits children's social development, robs them of initiative, adversely affects their creativity, etc. But I want to keep them alive. I want to protect them and shield them from the decadent culture that the Boomers have created.

    Since the culture is getting healthier as the Boomers are dying off, I think that in the future helicopter parenting will die out because it will no longer be necessary. But it was necessary when the trend started.

    Also, I think the need for it varies from place to place. If I were raising my kids in Salt Lake City or the Midwest, It wouldn't really be necessary, I would feel safe telling them to "go play." But we live in Los Angeles, and you've got to be a lot more vigilant here.

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  5. Sorry, what I meant to say above is that yes, statistically, the odds that your kids will be abducted and murdered if you tell them to walk to the park alone is low. I concede that. But the culture that we are living in is debased and decadent, and this instinctively makes people want to shield their kids.

    People who feel a vague sense of menace at seeing a society in which billboards placed near schools promote shows glamorizing serial killers, and a world in which an all-American athlete like Bruce Jenner is publicly "transitioning" into a "woman," are not crazy or irrational when they draw their kids close. It is an understandable response to something that is genuinely wrong. Again, I understand that crime is falling. But we should be a little more understanding about helicopter parents, they aren't egotistical or hysterical, they are reacting to a world that isn't as wholesome as it used to be.

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  6. Joe: I'm sympathetic to what you're going through, but living in a multi cult abyss like L.A. while we're in a cocooning phase does a lot to your psyche. As you admit. Nevertheless, even as L.A. was growing less white and Christian in the 70's/80's, kids still had autonomy back then since Boomer parents were hands off and also because people were so outgoing and upbeat. It kind of flies in the face of how dangerous the streets were given the feral black/brown youth roaming around and the legions of Silent/early Boomer pervs preying about.

    It also ought to be noted that 80's/90's white youths actually have shown back then and still show to this day a remarkable aversion to violence and anything else that hurts others. In spite of 80's culture that was suffused with violence and sex, both in real life and in the media.The children of the much idealized 40's/50's/very early 60's grew up in such privilege and comfort. With minimal exposure to any sort of serious violence or dysfunction. And they had doting parents.

    Yet what did all of that wonderful stuff produce? Basically a large cohort of people (born from about 1926-1964) that was alarmingly prone to corruption, narcissism, and distateful irreverence and glibness. The not so sweet spot for psychos seems to have been about 1935-1955.

    Also, the helicopter parenting of those born from roughly 1987-2006 has made them more vulnerable to exploitation since they aren't very street smart. The sweet spot of street smartness is the Gen X-ers ('65-'82) with late Boomers ('60-'64) and early Millennials ('83-'86) getting a touch of it as well.

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  7. Helicopter parents could be are either

    - the ones who are misestimating the dangerousness of the world from their early experience, when danger was rising because social openness was rising

    That take either a long time or a new generation without the dangerous experiences and the negative sides of smothering parents to correct

    - or they're the insane Tiger Moms and Eagle Dads who want to hothouse their kids because of striving so adopt an overly controlling attitude to their development

    Second lot will be harder to break, as they won't naturally disappear with the cocooning trend. Fortunately there's fewer of them.

    I don't see Hollywood or popular culture as having much to do with it, except as it feeds these guys "Taken" fantasies that rather than being some lame overprotective dad or a divorced and guilty absentee father they're actually a superman protecting his kids with his "particular set of skills" (yeah, right, loser).

    In general, individuals aside, I don't think Helicopter Parents have any beef with crass popular culture - they're the ones who just as often playing the GTA and reading the trash gossip mags and watching the hardcore porn and the Fifty Shades of Grey as soon as they pacify their kids and get them out of sight. Hardly seem like they're repulsed by it.

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  8. "If a Greatest Gen mom had a kid at age 35 in 1955, was her parenting in the 60's all that different than, say, a 10 years younger Silent mom?"

    That was my Greatest Gen grandmother (born in '21). She had 3 kids born in the early, mid, and late '40s, then my mother in the mid '50s.

    She was always a hovering type of parent, not just with my mother during the '60s but even us in the '80s. She's in some home movies from '83 to '85, when helicopter parenting was at a nadir. But her behavior looks like it was straight out of the 21st century -- a woman ahead of her time.

    Her parental psychology gelled into place during the heyday of Dr. Spock in the '40s and early '50s.

    I still remember my mother getting into little turf wars with my grandmother about just letting us be, not worrying if we went outside in the cold with only one instead of three layers, etc. She was clearly reacting against the way that she herself was raised by a hoverer, making sure her own kids wouldn't be subject to that level of micro-management.

    I love my grandmother and don't mind the occasional over-bearing parenting we got when we visited. I'm just noting how uncanny it was to see her behaving like a contempo helicopter parent back in the early '80s, when my parents videotaped me clothes-lining my brothers while running around the back yard.

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  9. "Several posters also noted the increasing dominance of conglomerates over the last 20-30 years."

    They mean vertically integrated monopolies, like where FedEx used to only own the airplanes, but now own trucks, point-of-sales shops (what used to be Kinko's), etc. UPS did the same thing, only swallowing up Mailboxes Etc. as their point-of-sales portal to the customer.

    Conglomerates are where a single group holds pieces from widely disconnected industries -- the main shrimp fishery and the manufacturers of photographic film. They have nothing to do with each other, and are not building up a monolithic empire over an entire industry (like FedEx or UPS). It was meant to hedge against risk -- not putting all your eggs in one basket, not counting on the taxpayer / gubmint to bail you out if you failed, and so on.

    Conglomerates were all the rage back during the Great Compression. So it's not as though a period of falling status-striving didn't have Real Big Companies -- they just weren't designed to strangle an entire sector. Just the opposite -- to have their finger in many different pies, with little domination over any particular one.

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  10. "In general, individuals aside, I don't think Helicopter Parents have any beef with crass popular culture - they're the ones who just as often playing the GTA and reading the trash gossip mags and watching the hardcore porn and the Fifty Shades of Grey "

    Great point. It seems in cocooning periods we get embarrassing overlap between kid and adult culture. In the 80's there was a firm division between kids and adults.Kids played G.I. Joe or Barbie together while older teens watched MTV, Back to the Future, Commando, and a Nightmare on Elm Street. Late Silent/Boomer parents had relatively sophisticated and convivial activities that the kids stayed out of.

