My first reaction when I read this over at Instapundit:
THERE’S A REASON IT’S CALLED GIRLS, AND NOT WOMEN:
The show’s main character, played by Dunham herself, embodies all of this. In the first scene of the pilot, when her parents tell her they won’t be paying her bills any more, she loses it, and informs them that instead of pushing her out of the nest, they should be grateful she isn’t addicted to pills. Her friends are equally appalled by the prospect of a 24-year-old paying her own phone bills, and, for the most part, they’re equally reckless. For instance, in the second episode, one of them misses her abortion appointment because she’s busy having sex in a bar. And their romantic relationships — unsurprisingly — come in about every possible iteration of dysfunction.
At its core, Girls feels like a deliberate, dissective examination of a group of people who stubbornly refuse to grow up and are lucky enough to be able to pull it off. The main thing Dunham’s characters share is the idea that just because they exist, somebody else should give them stuff.
was that we should call that entire generation’s bluff.
You’re out of here, get a job — even one Americans supposedly don’t want to take, see you at holidays, don’t call us we’ll call you, to what address should we forward your student loan notices, call your gender studies professor for help, you just figured out the B.A. is the new G.E.D., can you see the fiscal cliff from your loft bed, you too can experience an Obamaphone because your iPhone 5 with 4G isn’t actually your iPhone 5 with 4G it’s on my Plan ….
Except that cooler heads prevailed.
It’s not an entire generation. As someone who interacts daily with hard working students, who interviewed hard working students for my Fordham series, who (Thanks God!) has hard working kids who (Praise the Lord!) are out of the house … I can tell you it’s not the entire generation.
It’s just the big mouths enabled by Hollywood and academia.
We need to figure out a way to call that part of that generation’s bluff.
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This is another case of the best of intentions are the best pathway to hell. The “children” referenced in the article all have parents who actively enable this behavior. Parents created this mess and are now whining that Billy-Bob and Sally-Sue won’t move out, get a job, or even help around the house. I have multiple friends with this issue, and it is totally self-inflicted. Until parents realize that the greatest kindness is preparing your children for the future and kicking them out of the nest (literally) so they become independent functioning adults, they will remain infatilized. This does not mean not advising your children when they have questions, but rather allowing them to gain the experience they need (with failure and poverty) to become good citizens and good people. We have to love our children enough to allow them to fail, suffer, struggle, and eventually succed on their own. Anything else is about us NOT them.
I agree with you 1000%, in principle. However, in practicality, not as easy to execute. Kids living in Manhattan especially, unless they are in finance and pull in six figures, might need some financial assistance from parents for rent. I am not embarrassed to say I help a daughter – she works her tail off, has a great job, but it doesn’t give her a big salary, nor health insurance. She has a roommate, in a walk-up, on a noisy street. She pays for all she can but I don’t feel she should go into debt when we can help her until she has more earning power. We talk all the time if we are enabling her or helping her. For now, we feel we are only helping. It’s a tough call sometimes.
I truly think the dividing line should be necessity vs. “wants”. For example, I think a parent can allow a child to live with them. However is should be with the caveat that they pay rent, pay for their own expenses, and contribute to utilities. They should also be actively pursuing more education, a higher paying job, etc. in order to do this. Problems come when kids go to parents for non-essentials. This in my brain includes free child care, cell-phones, partying money, and paying for cars and associated costs. Real essentials are food, clothing, and shelter. Probably the best method for determining the divide for your kid is to acknowledge if you would be offended if someone on welfare demanded the same “privilidge”. If you would, don’t do it for your kid.
In addition to your list, may I add doing their share of the house and yard work? That was my requirement when my adult children lived at home while getting themselves ready to live on their own. And all four of them made it!
IMHO, the vehicle issue would depend on where you live… in an urban setting it’s not that big of a deal, but reliable transportation is much more important in flyover country.
my parents pushed me out, they had to.
I left them no choice.
they made the right choice and it took me years to realize that.
I’m only a few years removed from the “kids” portrayed in that show (28 now) and I think you’re right, Professor.
