Monthly Archives: July 2010

I’ve been following the story of Ms. Sherrod and her forced resignation and then the eventual apology she received (along with an offer of a new job in the Agricultural Department).

The day the story broke, I was watching the news with my stepdad who agreed that she should have been fired. And me, being me, laid into him because obviously no one did their homework and she was being punished for something that happened in a different context a quarter of a century ago.

I was reminded of the conversation when I read this article in today’s Times:

By Tuesday, Ms. Sherrod’s forced resignation was the talk of cable television news, and it was becoming clear that the Breitbart video clip had been taken out of context. After seeing the full video, the N.A.A.C.P., which had initially applauded Ms. Sherrod’s resignation, reversed itself, saying it had been “snookered” into believing that she had been acting with racial bias.

Bullshit. This is just an excuse to justify lazy reporting and obvious bias. It’s an excuse not to take responsibility for what the N.A.A.C.P. initially said.

This whole experience is a substantial example of the effects of bias in the media. And it’s pretty ridiculous.

And you wonder why I don’t watch the news.

**UPDATE:

Of course, I find someone who says what I mean in a much more concise and succinct way.

Here’s Blair Scott, of American Atheists, referring to the Shirley Sherrod incident:

Critical thinking skills and the ability to use rational thought are vital to the survival of the species. We saw that break down this week as every politician (right, left, and center) and every news outlet (right, left, and center) took the word of a single person and ran with it. There was no verification of facts, no burden of proof, no skepticism, no questioning of the source, etc. The accumulation of logical fallacies was like watching an algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico: spreading its devastating effects the bigger it gets.

Well put, don’t you think?

When I read this article, I couldn’t help but think about Veruca Salt. More specifically, the song the Oompa Loompas sang when they had to go fish her out of the furnace (yes, I’m talking about the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie).

Who do you blame when your kid is a brat
Pampered and spoiled like a siamese cat
Blaming the kids is a lie and a shame
You know exactly who’s to blame

The mother and the father

I’ve always loved that bit because, for once, someone is telling it like it is. Spoiled brat kids are products of their parents. Plain and simple.

But what about those kids who have good and generous parents yet still turn out to be unkind and rude?

Dr. Richard A. Freidman asserts that it is possible for good parents to have bad children.

But while I do not mean to let bad parents off the hook — sadly, there are all too many of them, from malignant to merely apathetic — the fact remains that perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children.

…

Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.

“The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is often in the child and that the family responses may aggravate the scene but not wholly create it,” said my colleague Dr. Theodore Shapiro, a child psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The era of ‘there are no bad children, only bad parents’ is gone.”

I recall one patient who told me that she had given up trying to have a relationship with her 24-year-old daughter, whose relentless criticism she could no longer bear. “I still love and miss her,” she said sadly. “But I really don’t like her.”

For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.

I can agree with him, to an extent. Some people are hardwired to be one way or another. However, I don’t believe that people have to stay that way. And I do believe that environment (the way you are raised, the things you experience and/or see) has a lot to do with the choices you make.

And ultimately, behavior is a choice. And everyone makes choices based on their own worldview that has been shaped by both nature and nurture.

My fear is that an article like this is going to further open the door for parents to stop parenting because “she’s just that way.” It provides an easy way out of tough situations for parents who do have difficult children.

I’d never heard of Hungry Girl before, but after this article in the NYTimes, I’m definitely intrigued.

Ms. Lillien has been criticized for advocating a path to weight loss that is slippery with Cool Whip Lite, onion soup mix and other foods of debatable nutritional value. She says that the recipes reflect the reality of what American women eat, sometimes despite their best intentions. “I live in the middle of the supermarket,” she said: the aisles that are stocked with packaged processed foods, many of which are loathed by locavores and nutritionists alike.

She says she also encourages her readers to eat soy products, almond milk, fiber cereals and butternut squash. Although Ms. Lillien herself espouses conscious eating, Hungry Girl ducks the issue on matters like seasonality, carbon footprint, organic status and saturated fat. She cares about just two things: How does it taste? And how much of it can I have?

Where do I sign up?