    In the 80's, parents threw out WASP and Slayer records and warned their kids to not bust their neck skateboarding. Since the early 90's we've seen parents regress by slumming in comic books/super hero movies/video games while often insisting on being "there" for the kids which both holds back the kids while also preventing the adult from having a life.

    See also the popularity of comic books with adults in the 50's.

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  11. "They'd be TARGETS for any Boomer sex offender driving by."

    The sex drive and the willingness to physically attack others begins declining in middle age and thereafter. I'm not saying that older people don't do things like molesting, but it's safe to say at this point that the majority of Boomer pervs are either dead, locked up, or are done with that "phase". The FBI claims that serial killers never willingly stop. Laughable. The BTK killer would have never been caught after he stopped around 1990. But he couldn't resist taunting the cops years after his last murder. The cops traced the message and busted him.

    The peak years for aggressively harming others are late adolescence, young adulthood and early middle age. It's true what they say, we do mellow with age. As the Boomers are now 50-70 years old, we don't have as much to fear as we did in the 60's-90's. Besides, late Boomers aren't as prone to being psychos.

    I do think though that black Gen X-ers are actually more dangerous than black Boomers. I saw serial killer statistics that showed that serial killers have been getting progressively darker since the 60's.

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  12. " If I were raising my kids in Salt Lake City or the Midwest, It wouldn't really be necessary, I would feel safe telling them to "go play." "

    I wouldn't romanticize Salt Lake City just because it used to be heavily white (no longer is, though -- less than 65% by now). In 1980, its population was about 1/20 the size of L.A. In order to have the same per capita rate of out-there / serial-killer-type crimes against children, it should have also had 1/20 the number of such crimes.

    Most people would think: a serial killer of children, in Salt Lake City, in 1980? But in fact there was -- a white Mormon named Arthur Gary Bishop:

    http://murderpedia.org/male.B/b1/bishop-arthur-gary.htm

    He lured, abducted, molested, and murdered 5 small boys from 1979 to 1983. He molested dozens of others who said they wouldn't tell anyone, which is why he let them live.

    In order for L.A. to have the same per capita rate of such out-there crimes, there would have to have been 20 times as many victims, or 100 child victims of serial killers during that five-year period. I haven't crunched any numbers, but that sounds too high even for L.A. in the '80s.

    At any rate, the point is that even lily-white Salt Lake City back then was no sanctuary for children.

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  13. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the "protection from blacks and Mexicans" argument, but if it's really that big of a problem, why move to L.A. and raise a family there in the first place? Given how toxic the environment is, why not move back to where your grandparents are from, where your kids can play safely without supervision?

    It's because top-paying jobs or higher-status careers can be found in L.A. but not where your family's roots are.

    The position becomes much less sympathetic in this light. The children have to endure a cloistered upbringing, surrounded by feral darkskins, just so mom and dad can pursue their awesome careers, and buy the family's prepared meals from awesome upscale supermarkets.

    In general, I don't hear helicopter parents talking about how they're sacrificing something of their own for their children's benefit. It's about how the children are going to give up X in order for the children to gain Y.

    I'd be more sympathetic if the parents chose to give up their shot at superstar careers so that they could live in a place where their kids don't have to worry about diversity. As it stands, the sheltered and stunted childhoods are seen as just an unfortunate side-effect or collateral damage of the parents' career pursuits. (Not "putting food on the table" and "a roof over their head" -- parents can earn that much money anywhere.)

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  14. " If I were raising my kids in Salt Lake City or the Midwest, It wouldn't really be necessary, I would feel safe telling them to "go play." "

    I grew up in Minnesota and i think Agnostic spent most (all?) of his childhood in the heartland. Both of us could tell you about the dangers that existed in the 80's/90's from our own memories besides whatever can be trawled up from the internet.

    One case that's haunted people who lived in MN in the 80's/early 90's is the Jacob Wetterling case. He and his 2 friends were biking to a video store/gas station out in the sticks when a guy drove up alongside them. He pulled a gun and forced them to stop and lay face down. He grabbed Wetterling, put him in the car, and then drove off. Wetterling was never seen again and never found. Though the two other boys lived, their descriptions failed to produce leads though the police investigated thousands of tips.

    After this happened around '88, you might think MN parents would be all over their kids. But the young kids who had born in the 1st half of the 80's were still largely free to do as they wished. Especially if they had older siblings. I had a '83 brother, and my best friend also had an older brother. The parents in both of our families gave us lots of time with no adult or dubious teenager supervision.

    One night walking home from that friend I thought someone with heavy footsteps was following me (this was about '91/'92 so I would have been about 6 or 7). I ran like hell to my house and didn't look back. My parents were home and they could tell I was freaked out.

    There's never going to be a time of total peace and safety. People back then just accepted that some times things happened. They also accepted that kids had to face a variety of things themselves in order to fully grow up. Have you noticed how so many of the post '90 Millennials look incredibly soft and fragile? There's a reason for that.

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  15. Moving to where your grandparents are from would probably cure the toxic billboard problems as well. There's still all the trash on the internet, but that's a constant across geography.

    Again, I'm sympathetic to wanting a wholesome environment for your kids. But the simple solution there is to raise them away from trash, not raise them in a landfill while wearing life-long HAZMAT suits.

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  16. Well, lots of people who live in California are natives of...California. I'm not a native, but my wife was born and raised here, although she lived in Nicaragua from ages 2-10. She went to school in the Midwest and worked there for a while after school - that's where we met.

    We moved here because my wife loves her parents and sister and wanted to be near them. I went along with it to make her happy, not because I am a whipped Beta male (Beta male yes, whipped no, LOL) but because I love my wife and wanted to make her happy.

    I never had any real interest in living in CA, it sounded like a nice place but it's not like I ever wanted to be an actor, the hipness factor and lifestyle never really appealed to me. I'm here because of my wife. I got a job in the entertainment industry because they were hiring, not because I aspired to it.

