Make that bitch your bitch, you bastard!

arfies linked to the text of this speech about "hyper-parenting." I've ranted about this before, and I think the speech makes some good points. I never really participated in very many extracurricular activities when I was young. I think my parents tried to get me into things, but I never really took to them. It was never a case of my being forced to do about eighty organized activities in a day. But I don't think that was quite as common when I was young. The whole issue of wanting your kids to get into a "good" college is pretty ridiculous, too. Going to an Ivy League school is probably an advantage in some ways, especially if your potential employers and such ALSO went to Ivy League schools. But is this because those schools are actually better, or because the people who attended them want to feel like all the money and effort they put into it was worthwhile? I'm inclined to think the latter might well be true.

I get the impression that a lot of the "hyper-parenting" is the parents trying to get their kids to do the things they wish THEY had done as kids (not that the parents would really be much happier if they HAD done those things). Competition is also a large part of it, though. While a certain level of competition is natural, I see way too much of it nowadays that seems to be based in insecurity. I guess it's like Homer Simpson said: "Sometimes the only way to feel good about yourself is to make someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves!" Incidentally, Matt Groening is mentioned in the article as somebody "who bucked conventional wisdom, followed their inner passions, tinkered, and did the impossible." And then there's a sentence saying, "Some schools have a no TV week; I wish it were a no TV year." [1] The TV-bashing is one thing I DIDN'T like about the article. I largely agree with Rosenfeld's assessment of the news media, but they hardly reflect the entire medium of television. But that's a topic for another post.

Speaking of Groening and the Ivy League, the commentary for the Futurama episode "The Lesser of Two Evils" has Matt asking why comedy writers from Harvard are obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. No answer was forthcoming, but it does seem to be true. Another question that wasn't really answered was why the writers decided Dr. Zoidberg was poor ("Put Your Head on My Shoulder" apparently being the first episode that mentions the fact). I think it's basically a logical result of his being a bad doctor, though.

[1] Wouldn't it be insanely tacky to insert "D'oh!" right here? Yeah, I thought so.