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October 30, 2002
Youngster Update

I suppose you want to hear about the youngsters. I think Eli is going to be a commando. He has the army crawl perfected, and he knows that when grabbing someone's head you should grip him firmly by the ears. If only we could get him to stop gnawing on shoes and eating floor lint. All part of the survival skills, I guess.

Caleb, meanwhile, has finally figured out why Eli is pressed to his mother's chest every three hours. I believe he's a bit envious, but heck, so am I. A few days ago, after observing for a few minutes, Caleb announced, "I want to try it. Can I have some?"

Without an ounce of pity, my wife informed him, "Your time has come and gone."

I suppose some of the more militant La Leche mothers would disagree, but it seems to me that your child should be done breastfeeding once he is capable of naming them. I know there's a whole long list of reasons for nursing a four year-old, but, the very high "Ewww" factor aside, I suspect this sort of thing might produce malign side effects, like overdependence and emotional immaturity, both of which lead in turn to voting Democratic, and we certainly don't need any more of that.

One of the many girlfriends Caleb left behind in Kansas is named Kami. She's three times his age, but he digs the older women. Yesterday he sighed and said, "I love Kami."

"I know you do."

"Yeah. She has cars."

He's a good little fella, despite his weakness for doe-eyed lasses with ample Matchbox collections. It maddens me to think of all the vile people waiting to get their hooks into little ones such as these. Marketers, government educrats, diversity-mongers and their trailing throngs of professional victims -- the list of trolls itching to influence our children seems to grow with each Harvard graduation. They must be guarded against with a vigilance that lesser parents will never understand.

For example, Caleb received as a gift a book that is all about rescue heroes. You know, firefighters, police officers, paramedics, overbearing weekend-warrior ATF thugs (just kidding), and so on. On every page there are at least two of a type of hero, and at least one of the heroes is a person of color, or a woman, or both. On some pages there are no white males among the heroes, which is fine, as far as I'm concerned. What's interesting, however, is that one of the scenes shows four police officers (two brown women, one white woman, one black man), arresting two bank robbers.

You can, I'm sure, guess the rest. Although no other job classification in the book features all white males, both robbers are white men. While the illustrator clearly went out of his way (and far outside the boundaries of credulity -- how often do you see a woman firefighter lugging a man down an escape ladder?) to ensure a misrepresentative but idyllic diversity on his pages, he chose not to extend this diversity to the criminals.

How pathetically condescending, but then again, so is Jesse Jackson, and nobody's kicking him out of the Women and Minorities Grievance Committee.

Even worse than this subtle attempt at indoctrination is what produced the following statement from Caleb today as he handed scrap papers to the wife and me: "Look at me, I'm the mailperson."

"What?"

"I'm the mailperson, Daddy."

"The mailperson?" I asked my wife.

"He has a tape that talks about different jobs like that. It must be on there."

"I want it out of my house."

"Okay."

"Seriously."

"I hear you."

"So," I said to Caleb, "you're the mailman, eh? The mailman."

"Yep, I'm the mailman."

Take that, all you people who would trap the minds of our children in your insipid little utopias. Brainwash your own kids, if any of you bother to have them.

Posted by Woodlief on October 30, 2002 at 09:54 PM


Comments

Thanks for airing this insidious PC takeover of children's books and almost any form of print advertising out there. White males make up approx 40% of the US population yet, by my unscientific observations (usually accompanied by ranting to the DW), are displayed less than 25% of the time in books and magazines. Hey, that makes me a minority, right? WHERE'S MY ENTITLEMENT CHECK!!!!

Posted by: Mike at October 30, 2002 11:52 PM

since when has 'mail-person' become the PC version of mailman? I thought it was mail carrier, like fireman became the more gender neutral fire-fighter, stewardess to flight attendant, etc.

rather than 'correcting' the genderized part of the job title, concentrate more on the activity being performed. and it sounds a lot better than 'mail-person'.

Posted by: Mike Jacobs at October 31, 2002 8:47 AM

Mike,

The reasons he felt like 'correcting' the gender are perhaps because:

1. It's his child.
2. He can raise his child he way he sees fit.

You may want to perform a nice little "pop" psychological examination of yourself and ask why it is that this would bother you in the first place. Perhaps too much feminist rhetoric has oozed into the thinking?

I suppose if Caleb grows up saying “mailman” rather than “mail carrier” we had best expect him to also develop a penchant for wife-beater t-shirts and violence as he wasn’t taught the proper sensitivities.

Posted by: Davey at October 31, 2002 9:02 AM

You know, I recently ran across some census info from 2000 (I don't have the link anymore, unfortunately) and was actually *surprised* when I saw the numbers. Hispanics make up something like 12.5% of the population, brown people make up about 12.2% (I refuse to say African American unless that person was actually BORN in Africa. My family came from Britian, but I'm not British American. I'm white. So that makes them brown.), whites around 75%, and the rest scattered among the various other minorities. Look at that number, TWELVE PERCENT. Now, not that I think they shouldn't be entitiled to their fair share of representation in media, but we've gone way overboard in our attempt to look pc.

Posted by: amy at October 31, 2002 9:12 AM

I feel your PC pain. My seven year old is also into the Rescue Heroes, and it's hard to get by all the PC crap. Of course, my son seems to care less. He has GI Joe fly his Barbi airplane, while Barbie serves the passengers. I'm sure the NOW gang would be appalled.