    Also, not everyone in the Midwest is from an ideal family situation with loving grandparents et al. The Midwest is a more wholesome place generally but that's not true for everyone. My dad was a convicted felon (he's deceased), a registered sex offender (x2) who drove a cab for most of his life. But he was a great parent, especially compared to my mom, who is malevolent and nuts. Not stating this to earn points in the victimology Olympics, just saying that at least for me, there isn't a bosom of a healthy extended family to return to. One of the reasons why I am so conservative (and a helicopter parent) is because I understand the value of a wholesome family and am determined to give that to my own kids. I still have close friends back in the Midwest but no relatives that I'm close to, there are relatives there, but I don't have much in common with them. One drives an 18-wheel truck, the other is a single mom who performs with falcons at a Medieval Times restaurant. My mom's extended family is in New England and they are nice people but I have no ties to the area.

    Next, the longer you are in a place, the more roots you put down. The kids' school - - which is wonderful, and 100% wholesome -- is here. Their friends are here. My wife's relatives are here, our social circle is here, etc. By being very careful and vigilant, we have found families and friends who are wholesome and trustworthy, it's just taken an enormous amount of work, here people are "guilty until proven innocent," while in the Midwest they are "innocent until proven guilty,'" so to speak.

    Fourth, I am succeeding in keeping my kids safe. It is incredibly difficult and expensive to create an artificially wholesome environment for them when they are surrounded by lil' cholos, but I am succeeding. I don't need to move to the Midwest to do this, I am getting the job done here.

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  17. Fifth, I actually would like to leave, but by wife doesn't want to leave. Her parents are both deceased (they were in their early 40's when she was born), and her sister died two years ago from cancer, so we could leave. But she doesn't want to go, this is her home. If things ever get truly intolerable here I'll make her go, but I don't want to uproot her and take her to a place that is completely unfamiliar. I am sacrificing a lot for his, the stress levels (financial and otherwise) are incredible here, but for now I am keeping the balls in the air, sort of.

    Finally, I do have some selfish reasons for living here. If my kids ever started having trouble I'd sacrifice these things and move, but for now they are doing well and I don't have to move. The main reason is that I want to do interesting work. Like it or not, there are more interesting and sophisticated jobs in a major city than in the hinterlands. Here i can do entertainment, antitrust, complex litigation -- in a lot of second and third-tier cities I'd be stuck defending against personal injury cases, and it's just not as interesting. So yes, that is a selfish motivation.

    Second, as (1) an ambitious person who rose above the circumstances of his birth; and (2) who grew up in the Midwest, I do think that some of the attitudes there are stifling. The whole "I'm just a regular guy, nothin' too fancy" schtick -- ugh, even when I was a kid it made me want to puke. The Jante phenomenon is real. I'm the kind of guy who wants to bang the cheerleader and drive the red Corvette - and isn't afraid to admit it. Lots of Midwesterners have an attitude which requires them to convince themselves that they don't want to do those things and that Mary Jo Thunder Thighs and the ratty Chevette are "ok for them." You are right about the shallow strivers of the West, but one of the region's refreshing qualities is that NO ONE out here has the "aw shucks, I'm just a regular guy and don't need anything fancy" mentality, everyone from the homeboys in South Central to the Chinese immigrant washing dishes in a restaraunt wants to screw the cheerleader and drive the hot car. It's incredibly refreshing. That doesn't mean that Western strivers want those things to the exclusion of all else, or that Jimmy Regular Guy in St. Louis can't establish a loving, wonderful family with Mary Jo Thunder Thighs, but it does mean that people out West do not limit themselves to lives of mediocrity because... well, I've never understood why the Midwesterners have that mentality. I just know that it wasn't for me. Although I was more ambitious than most, I was still happy in the Midwest, but if I were to return I would find it a little stifling, not intolerable but somewhat. The Midwesterners would say that they are just "down to earth," "prudent," etc. and while that is partially true, they are also limiting themselves for no good reason.

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  18. And yet California has proven to be the South Africa of America, reverting steadily back to the savages, where children must be isolated from their peers in order to secure their basic safety.

    A place that attracts domestic strivers will attract foreign strivers, so that overly ambitious people unwittingly create a Tower of Babel environment where they congregate.

    The places on the map that are content with not being places on the map have not been overwhelmed by transplants, whether domestic or foreign, and are still fairly homogeneous (white), cohesive, and civic-minded (relatively speaking anyway). Their main problem is the brain drain.

    And yet with all those ambitious intelligent minds who set off for California, they still can't figure out how to draw water from a faucet, a task that most West Virginians can manage on most days.

    Which is worse, long-term: a brain drain, dormancy, and being in the doldrums, or parasitism, corruption, and rapine?

    And that's the worst case back east. Most places in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana are doing just fine, not languishing like West Virginia, and definitely not circling the drain (or perhaps evaporating into thin air) like California.

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  19. California is more rooted than other Pacific states, but it's not much to be able to brag that "We have deeper roots than Portland!"

    Where were your and your wife's relatives from, who were born around 1920? You mentioned her parents, but what about her grandparents? That's more like deeply rooted. Not only because it reaches further back in time than one generation, but it will include more people on the lateral branches as well -- her grandparents' siblings, her parents' cousins, and all those other folks who fill out the richness of the family tree.

    And since you're not from California, your kids' deeper roots are at most 50-50 Californian vs. Midwestern. The Midwest has been settled far longer than California, so of course their roots will be deeper through your side.

    You may already have too much invested in keeping the kids there, so debating this may be pointless.

    But if there are any Millennials reading from out West, who may only have infant children or no children, consider moving back where your roots are before you get too heavily invested in a sinking ship.

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  20. I heard an interview a couple years ago with a late Boomer successful FX artist in the industry. He said that he was moving back home to Ohio to raise his kids. He didn't really get specific about why but look up these people if you want to know why Hollywood is no place for kids.:

    Victor Salva
    Bryan Singer (investigation was squelched because it would've incriminated hundreds of big shot Hollywood figures and the authorities)
    Roman Polanski
    Corey Feldman (victim in the 80's, he still refuses to name names of perps and victims because he really fears the power these people have)

    Note also the fact that California appears to be the pedo capital of America especially Nor Cal. At least judging from how many scandals and predators have frequented the state. Pervs are of course pretty rootless so a lot of them drift out west too.

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  21. I have noticed this as well. Maybe, intuitively, parents are beginning to perceive that the crime rate is going to begin rising.

