Headlines

W.R. Mead

The e-mail of doom

I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children’s underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don’t want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes — it’s not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace — far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won’t do it by simply whingeing and saying you don’t like it. You’ll have to come up with meaty reasons to demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn’t possible, or you simply can’t be bothered, then I rest my case.

I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed.

Dad

Read the Article

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Trackback URL

Finding Ponies...

Comments

If you need more than one, short sentence, you’ve lost them!

OldEnglish on November 25, 2012 at 9:26 PM

Read this one too.

Ugly on November 25, 2012 at 9:30 PM

Whoaaa.

petefrt on November 25, 2012 at 9:30 PM

Dude… wow.

tommy71 on November 25, 2012 at 9:39 PM

Ugly on November 25, 2012 at 9:30 PM

Holy crap. I remember when that happened. That letter brought tears to my cold, tired zombie eyes.

dczombie on November 25, 2012 at 9:42 PM

In many ways, W.R.Meade is the V.D.Hansen of the left. Serious, thoughtful, above the fray.

petefrt on November 25, 2012 at 9:43 PM

Ugly on November 25, 2012 at 9:30 PM

Thanks for posting that.

I don’t know what to make of all this. I’m just grateful to be blessed by having loving parents, husband, son, sibs, in-laws and cousins, and grandparents who are no longer with us. Our “achievements” vary, but we are very successful domestically.

This is what I’m thankful for. I’m still enjoying the Thanksgiving spirit, despite the societal effort to force me into engaging with all this Christmas idiocy out of season.

juliesa on November 25, 2012 at 9:55 PM

heh!

a verbal spanking in your email box, kiddos!

ted c on November 25, 2012 at 9:55 PM

I’d like to send an email like this to my wife’s now-adult daughters, but it would probably destroy my marriage.

Sadly, force-feeding these stupid girls the harsh, brutal truth about themselves and their destructive life choices is probably the only thing that could save them (and their illegitimate children) from their impending lifetimes of misery. Can’t make the little girls cry, though, can I?

Harbingeing on November 25, 2012 at 10:00 PM

the truth hurts, but the truth is the truth and folks just gotsta hear it. Email is a bit...blunt, if you will.

ted c on November 25, 2012 at 10:03 PM

I’d like to send an email like this to my wife’s now-adult daughters, but it would probably destroy my marriage.

Sadly, force-feeding these stupid girls the harsh, brutal truth about themselves and their destructive life choices is probably the only thing that could save them (and their illegitimate children) from their impending lifetimes of misery. Can’t make the little girls cry, though, can I?

Harbingeing on November 25, 2012 at 10:00 PM

I hate to tell you this, but no. It isn’t worth dropping the Truthbomb if you return to your home field to flak bursts and spotlights.

Unless you can contrive some way to get the children away from their ‘mothers’ you’ve probably done all you can do. Leave the rest up to God and the harsh teacher Mz.Reality, in that order.

MelonCollie on November 25, 2012 at 10:11 PM

These parents are self-serving idiots.

Hey, Mom & Dad: YOU ARE FAILURES!!! You failed at raising your children. Accept it.

You should be apologizing to the kids for failing to engage, to discipline when the situation required it. But parental discipline would have required work, and you couldn’t be bothered.

Parents: Just go quietly away. This is the multi-cultural world you made. You deserve the misery.

HDFOB on November 25, 2012 at 10:34 PM

Reads like something we should write collectively to the Left in this country. Although, I would add a caveat: If you show up on my doorstep before fixing yourselves, I will bust a cap in your @ss and laugh before closing the door. LiB!

Thomas More on November 25, 2012 at 10:54 PM

These parents are self-serving idiots.

Hey, Mom & Dad: YOU ARE FAILURES!!! You failed at raising your children. Accept it.

You should be apologizing to the kids for failing to engage, to discipline when the situation required it. But parental discipline would have required work, and you couldn’t be bothered.

Parents: Just go quietly away. This is the multi-cultural world you made. You deserve the misery.