Of course, the “flip” side to this, is the supposed intellectual superiority–the smugly condescending, almost patronizing attitude–of people my age who went to college and voted for Obama. To quote a terrible prequel, “They think their brains so BIG!” Every time I see them talk politics, it’s with the head-patting “Oh, you silly kids” tone that seems to pervade the Left (when they’re not up in self-righteous firebrand mode, at least).
So it seems we have two extremes for my generation: the entitled, and the elitist. The former is covered by this Girls show. The latter is covered by all the twentysomethings that believe their college degrees and leftist ideals mean they know everything already, and any thought to the contrary isn’t worth the brain cells it takes to think.
Be as careful where you spend your money as you are with your vote. It amounts to the same thing, really.
Don’t watch the show, don’t advertise on it, don’t buy the products of companies that support liberal policies.
For instance, those vile Target commercials. My local mall has a Target and a Walmart. There’s a no brainer for a conservative: spend your money in the walmart.
Opposed to Hugo Chavez’ collectivization of farms and elimination of opposition media in Venezuela? Don’t ever stop at a Citgo station.
Aw, now you hurt Julia’s feelings. And now she’s crying on Obama’s shoulder. Poor baby.
Don’t fret Julia. You too could run for a Senate seat in Mass. and most likely win because you can be really, really, really sincere if nothing else.
Yep, Sally, and don’t forget that Lil’Julia “Gave It Up” to The Boy King for her, ya know, like, First Experience.
Infantile Highchair Pounders being “raised” by older Infantile Highchair Pounders and soon, LUCKY US, will be (Condolences, American Liberty..)”raising” new infants of infantile persuasion.
‘Fraid I’m only very gradually climbing out of my post Nov.6th gloom. I do get a hopeful smile when my wife and I are up in western North Carolina and see ‘yoots NOT on
i-Thingies every waking, exterior hour…Alas, then we return to Winter Park and again witness a sea of them with their eyes glued to their i-Thingy screens and fingers just a buzzin’ and giggles over the desperately important Real Life Stuff on their Thingies from Breezy & Binker. AND, Mommy & Daddy seeing it as Just Fine and ‘What’s the question?’
Irascible ‘Coot Curmudgeon and FINE with THAT,’Yo.
…and you proabaly saw some REAL Cherokee Indians in beautiful Western NC.
Yes, indeedy, and country folk and country kids and ya know what else..? Those country kids were playing outdoors like we did when we wuz young–NOT pounding on i-Thingies and video games! Yep, riding bikes and ‘rassling and ball playing and monkey bars climbing with no parental gasping and calling their lawyers if Lil’Johnny fell and hurt his little country self. Imagine.
And, the Great Smokey Mountains on fire with color(mid-October)and men & women talking to each other in country cafes and NOT eyeing their Boysenberries and i-Thingies lest they MISS something on an app thingy. Again, Imagine,’Yo.
A prominent “big mouth enabled by Hollywood and academia:”
TIME Nominates ‘Condom Rights Activist’ Sandra Fluke* for ‘Person of the Year.’
*2003 graduate from Cornell University’s NY State College of Human Ecology’s program in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies.
Now Flucking for pay…by the hour…!!!
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/12072
Egads — she’s such a slute.
That’s BS. She’s not a ‘condom rights advocate’. You can get free condoms in hundreds of places in any city.
Sandra Fluke was trying to destroy the 1st Amendment rights of her university. She wanted to use the legal system to force them to provide ‘free’ contraception despite their religious objection to doing so.
Now, you could accurately label her an “Anti-1st Amendment advocate” or a “Destroyer of Freedom Activist” or an “Opponent of Civil Rights”. But, calling her a ‘condom rights advocate’ is absurd.
Of course it’s BS. I found that headline on the internet — thought it was absurd and it made me laugh. (I should have attributed the source.)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2012/11/28/time-nominates-condom-rights-activist-sandra-fluke-person-year
“Free the condoms!”
Fluke is a trained subversive, sent on this mission and enabled by Democrats that posed for her “testimony before congress” … except it was not before congress (or that committee) at all. But it was staged to appear so … so she could tell her lies under the pretense of a hearing. It was all stagecraft … and still is.