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  22. "well, I want a big fancy job as a snotty 23 year old because I paid for it and I expect it."

    This is the first I had read this about Milennials. You want value for what you pay for and a $30k entry job at the bottom rung of the ladder is okay when college cost $8k/year but not so much now that it costs $25-30k (tuition only)

    ---

    "Hollywood isn't actively trying to corrupt the young any more."

    Name 1 positive father on TV that isn't a criminal. One negative gay relationship? Mentally ill men are getting the nod for their portrayal of women. Are CSI/SUV even remotely in line with the perp/victim ratios in the country? Any positive female housewives that aspire to nothing more than dutifully serving their family or is there always something missing from their life?

    ---

    I live in an affluent area, that is 90% white (suburb of Chicago). Out about 80 kindergarteners at my kid's school there are about 5 mothers that are clearly under 35, though a handful more probably are. However, the majority are clearly over 40 (or are aging really poorly).

    Observations of the neighborhood
    - tennis is surprisingly not big in this neighborhood the courts are almost never in use
    - basketball courts are used semiregularly by teens in unstructured games
    - unstructured play in the large grass fields/baseball diamond doesn't happen. It is used for organized park district activities or by dog owners play catch with their dogs
    - playground equipment. Pretty boring stuff thanks to over reactions of the past. Its supposed to be for 4-12 year olds but in practical sense its more 2-8. It still gets used by the younger set constantly on nice days. Most parents sit on the bench and let their kids run around unless they are pushing the kids in the swing. They will yell at them to not climb up the slides when other kids are trying to go down. If the parent hovers its because the child is noticeably autistic or downs.
    - the pools are regularly used the parents sit on the deck and read while the kids play in the water. Unless a kid is 13 or older a parent must accompany them
    - We have a skateboard/trick bike area that see some occasional use
    - While kids generally aren't seen much around the main arteries, if you are driving down side streets you need to be careful not to hit them. They bike/scooter/throw the football up and down the streets. It is also not uncommon to see them unescorted at DQ, 7-11, etc.

    We know a fair number of our neighbors, Our kids are required to stay within yelling distance of our house and not to go in somebody else's house with checking in. That gives them a radius of about 1/10th of a mile. There are 15-18 children between 2 and 9 inside that range, including my children. It would probably be a bit larger for the mild child (my oldest is disabled), but he already has the longest leash of any kid his age so increasing it serves no purpose other than to antagonize the neighbors.

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  23. "
    "Hollywood isn't actively trying to corrupt the young any more.""

    I'm not sure if they ever tried to corrupt the young. Media tend to reflect people's tastes, rather than influence those tastes, except in rare cases. So the degeneration of television is more that the public's tastes and world view have gotten stranger and more cynical, because of cocooning.

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  24. "The children of the much idealized 40's/50's/very early 60's grew up in such privilege and comfort"

    Actually, from talking with Baby boomers, I would disagree with this. Boomer kids were out and about and unsupervised during the 50s, even though adult and teenage culture was still cocooning. Just as Millenial kids were cocooning during the 80s, even though the broader culture was still outgoing.

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  25. Talking to Boomers, you get stories about roaming around the neighborhood, having accidents with their bikes, getting lost, etc.

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  26. Curtis: Media tend to reflect people's tastes, rather than influence those tastes, except in rare cases.

    With a lot of movie culture, I would guess it is down to "powerful" striving personalities getting control as producers and directors, making what appeals to them and then trying to exploit the business cycle and their distribution and marketing clout to get the most out of their product.

    And even when this fails they use personal connections, manipulation and charisma to ensure they keep on failing upwards and their movies keep on getting made.

    I don't think the movie business is (or can be) that depersonalised and that efficient at the other levels that movie studios have to cater to public whims to survive - their marketing and sales are good enough that the whims of the higher ups and fucked up internal Hollywood power plays still have a lot of reign. Not enough to stop the likes of "After Earth" being a turkey, but a fair amount.

    The studios are clever enough to make people feel like watching some gross out Eli Roth torture porn is a sign that they're hardcore, and make it easier to watch than to seek out a movie that's actually emotionally satisfying and release it at the right place in the year that the people are not oversaturated enough with it to realise how much they hated the last one, and they put some popular little hottie in it to drag in the guys, etc. So they don't actually have to care if it's what people really want, at the level of story or theme or wholesomeness, or act rationally at that level of their business.

    I do think the cocooning cycle probably has an effect, but at the level that directors and producers in a cocooning era are more people who are privately creative and lonely thinkers and then never challenged by others, so end up with producing scripts and art which more timid and psychologically eccentric.

    tl:dr; I don't really think for the most part media is influenced by trying to corrupt people or influence them that much nor to cater to how the public see things. Writers and directors and producers just make stuff that reflects their world view, then market the hell out of it, and during some times their world view is more messed up than others.

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  27. "Media tend to reflect people's tastes, rather than influence those tastes, except in rare cases."

    Really? People were looking for "positive" gay role models and their fag hags when Will & Grace hit the scene in 1998? Or was it the direct result of gay agenda defeats in 1996 from DADT and DAMA. Last fall we got not 1 but 2 Hillary 2016 TV shows "State of Affairs" and "Madam Secretary". And that is on the heels on the fight over NBC's more blatant form of campaigning with their planed "documentary" on Hillary in 2013.

    "The Fosters", "Glee", "Modern Family", advertising for Honeymaid, etc. The push for trans acceptance.

    Exceptionally few people have a taste for this stuff. At best they have a tolerance of it. The critics rave about all of it but even at their best these shows are seen by 20 million people and its usually around 3-6 million.

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  28. "Actually, from talking with Baby boomers, I would disagree with this. Boomer kids were out and about and unsupervised during the 50s"

    What I meant by comfort and privilege was new suburban houses, nice crisply laundered clothes, and hearty home cooked meals. And well run services and well maintained infrastructure.These things aren't relevant to how outgoing people are. Also, adults were responsible and mild mannered. To a fault, in fact, as their constant doting and sucking up to kids led to Silents and Boomers having a Veruca Salt mentality ("I want and I want it NOW"). To this day, pay attention to Boomers (especially the pre 1960 ones) and watch how brusque and terse they get when things don't go their way immediately.

