Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”
As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” - now known as “OWS” - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for everybody.”
Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.
Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along.
Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:
• Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”
No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.
• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.
While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.
• Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.
• A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.
• There are reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.
Oh Jesus Christ. I am at a loss for words at the stupidity emitted by Marybeth Hicks in this article - but then again, I suppose it is expected coming from the author of Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left’s Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom. Please, please, please, somebody who isn’t overrun with anger tear this nonsense apart.
For the rest of you, there is a little “Email the Columnist” button at the top of the article. Please respectfully tell this nut the truth.
(Photo) “If they enforced bank regulations like they do park rules, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place! #OWS”
The saga of the OWS library books continues…
There are only about 25 boxes of books; many of the books are destroyed. Laptops here but destroyed. Can’t find tent or shelves….Many books destroyed. Most equipment -and structures missing… most of library is missing (ALL of the reference section btw), damaged or destroyed.
— Mandy Henk, one of OWS People’s Library’s volunteer librarians, on what she found when she arrived at the 57th St. Garage to reclaim the books and electronics confiscated.
The mayor’s office tweeted a photo yesterday in response to outcry over reports that the books had been destroyed, saying they were safe and sound. According the Maddow Blog, their pants are kind of on fire. The librarians, who went with a full list of what had been taken, were told to come back later to see if anything turned up from the garbage.
UNLEASH THE TEARGAS ON THIS UNRULY MOB!!
Some might see a crass corporate attempt to latch onto a movement that fits well with the company’s branding. We see a progressive company showing its pre-corporate roots. (via Percolate)
Why don’t these companies set up a job fair at each one of the Occupy sites?
So will Ben & Jerry’s put their money where their mouth is and hire the 99%? That’s the question. Related: We’ll go ahead and call it. B&J’s should release a 99%-ers flavor of ice cream! Broken dreams, endless debt, and peanuts. Lots and lots of peanuts.