HDFOB on November 25, 2012 at 10:34 PM

I, like you, blame the parents for doing an inadequate job in the first place!

I see something similar happening to some friends of mine: they raised their kids with a hands-off, misguided ‘they’re going to do what they want no matter what you tell them’ approach, and now their kids with above-average intelligences are aimlessly going through life, wasting a lot of time and potential. It’s sad to watch.

Anti-Control on November 25, 2012 at 11:35 PM

I like many here blame the stupid parents. I have often chastised my own parents for not PARENTING my younger siblings as much as they did me.

And I now understand the POINT of all the punishments (both physical and mental) that were handed down to me as a child and a young man and realize I am much quite the better for all of them. The fact that my parents pretty much quit trying and did the laizze faire approach with my other 3 siblings is a source of great irritation to me.

SgtSVJones on November 26, 2012 at 12:11 AM

It has often been said:

When I was 18, my father was the stupidest man in the world. There was nothing he knew that was right or beneficial for my life.
When I was 25, I began to see some glimmers of hope for my father. Some things that he just might be learning now that I had left the house and was on my own.
When I was 35, and had a wife and kids of my own, it was obvious Dad had been boning up. It was amazing how much he had learned in the last 17 years!

GWB on November 26, 2012 at 12:32 AM

It all goes back to the 1960′s, when the active and intentional usurpation of parents by the state began, via the liberal indoctrination and the psychobabble brainwashing that goes on in education and the media.

Our children are taught that there’s no “right” or “wrong”, it’s all just moral relativity; no winners or losers, but everyone should win a trophy for effort, socially promoted to the next grade for their “self esteem”, i.e. affirmative action promotions; that there is no God or need for religion, therefore nothing ultimately answerable to; that little schoolgirls are entitled to birth control, abortions, and liberal sex-ed indoctrination without parental knowledge or consent; that their parents are stuck in some antiquated and corrupt anglo-centric cultural time warp that bears no relevance to today’s world – so why should they listen to anyone, especially their parents?

No, parents are not entirely blameless – too many have thrown up their hands in disgust and resignation, overpowered by the constant sh!tstorm of opposition and subterfuge coming from schools and media. But, our culture and even our laws have now been poisoned – parental sovereignty over their own children scarcely exists as a concept anymore, and parents have lost the war for the hearts and minds of their own children.

Harbingeing on November 26, 2012 at 2:08 AM

HDFOB on November 25, 2012 at 10:34 PM

This.

I’m not usually one for blaming the parents, but when you’re 0 for 3, it’s time for a little introspection.

29Victor on November 26, 2012 at 2:16 AM

It all goes back to the 1960′s, when the active and intentional usurpation of parents by the state began, via the liberal indoctrination and the psychobabble brainwashing that goes on in education and the media.

Harbingeing on November 26, 2012 at 2:08 AM

The radicals couldn’t have taken control of the children if the parent’s didn’t let them.

For some, the heart and mind of their child a fair trade for eight ours of “free” babysitting a day and then several more hours in front of the TV.

29Victor on November 26, 2012 at 2:18 AM

The radicals couldn’t have taken control of the children if the parent’s didn’t let them.

29Victor on November 26, 2012 at 2:18 AM

+infinity!

Anti-Control on November 26, 2012 at 3:20 AM

To be fair, it sounds like he recognizes that he made poor parental choices based off what society at the time said to do:

“I bought into the fashionable philosophy of not interfering; letting the children find themselves. When they were getting into trouble — at school, or later with their relationships — I would just bite my lip and tell myself, ‘Don’t butt in, it’s their lives.’”

eforhan on November 26, 2012 at 8:23 AM

I’d like to send an email like this to my wife’s now-adult daughters, but it would probably destroy my marriage.

Sadly, force-feeding these stupid girls the harsh, brutal truth about themselves and their destructive life choices is probably the only thing that could save them (and their illegitimate children) from their impending lifetimes of misery. Can’t make the little girls cry, though, can I?

Harbingeing on November 25, 2012 at 10:00 PM

Bruce Jenner, is that you?!

SD on November 26, 2012 at 9:38 AM