    It's not surprising that Boomer kids were so Gung-ho to play without caution given how pleasant conditions were in the 40's-mid 60's. Even as things became more ominous in the 70's and 80's later Silents and earlier Boomers were so entrenched in optimism and entitlement that they became very naive and glib to this day about how their heedless behavior has screwed up so much.

    A big reason the crime rate shot up in the 60's is because Silents were growing more boldly predatory which was made easier by early Boomers being not just outgoing but also very easy to exploit. Though the streets remained dangerous for Gen X kids in the later 70's and 80's, they were street smart to the point that they were a much tougher nut to crack ("I'm not gonna drink that or smoke that. I'm not getting in your car, I've never seen you before"). So middle aged criminals still wrought a lot of havoc in the later 70's/80's, but it didn't involve kids and teens like it did in the 60's/early 70's. That's a big reason white organized crime suffered huge blows in the later 80's; they were running out of ditzy white kids to do their dirty work.

    The Me Gen. never takes accountability for anything as they've laughed their way to the bank. When they were kids it was the aging squares of the Greatest Gen/early Silent Gen who they lambasted as an out of touch threat who needed to be cast out. Now late Silents/early Boomers ridicule X-ers and Millennials as impatient and ungrateful for wanting better lives. After all, the Me Gen "earned" everything they've got (and "deserve" more than they have) so how dare younger people try to push their way to the front of the line. Never mind the fact that the Me Gen was openly calling for violence against their elders in the 60's/early 70's.

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  29. "Media tend to reflect people's tastes, rather than influence those tastes, except in rare cases."

    "Really? People were looking for "positive" gay role models and their fag hags when Will & Grace hit the scene in 1998?"

    This is the conservative victimization narrative. Everyone's a great person deep down inside, they just get poisoned by the gosh darn liberal media. I share Curtis' position. Art is a heightened version of current public sentiment.

    People became far less homophobic in the 90's due to greater levels of striving, people becoming more out of touch, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that we dropped down our guard a bit since we no longer had to worry about a fellow super power boasting about how degenerate the American capitalists were. That's why we went from no gay characters in the 80's to trendy token gays in the 90's and beyond. I've brought it up before but it's relevant to note that in the mid 80's a father misunderstood a mundane scene in a GI Joe cartoon and made a big stink to the TV station and the local media. The story ended up reaching the studio who made the cartoon. The studio called the father and politely explained to him that there was no gay themes in their cartoons. And the studio was being truthful.

    The hedonism of the Boomers in the 70's also led to sort of hitting the cultural reset button in the 80's as Gen X youth aspired to go about things in a more wholesome and unpretentious manner than the parted polyester shirt and medallion set did in the 70's. Unfortunately the 80's proved to be a all too brief respite from brain dead social liberalism.

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  30. "Last fall we got not 1 but 2 Hillary 2016 TV shows "State of Affairs" and "Madam Secretary". And that is on the heels on the fight over NBC's more blatant form of campaigning with their planed "documentary" on Hillary in 2013."

    The mainstream media is still dominated by early Boomers who tend to be very liberal (and even a few demented Silents are still hanging on). Thanks to their power, the way they've sunk their talons into everything so deep and also modern medicine allowing them to live decades long than previous generations it looks like we might not be rid of them for a good 30 years. Depressing, I know.

    Gen X-ers have been frozen out for decades. Due to Silent/Boomer stubborness and longevity, the Gen X-ers have basically been forsaken by the system. If later X-ers/Millennials finally revolt against the Me Gen (out of necessity and desperation, unlike the vanity motivated shit stirred up by the Me Gen in the late 60's), it will have been long overdue.

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  31. I do think the cocooning cycle probably has an effect, but at the level that directors and producers in a cocooning era are more people who are privately creative and lonely thinkers and then never challenged by others, so end up with producing scripts and art which more timid and psychologically eccentric.

    Yeah, art is a lot shittier in cocooning periods since people grow out of touch with each other so we lose the ability to understand what makes something resonant, sublime, beautiful etc. And it gets worse the deeper we get into a cocooning period. In the 90's, we still were close enough to the 80''s to have at least some grasp of how to compose a melody, how to frame a shot, how to sing and act more like a human being rather than a soulless bore LARPing as a human being and so on.

    Interestlingly, it's generally agreed that around 2000 is when live delivery got so poor (either mumbling or shouting) that quotable dialogue died.

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  32. I meant LINE delivery. Sorry.

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  33. The General Social Survey shows that the peak year for disapproval of homosexual sex was 1991, and has been steadily falling ever since. So it was popular attitudes that changed first, with crass media producers jumping on the bandwagon to make a quick buck off of it.

    Disapproval of gay sex had been rising during the '70s and '80s, btw. It was not at a constantly high level before declining. It rose, then fell. Something worth remembering -- condemning homosexuality can increase in the future because it has already increased within living memory, for over two decades no less.

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  34. "well, I want a big fancy job as a snotty 23 year old because I paid for it and I expect it."

    WillBest: "This is the first I had read this about Milennials. You want value for what you pay for and a $30k entry job at the bottom rung of the ladder is okay when college cost $8k/year but not so much now that it costs $25-30k (tuition only)"

    My comment about brash Millennials was pertaining to the NY publishing industry. The idea is that certain areas/fields are very high status so rich parents are using their money and influence to shove their sometimes mediocre/insolent kids into these areas/fields so as to gain status points for themselves and their offspring. Also, people were focusing especially on the girls in that industry because they were lamenting the good old days of the 1920's-60's when amiable guys got to have a little fun and stir up a little trouble because there weren't so many whiny women bossing people around.

    Millennials (and Gen X-ers) have certainly gotten a raw deal over all. The harder kids try to start some career, the harder it gets to find a workplace that doesn't treat you like a doormat. And of course the ongoing invasion of women and immigrants leads to more workers which leads to lower wages. While also insisting on "sensitivity" which makes it impossible for white guys to speak the truth about what/who really needs to go. This PC crap also doesn't let them relax and be themselves.

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  35. "This is the conservative victimization narrative. Everyone's a great person deep down inside, they just get poisoned by the gosh darn liberal media."