If she was pushing a conservative cause, Maher would include her in his vile sexual fantasies like he does when he verbally/hypothetically sexually assaults Palin (or the “teabaggers”).
But lying to the public and getting away with it is all the rage these days … all means justified for the Obama. Remember 2008, Obama would halve the deficit, no lobbyists in his administration, Obamacare debated on C-Span, and the oceans would cease their rise.
“Apples don’t fall far from the tree”, “you reap what you sew”…
You get the idea.
It’s all about enabling. Look at Obamacare….letting “kids” stay on their parents insurance until they are 26. Seriously???? Let them get a job. The “kids” I know, who were in college had jobs. If you want it bad enough, work for it…THAT’S the American way. Time for everyone to GROW UP
In defense of this one aspect of the insurance quandary the young people found themselves in…because 1) of the 50% unemployment for college grads, we had to temporarily put one of our kids on our insurance, until they, (Thank G_d), got a job, and 2)Obamacare has made even the college health insurance offerings a nightmare, higher costs and getting claims honored has been a nightmare. One of my kids, at Virginia Tech, had their school plan–he works out at a gym, got a hernia, and the health insurance from VT wanted 5yrs of medical records to prove it wasn’t pre-existing. Wouldn’t even cover the MD/surgeon’s eval. and of course the hernia was only 2 months old. Anyway, we paid out of pocket, and then put him on our plan, which was more affordable. BTW, the son had no other previous health problems.
To Dr. Jacobson’s broader point, yes, many of us have been blessed with children who are the opposite of Dunham’s example of young adulthood.
sounds like you did it by choice.
and thats something, if I remember the wordings right, you may no longer have when this goes into full effect.
Along the way, the “taken care of” young adults are losing something important. I remember the days when the hubster and I were “barely making it”. It really sucked at the time, but it forced us to be creative and we survived it. And it makes us grateful for finally being successful, but keeps us from taking it for granted. We know from experience that if we face hard times again, that we’ll come out on the other side just fine and most likely better for the experience.
I got a draft notice at 19 and escaped the tyranny of a mom that cooked pot roast on Sunday into the loving care of a drill sgt that had to shave 3 times a day starting at 4:30am and couldn’t even cook C-rations.
Democrats are the bad parent that will never say no, while Republicans are married to them. Anything twin sluts Julia and this Dunham character want, they get. If the wage earner parent says no, the enabler parent openly argues with the responsible parent about him/her being hateful and selfish, driving a wedge between the child and the responsible parent.
Ted Kennedy might fit that bad parent part, drinking and abusing his daughter’s friends, while blaming the stiff religious America for hating the poor like Romney does.
The analogy needs work. But Democrats are the irresponsible parent that have second mortgaged the house, to cover the maxed out credit cards, run up to keep the spoiled kids on their side. All blame is placed on the “rich” parent for not borrowing more against his struggling business.
Traditionally, the man was the head and the wife would say to the kid “you’ll have to ask your Father”. But now if June is on pills and spends all Ward’s money on shoes and spoiled Beaver, it would be a sexist show because all men like Ward are at war against women and are racist and bigoted. So any analogy has to have the woman as the responsible hero, or it is rejected (by the brainwashed) out of hand.
Obama is going out to campaign for no cuts to anything, unless the mean rich Republicans are too selfish to let him give it to the “middle class”. The politics of division, instead of responsible adults. Obama keeps saying we are an American family … making him the bad parent.
[…] Jacobson has a thing or two to say about the kind of kids who are likely to attend that school: Call that part of that generation’s bluff …we should call that entire generation’s […]
I hate to admit it, but I watched a bunch of episodes the other day after having avoiding it for ages, and it’s a funny, well written show. I don’t know to what degree it does or doesn’t reflect this generation, but as a Generation X’er, I found the way we were characterized at that age by the media and pop culture to be so moronic that it was laughable.
The common thread, however, was that liberal arts majors who can’t find real jobs and are supported by their parents are generally entitled losers no matter what generation they’re from. And, sadly, these are the sort of people who go on to create culture while conservatives invariably being grown ups prevents them from doing likewise.