Blaming The Victim

What kind of namby-pamby nation have we become? You know what I'm talkin' about. We reward every tiny accomplishment of our children. Who needs a kindergarten graduation? Why do all the kids on the soccer team get a trophy, no matter what place the team finishes? Why does everybody get an award instead of just the MVP? What's with having to invite every child in the class if you pass out birthday party invitations? We are not preparing our youth to face the real world! Or ARE we?

Now these kids are growing up and trying to make the real world conform to their experiences. Let's pretend everybody likes everybody else, and life is fair. Don't say anything that 'disrespects' somebody else. Free speech is no longer an option. You are not allowed to have an opinion unless it is the popular opinion held by society. You must not dislike anybody. If you start a club or business, you must let all people participate. You must let boys play on a girls' team if they don't have one of their own. Military academy? Make sure you let in girls. It's getting to the point that churches will have to accept people of different religions into their congregations, and reformulate their religious beliefs in case they are offensive to the new joiners.

You'd better toe the line, too, or we'll sue you! We know our rights, by cracky! Don't mess with us. We'll point the blame on you, and you'll have to defend yourself, or pay up.

Here's the story stuck in my craw today. Mother arrested with daughter for bullying teen. Uh huh. Remember that Missouri woman (poor ol' Missouri) for pretending to be a teenage boy on the internet, and causing that poor girl to commit suicide? Well, here's a new one. Only she's embarrassing the state of Indiana. Seems she drove her 15-year-old daughter and friend to dump some disposable diapers inscribed with naughty sayings into a rival's yard. Yep. There was not even poop in those Pampers. They just had insults written on them. They probably could have been picked up and disposed of in 5 minutes. It's not like the troublemakers took out an ad in the paper, or put up a billboard, or prank-called her 100 times a day, or plotted a Texas cheerleader murder. It was folded diapers dumped in the yard. Oh, and one little detail I forgot to mention...the recipient of the diapers tried to commit suicide. Don't worry. She was a failure. She lives!

Is it just me, or do we need to place some responsibility on the child-raisers of the 'victims' as well as the perpetrators? Sure, it was wrong to write insults on diapers and distribute them in the front yard. But would that make YOU attempt suicide? It would make ME vow revenge. Oops, my upbringing is showing. Seriously...isn't there something else going on if such a prank pushes you over the abyss? Perhaps someone was in need of a diagnosis, or counseling, or medication. Maybe the diaper dumpers actually did this family a favor.

I don't mean to blame the 'victim', but where is this going to end? Boo hoo hoo! Somebody just TeePeed my yard! The whole world is against me. I'm going to kill myself. Mom, make sure you sue whoever did this. They should have to pay for this hate crime.

It seems that we are harming, not building, self-esteem with this 'everybody wins' philosophy. Teach your children that they are losers. But not in a bad way. On MSNBC's Morning Joe the other day, the panel ridiculed Mike Barnicle because he raised his children on the premise that 'There's always going to be somebody better than you.' The rest of the panel, especially Mika Somethingshevsky, were outraged. "That's great. Your kids grew up thinking that they could never be the best." Something like that, it's not an exact quote. And Barnicle IS the guy who said Hillary Clinton 'looked like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court'. OK, that's kind of sexist, but it's also kind of funny. I forgive him this slight on my gal Hillary, because at least he tried to prepare his kids for life.

Snap out of it, people! We need to toughen up tomorrow's citizens.