    Its perceptive when they really are out to get you. There are memos floating around telling reporters to not use certain words because it makes people have negative reactions. And that they have to keep cycling to new words once the code is broken. Or compare and contrast the way the national media engaged in a coordinated assault against the Catholic church over child molestation where it virtually ignores the same crisis that is ongoing in public schools throughout the country.

    I don't think people are inherently good. I think they are inherently indifferent so long as they can be convinced that whatever is going on doesn't affect them in anyway.

    Hollywood, however, is uniquely full of sexual deviant anti-Christians. There is no question they are there to present this agenda. If they weren't they would put forward an honest portrayal of gay culture rather than presenting gays as heterosexuals who just happen to like the same sex.

    People only accept gays because they have been so anchored by Hollywood that they can no longer comprehend what gay culture is. Tell them that the CDC has found that 1 in 5 gay men have HIV and they simply don't believe it. Never mind taking them further down the rabbit hole of antibiotic resistant diseases, orgies, anonymous sex, open relationships, domestic violence, etc.

    ---

    I am relatively new to this website, so I don't know if it has been discussed, but Law & Order premiered in 1990. Its disproportionately white perps (that could be my neighbor!) and straight from the headlines reenactments could have served to reinforce the "my child is in danger" mentality that lead to helicopter parents even in predominantly white areas.

    The experiments done on anchoring are pretty enlightening at showing how irrational humans can be. The anchor doesn't even need to be related. There was an experiment done where people were asked to provide an estimate of something and in the room was a counter which had no relationship to what they were being asked to estimate. The people in the room with a low count estimated lower by a statistically significant amount than the people in the room with the high count.

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  36. "The General Social Survey shows that the peak year for disapproval of homosexual sex was 1991, and has been steadily falling ever since,"

    Philadelphia 1993 staring Tom Hanks as the gay protagonist who was wrongfully discriminated against. What is important about that then is that it would have had to been green lit sometime during 1991.

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  37. "What is important about that then is that it would have had to been green lit sometime during 1991."

    that just means there was a little overflow in the border years between the crime-rise and cocooning.

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  38. it seems there's a pretty obvious link between public attitudes toward homosexuality and the crime rate. perhaps the cocooning 1950s were more pro-homosexual than anybody thinks. afterall, Rock Hudson was considered a heartthrob.

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  39. "Philadelphia 1993 staring Tom Hanks as the gay protagonist who was wrongfully discriminated against. What is important about that then is that it would have had to been green lit sometime during 1991."

    Philadelphia didn't, er, come out until Christmas weekend 1993, the first year that the GSS shows a decline in disapproval of homo sex. (No survey was done in '92.)

    But the GSS is administered during the summer. So before everyday Americans even saw commercials for that movie, they'd already begun to dial down their disapproval of gay sex.

    If they'd green-lit and *released* Philadelphia in '89 or '90, it would have fallen flat. Audiences weren't ready for it yet.

    Look at Silence of the Lambs, released in February '91. You couldn't ask for a less sympathetic portrayal of homo / tranny deviance. Not just the narcissism and general freakishness, but his serial killer behavior on top of it all. Just two to three years later, that would've struck audiences as insensitive rather than the awful truth.

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  40. Harold Lloyd (HL)4/20/15, 7:08 PM

    Jew detector went off hard on reading Joe Schmoe's posts

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  41. Sign of how quickly things went down hill in the 90's:

    "Home Improvement made its debut on ABC on September 17, 1991,[2] and was one of the highest-rated sitcoms for almost the entire decade. It went to No. 1 in the ratings during the 1993–1994 season; the same year Allen had the No. 1 book (Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man) and movie (The Santa Clause).[3"

    Folks, Tim Allen is closeted homo who's schtick is pretending to be red blooded man's man. In reality, he's a childish prankster. Around 1993 we saw a ton of know it all kid characters as well as "adult" characters behaving childishly. Really, it was about 1991 that this crap started in earnest. Terminator 2 and the infamous Robocop 3 (shot in '91, released much later) were hard R franchises that inexplicably stuck know it all kids in the middle of the action. It just got worse with the rise of Mcauley Culkin and Adam Sandler. Exploited stage kids, homos, and Jews. Wonderful.

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  42. In the 80's, we had Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Candy, Bill Murray, Martin Shore and so on. They sometimes acted like goofballs but they still could give some nuance and humanity to their performances. I guess Eddie Murphy turned out to be a homo though.

    Who rose to fame in the 90's? Tim Allen, Pauly Shore, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrel, Jim Carrey, Chris Farley, Sinbad (!)and.... Some of these guys could be funny but often resorted to childish screaming and mugging. I guess becoming a big star in the 90's meant being a "sensitive" (closeted in George Clooney's case) type or debasing yourself as a childish buffoon.

    Can you imagine Tim Allen convincingly threatening to kick a horny teenager's ass like Candy did in Uncle Buck?

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  43. My point was since it takes 18 months to 2 years to get a big budget movie through the process the guys writing the checks didn't have any particular knowledge that they were reflecting the societal shift when they committed the resources. In looking through the history of the movie it appears that one of the producers had been working to bring this project about since 1988. Which further bolsters that point.

    As for Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill wasn't just a homosexual, he was a tranny. An important distinction for gays at the time to make less they be lumped together and validate the slippery slope argument.

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  44. "I am relatively new to this website, so I don't know if it has been discussed, but Law & Order premiered in 1990. Its disproportionately white perps (that could be my neighbor!) and straight from the headlines reenactments could have served to reinforce the "my child is in danger" mentality that lead to helicopter parents even in predominantly white areas."

    The dour tone of that show fits into the beginning of cocooning. As people became more wary and neurotic they would be more likely to watch a show that featured horrible criminals lurking about. This is actually a plausible idea in the early 90's when the show debuted. Ironically though, the show's ratings improved as the crime rate fell throughout the 90's.

    Keep in mind that the cop shows of the more convivial 70's/80's usually had amiable cops chasing a variety of criminals, some of whom were just small time hoods. Nowadays, it's always killers and sex psychos since today's autistic audience doesn't care unless the stakes are really high and there's lots of titillating crap to wake the audience up. Also to make the audience feel validated for avoiding people. Don't relax for a second you might get sliced up...You know this based on a TRUE story....Scared Yet?Shows like SWAT, The Streets of San Francisco, In the Heat of the Night, Miami Vice and so on didn't make you feel wary of the outside world since they had modest and good natured protagonists doing the best they could to grapple with the psychos, liars, delinquents, and gangsters out there.

