In other news...

by snaggle at 03:25 AM on May 25, 2001

I've seen electronic collars for dogs pretty often and I always thought they were a little harsh. There's nothing worse than trying to coax a neighbor dog into coming over to play and watching it receive a bone-jarring shock. And along with that, as if we who are growing up now didn't already have enough reasons to hate our parents — now we have this — tracking devices and electronic leashes and such for teenagers.

The Baby Boomer generation, who were so afraid of The Man and The Big Evil Government, has now turned into Big Brother, not even trusting their own children. I know I've had first-hand experience with a bit of this; my parents thought it was improper for me to have friends of the opposite gender when I was younger. Finally, about my second year of high school, I laughed at them and rebelled: I was friends with whomever I wanted. Now, of course, no gay man is complete without his faghags (bet my parents didn't anticipate that repercussion.)

They say that the quantity of time parents are spending with kids is slightly on the increase, but that the quality of time is steadily on the decrease. Job restrictions, generation gaps, techological leashes for parents to their jobs as well as children to their parents... perhaps it's time to finally teach parents how to be good parents? I'll admit that sometimes I would like to be a parent just so that I could "correct" the mistakes my parents made — which is a very bad attitude, since a very similar one was what got me in a sticky situation; my parents decided that they needed to "correct the mistakes" they made with my brother and sister, who are both about ten years older than I am. Now we have parents who were at the forefront of a cultural revolution that is still romantizied to this day taking twenty steps backwards from the stances they took not too many years ago and generating more paranoia towards their own progeny than Senator McCarthy would have ever shown any citizen of the United States.

By the way, no matter what your opinion of the Bush administration, I encourage you all to take a look at this StickyBuffalo critical evaluation of the energy policy of George W. Bush — directly from the policy itself, not from the glib treatment the press is giving it. Make your own opinions: read the proposal yourself.