My son did the army crawl thing too, and one of his teachers suggested that some of his hyperactive behaviour may be related to his crawling style (vs. hands and knees). Apparently, it has someting to do with muscle development. Or, it might have something to do with being a seven year old boy. Research continues.

Posted by: Michael at October 31, 2002 9:22 AM

Great absolutly great
As said above raise your child , my son is just on the cusp of getting to that in the hooks stage and i am exceptionally vigilant that he quite frankly learn things the way i did, very pre-pc
what the hell is wrong with mailman and mailwoman ?
HG

Posted by: Howard at October 31, 2002 10:35 AM

So what term are you teaching him: black, brown, African American, Afro-American, or other?

Posted by: disconnect at October 31, 2002 10:45 AM

Didn't someone once say, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"?

Posted by: MarcV at October 31, 2002 11:16 AM

I, for one, absolutely love all things PC. The books are marvelous for starting non-matchlight charcoal, the video tapes make excellent furniture levelers (though you may have to break them up, first), the various dolls and playthings do wonders for my dog's gums. My entire life would be so much more difficult without Political Correctness.

Posted by: Tom at October 31, 2002 2:55 PM

That's ridiculous. Everyone knows that the proper, PC terms for men and women who deliver mail are "mailman" and "femailman," respectively.

Posted by: Milton Wright at October 31, 2002 7:09 PM

Excellent, Tony. I'm making my fiancee read this -- we'll probably have kids someday and she needs to be prepared.

Posted by: Spoons at November 1, 2002 1:14 AM

"Mailperson"! How non-PC! Obviously there's a "son" in "mailperson." Plainly, the word should be "mailone." Or should it simply be "mail"? (As "chairman" has morphed into "chair.")

On second thouht, "mail" probably won't do. Homonym problem.

Posted by: Ken Hirsch at November 1, 2002 2:33 AM

Postal carrier.....

Tony, I feel for you! I go through the same thing all the time. Fortunately, I have become very adept at brainwashing my youngsters....and they are now as warped their mom.

Posted by: Da Goddess at November 1, 2002 2:36 AM

You'll be delighted to know that female enlisted folks in the Air Force are still called "airmen."

The Marine Corps can't be confused with the PC elite either, they have "marines" and "women marines" (or WM's for short.)

However in the Army we are all merely "soldiers." No doubt the insidious work of some feminist, communist, harvard educated, brainwashing PC nazi, knee-jerk-liberal.

Posted by: rhodesius at November 1, 2002 6:56 AM

For another perspective on extended breastfeeding, check this out.

(shudder)

Posted by: disconnect at November 1, 2002 10:46 AM

When I was a kid, our 'mail carrier' was a very nice lady (she alwasy took a few minutes to chat with me when I saw her and, in the summers, she would see my letters from camp and send me stamps). She had a sense of humour, too. Her vehicle had signs on the doors that said "U.S. Fe-Mail", given to her by her coworkers (all gov't employees, too).

I'm only 33 - that wasn't so very long ago. We lost something precious when we let them start sanitizing the language. It may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle, though I'm with you 100% in fighting the rearguard action against their nonsense.

Posted by: Dodd at November 1, 2002 12:08 PM

Of course it's not limited to childrens literature. Before retirement I was a very reluctant member of AFSCME - a union of government employees - and recipient of their monthly magazine. There were always copies in the workplace too and I would delight in tossing it to someone and say "find the white guy." The photos were inevitably overwhelming in the number of Blacks, Latinos, women, etc.

Posted by: tom scott at November 1, 2002 12:48 PM

I like your wife !

Posted by: ron robertson at November 1, 2002 2:49 PM

Is there anything I can do to convince you to ping Weblogs.com? I want to be able to read your latest posts as soon as you write them (I'm impatient like that) instead of when my poor excuse for a memory has me clicking all the "non-updated" links on my blogroll. Come on, support my lazy blog surfing mentality. ;)

Posted by: Cis at November 3, 2002 3:59 PM

By the way.....I found an AWFUL book at the library the other day after I commented here. It's called (or something akin to) "The Wump Way" and the land has been invaded by Pollutians....who make it difficult for the Wumps to breathe.

That couldn't possibly be an attempt to brainwash our children, could it?

Posted by: Da Goddess at November 4, 2002 2:53 AM

Tony:

A colleague at work told me that his son's teacher told the class not to waste a single drop of water. Hold the glass under the tap, fill the glass, and turn the tap off before withdrawing the glass. Also, flush the toilet once a day. For the salvation of the environment, of course.

It is a cold fact that one lesson parents must teach their children is that many of their teachers (and assorted others in authority) are idiots.

*****

I've been reading you in arrears for the last several weeks (I'm seemingly busy, but I'm not quite sure with what) so I have not been commenting. Your dissection of the economist's cost-benefit analysis of terrorism was excellent. Your reminiscence of your daughter was a poignant exercise in autobiography that was at the same time an eloquent brief for the Christian viewpoint.

Posted by: jim at November 4, 2002 7:40 AM

Tony.
I've missed you. Thanks for still listing me among the donors and the blogroll (amazing, since I haven't updated the thing since May.)

Also, thanks for frightening the crap out of me as I consider possibly trying to conceive my first child. (P.C.? Me??!?)

On the other hand, it's nice to know young boys will most likely be ogling my breasts for years to come.

Hell, a girl can always have hope.

Posted by: Alice at November 5, 2002 11:10 PM