    Today's cop shows wallow in lurid stuff by focusing on the most sick kinds of crime (based on real cases sometimes no less) and also by the nihilism of borderline sociopathic protagonists like on the Shield.

    Don't get me started on the spergy CSI shows. Solving crime doesn't take people skills and common sense. No...it's practically magic! Our tech wizards can figure it all out.

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  45. The Vermifuge4/20/15, 10:19 PM

    "The Midwesterners would say that they are just 'down to earth,' 'prudent,' etc. and while that is partially true, they are also limiting themselves for no good reason."

    Most of them have one good reason. Their IQs won’t allow them to think too far beyond their current situations, or imagine the excesses of the imagination, and plenty, too, have accepted their lots and won't have a striver’s pangs of longing and regret. It's often easy for the ambitious to look at the less ambitious and think there's something defective in the lives outside their experiences (as if they’re full of hidden disappointment and resentment). Not everyone, however—not even most—need to break away from a place; for, when the roots are stripped, the instability will trap the gullible in a path bound for failure. Besides, there are too many mediocrities who believe in their greatness and unquestioned authority, when all they have is good luck and connections. To know your limits is responsible; to understand someone else's limits is clarity.

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  46. "Look at Silence of the Lambs, released in February '91. You couldn't ask for a less sympathetic portrayal of homo / tranny deviance. Not just the narcissism and general freakishness, but his serial killer behavior on top of it all. Just two to three years later, that would've struck audiences as insensitive rather than the awful truth."

    Interestingly, the author of the novel grew up in Tennessee and the protagonist is from West Virginia. I guess the movie's values are more Appalachian, with a more mysterious, condemnatory view of evil.

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  47. OT: I know this won't please you.. Sandra Bullock most beautiful woman in the world, according to People magazine.


    http://www.people.com/people/mobile/article/0,,20913899_20915288,00.html

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  48. "OT: I know this won't please you.. Sandra Bullock most beautiful woman in the world, according to People magazine."

    People doesn't want to offend the legions of graying Boomers who buy the mag. to keep up on gossip. To state the obvious, women (esp. unhappy, insecure middle aged ones) often get riled up by the thought that there are tons of young, soft voiced, and fertile girls who are now getting (deserved) attention.

    Why do you suppose Oprah only gets more popular? Regardless of her entertainer abilities (which she's highly blessed with being a black Boomer after all) the fact is that hordes of Boomer/early Gen X white women watched her partially because she isn't remotely attractive by any standard. She didn't really get noticed until the late 80's when she was entering middle age and I doubt she ever looked that great even in her youthful prime. Black women age very fast to boot. Her Wiki page has an '86 photo of her when she was about 32. Even with studio makeup/lighting, she could pass for being a decade older.

    Per Wiki:The November 1988 Ms. observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality"

    It's telling that they ignore age since it touches on two uncomfortable realities:
    - The fact that women get less attractive with every passing day after peak fertility (late teens/early 20's).
    - The already apparent push to make the Boomers "ageless". Please. And if you're gonna try this there are much better people to pin your hopes on the a black women with a history of drugs, weight problems, and promiscuity.

    There are no straight sane men who would take a tabloid's idea of attractiveness seriously. Especially the kind targeted at older women.

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  49. Also with regard to the PC 1988 article. Black women and liberal do gooder white women are not at all comfortable discussing the fact that West African women by and large rank far below other ethnicities in attractiveness. So instead of being honest and hurting feelings, they make an incredibly desperate and inane attempt to insult "conventional" (read: realistic and entirely agreed upon by anyone with aesthetic standards) beauty.

    The obligatory and Jew friendly swipes at "whiteness" make it obvious. About 70% of the time these ditzy jeremiads usually insult blondes in particular. Ironically, some studies have found that men are usually most favorable towards soft/natural hair color. So bottle blonds are actually looked down upon contrary to liberal/Boomer propaganda about mainstream tastes upholding Hitler style standads.

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  50. I understand People's target demo. They need boomers to feel they are still sexy since nobody under 35 buys their magazine. Nothing wrong with stroking the ego of the paying customer.

    The more troubling list in my mind was how some 40+ year olds ever made it into the Maxim 100, which really should be an over 35 need not apply sort of thing.

    I never understood Oprah, and I don't feel it is because she wasn't attractive, and presumably nonthreatening. I wasn't old enough at the time to pay attention to how she ever got her start. She apparently took a local Chicago show from last in the ratings to first and then parlayed that to national syndication. It is not true that she has gained popularity though. Her last couple seasons averaged less than half the viewership from her prime in the 90's.

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  51. Non-heterosexuals women are over-represented on the People's Most Beautiful list:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_%28magazine%29#100_Most_Beautiful_People

    Jodie Foster (lesbian)

    Courteney Cox (seems lesbo or bi)

    Nicole Kidman (bearded for Tom Cruise, not normal hetero behavior)

    Jennifer Aniston (see earlier post via Blind Gossip that she's lesbo)

    Angelina Jolie (bi)

    Drew Barrymore (bi)

    Beyonce (lesbo or bi)

    Sandra Bullock (tranny)

    Scanning over their list of Sexiest Man Alive, somewhere between 20-50% are gay:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_%28magazine%29#Sexiest_Man_Alive

    Obviously no one thinks Jodie Foster is beautiful. These lists are just circlejerking from the gay mafia in the media-entertainment complex.

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  52. At some point between now and about 2025, there's gonna be a rude awakening for these closet cases who've had contrived careers on the basis of a an autistic public and an ever greedier ring of gays/pervs and their enablers and useful idiots.

    Eventually we'll wake up and we can get back to actors with real heart and soul, rather than dead eyed homos and frigid lesbos smirking about the ruse they've pulled on Middle America for over two decades.

    I've noticed that even Wikipedia pages on closeted celebrities have prominent photos with dead giveaways. Look at Bradley Cooper's (Sexiest Man of '11). The first close photo shows him with an uncomfortable, "not quite there" aura. Jake Gyllenhaal's is even more embarrassing. Just how clueless are Millennials anyway? They are the target audience for movies with a growing flood of closeted actors.

