Ever wonder how we produced the OWS movement? I don’t mean the communist or radicals, I mean just in general how we produced a generation of people who don’t understand why you won’t give them what they want, why they can’t camp on your lawn indefinitely, why even though they’re committing crimes and harassing people you aren’t being nice to them? Here’s why:
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Who doesn’t like the ice cream truck? Apparently some parents in Park Slope.
Dozens of recent comments on a Park Slope parents message blog said ice cream vendors need to leave the area, especially places around the playgrounds and parks, to help avoid afternoon meltdowns and temper tantrums from children craving frozen treats.
“Go somewhere else, go on another corner because…it does make it too tempting for them,” Debbie Markovic said Monday as her lactose-intolerant daughter begged for ice cream.
Park Slope, for those of you who don’t know, is a very rich section of Brooklyn populated mostly by the elite of the area. It is predominantly wealthy, snobbish liberals and their hipster children who live there.
And the people that live there are the kind of people who want to ban ice cream trucks from entering their rarefied Obamunist ghetto than tell their children “no” and be done with it. Think about that for a second.
What lesson does the daughter of Debbie Markovic internalize here? That it’s other people who must deprive themselves of making a living or indulging in one of life’s simple pleasures so that she doesn’t have to be discomforted? Is she being taught that if she can’t have something due to her individual condition it is acceptable that other people be denied as well? Is she learning that her problems can be solved by inflicting them on everyone else?
Obviously. And doesn’t that sound familiar?
Diana West wrote an excellent book called The Death of Grown Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bring Down Western Civilization that seems more like prophecy than social critique. She argues that our nation of eternal adolescents cannot hold up the West – and in OWS we see she’s right. Debbie Markovic, a petulant child herself, is raising the next generation of OWS who will proudly hold up a sign demanding that the government ban ice cream, that scourge of the lactose intolerant. That it’s simply her responsibility to avoid things she can’t handle never will occur to her.
She would need a grown up in her life to teach her that.
Heh… my only complaint against the ice cream trucks is that they tend to drive by the house after the boys’ bedtime, bell ringing and music blaring. (Yes, this has happened as late as 9pm on nights when it’s still light out that late.) There’s nothing like getting the little ones all tucked in, sleeping soundly, then *RINGRINGRINGRING!*, accompanied by a very tinny “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.
I can understand why they would be driving through the same neighborhoods multiple times a day. My boys will tell anyone that I have no problem telling them “no” when I don’t think they should be spoiling their dinner or the timing for getting hopped up on sugar is bad, but waking them up with that after they’re asleep at night, or even when they’re trying to fall asleep is another matter all together. I can’t imagine that there are any kids up that late, who’s parents are willing to let them get hopped up on sugar. Maybe they aught to try the college campus dorms? (Sorry, I had to get that particular rant off my chest.)
That being said, people need to get over it. Seriously. It’s a playground, (presumably) in the middle of the day, and ice cream trucks at playgrounds are a tradition. I still think that the drivers of ice cream trucks need to undergo a background check before being allowed to drive one (a rant for another time, I suppose), but banning them all together from the areas where they make the best part of their living?
I agree, a huge part of the problem with society today is that no one wants to tell their kids “no”.
Agree with you entirely. I find the vendors annoying too – but I find parents who won’t raise their kids right more annoying.