    Elijah Wood's photos also gives me the creeps. He's a DJ too. Also frightening is that he obviously started as a child actor. God only knows what he went through.

    Any thoughts on Sheppard Smith (Fox News) or Lindsey Graham?

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  53. We aren't seriously considering Bullock a Tranny? Why would Jesse James have married her? There wasn't any business benefit to it.

    Obviously no one thinks Jodie Foster is beautiful

    At least not these days, the Jodie Foster of Maverick era...

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  54. Is deadeye really a fair metric?

    I have been to comic con and for $50 you can have your picture taken with the guy from Dr. Who or whoever. 120-130 people line up and then over the course of 60 minutes that celebrity is subjected to having to process that line. Its not an easy thing to pull off and maintain a natural look through all of it.

    Those celebrities run up and down the carpet posing for dozens of shots and they aren't necessarily posing for just 1 camera. There would be 5 or 6 in the general vicinity trying to get the picture, so the celebrity ends up looking in the general direction rather than the one that ends up being sold to whoever.

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  55. If you search this blog for posts regarding gays/gaydar, Agnostic has come up with some good ways to pick out certain suspect traits. Check out Google Images for a suspected case and you'll start to notice certain things.

    Among other things:
    - A "surprised" face: Eyebrows raised, mouth agape. Since gays are eternal toddlers everything is always a novelty. Thus the excited/surprised face so often.

    - The flat/horizontal smile revealing the lower set of teeth. Normal sincere smiles of adults usually involve turning up the mouth corners which tends to cover up the lower teeth. The flatter smile is more babyish. Adults who give this baby smile (e.g. gays) look really damn creepy

    - An obvious awkwardness/constant out of place-ness caused by the gay trying to avoid acting gay while around straight people. Gays who act like themselves typically become flaming drama queens. So when that's not an option, they usually get lost faking a "straight" persona. A few can be superficially charming (like Clooney) but it shouldn't take much digging to break through the facade. Straight guys, even socially awkward ones, are going to come off as more virile, more complete, more natural on account of not having to slip in and out of different personas constantly. A straight nerd is going to act like a nerd regardless of who they're around. They won't rapidly put on or take off a mask.

    It should be noted that this pretending gives them a lot of experience with how to handle (and basically lie to) a variety of people, which probably explains why gays end up being common in politics and intelligence. Not to mention acting, duh. Essentially, being in the closet is training for being a duplicitous psychopath. Gays tend to lack empathy and insight anyway, so they already are inclined to deceit and selfishness even if they don't bother with the closet.

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  56. The Dead Eye thing can also be explained by the awful diets/sleeping habits/heavy drug intake/lack of support from friends/family (gays burn bridges a lot).

    - Another sign of teh ghey is prematurely grey hair although celebs obviously are inclined to maintain their hair to make it look however they want. Fast living will burn you up, hence early gray hair. It seems that high promiscuity (esp. if it's a lot of oral) seems to really do a number on health.

    "(I have been to comic con and for $50 you can have your picture taken with the guy from Dr. Who or whoever. 120-130 people line up and then over the course of 60 minutes that celebrity is subjected to having to process that line."

    Don't tell you me you actually paid for that. I honestly don't get the point of paying money to briefly encounter someone. Exploitation. The celebs/agents who do this ought to be ashamed, unless a good chunk is going to charity. Jamie Lee Curtis did a marathon meet/greet/autograph signing for a charity a couple years ago. But most of the time it's a 3rd tier celeb (or even bigger nobody) desperate for money who takes advantage of nerds.

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  57. I don't understand that mentality. You have a voluntary bargained exchange. For example, I find cons are worth a day if I need an artist because many of them typically price themselves under the quality of their work. Am I ripping them off, if I am getting the same work from them that I would have to pay 2-5 times as much from a design firm? I didn't make the artist do it.

    Anyway, I grew up watching star trek TNG with my whole family so when Patrick Stewart came through I paid to have a photo with him. Can't say I feel ripped off though. If myself, and a few hundred like me, weren't interested in paying I doubt he would be in Chicago and I would never get the opportunity to meet him. Sure he doesn't need the money, but traveling and being away from your family is a PITA.

    Now if you found him on the street and he asked for money that would be something else. I suppose I might also extend that logic to say a Chicago native like Vince Vaughn or one of our many sports celebrities. But for the people out of town, I basically look at it as paying them to come to you.

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  58. I can buy that Sandra Bullock has testosterone insensivity syndrome, Agnostic, not that she's transexual by her own whim. It's a condition. Though technically she's still a man.

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  59. Jody Foster was gorgeous in her younger years, one of my first crushes, actually. Again, personal preference, man. You're a smart dude with some interesting (albeit, to my mind, paranoid) ideas, but then you pepper your writing with solipsistic generalizations like black women are ugly or "Obviously no one thinks Jodie Foster is beautiful." It's odd, man.

    As for helicopter parenting, I agree, it does seem to be dying down a bit, and thank God for that. I've been a parent of boys for 21 years now and when my oldest was in elementary school in the late 90s/early 00s, it was difficult for him to find kids playing outside. We always intentionally operated under what we remembered as kids growing up in the 70s, which was basically total freedom during the day. It was tough. With my two younger kids who are currently in middle school, it's been noticeably easier. And it sure does run along class lines. When we lived in an older part of town with mostly working class and Hispanic families, kids were outside all the time and walked to school starting around 2nd grade. We moved to a newer, more affluent neighborhood 5 years ago. While there are kids playing outside, they don't roam as much, and a higher percentage or parents drive their kids to school.

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  60. WillBest wrote: "playground equipment. Pretty boring stuff thanks to over reactions of the past."

    Last year I went to my old elementary school out of nostalgia, and I saw they had torn down the old playground. I got emotional because in the early 90s when it was built the school had us kids work on the construction. I think I was in 2nd grade, and I remember sanding down 2x4s. The older kids were given more dangerous work.
    It sucks for kids today, because the elementary school playground also served as the neighborhood playground during weekends/holidays. Now there's nothing for kids to do outside.

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