This one's REAL!

http://www.canofun.com/blog/videos/isbushdrunkie.wmv

YOu definitely need to watch the show, Video Dog...I pegged it the moment I first heard the "cop's" voice.

"discrimination, assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress."

Sounds like standard sales "motivational techniques" to me. I've worked in various kinds of sales, and this kind of juvenile BS is pretty common...rah-rah speeches, little songs, mottos that everyone is forced to repeat...and petty humiliation and frat-boy hazing of those who don't meet their "goals."

A lot of sales managers think "motivation" means keeping those under you in a state of constant fear and emotional dependence.

Doesn't make it right, of course, but I expect that the defense will be something along those lines.

I just finished Stephen King's novel Cell today. In it, there's a character who puts forth the proposition that humans, stripped of higher brain functions, revert to the thing that made them the dominant species here on Earth: the fact that we are the meanest, most vicious motherfuckers on the planet.

It seems to me that the writer here is saying the same thing in a much more genteel way. And she gets savaged by the commentors, where I haven't heard anyone say a mumblin' word about King's thesis.

Here's the thing. Like it or not, there's a dark, violent core in all of us. It's the genetic echo of the killer ape who survived on the African plain by being just the breed of vicious little bastard that King describes. And, however regrettable, you can see it to this day in the agressive behavior of children.

That's okay. They don't know any better, and teaching them to know better is part of what we do as parents. And it's a tough lesson to teach: go too far in repressing agression and your children become patsies, or worse, sheep willing to follow anyone; don't go far enough in channeling agression, and they become nothing better than animals with shoes.

That, however inexpertly portrayed, seems to be the point of this piece.

Those who want to refute it woud do well not to emulate the viciousness of killer apes themselves.

Some of these letters in which the writers get all indignant about the idea that little boys could potentially grow up to engage in barbaric behavior make me long for the days when Lord of the Flies was required reading.

Yup - the definitive guide to young children. Well that says a lot about the writer of that letter.

And the fact that you feel the need to respond to disagreements with a sneering personal attack says volumes, my friend, about you.

Actually, if you had read *and* comprehended it you might have realised it was a allegory for adult behaviour and completely ridiculous to apply to this discussion.

Not true. It's an allegory for human behavior. The fact that children are the subjects illustrates and makes more shocking just how deep the savagery goes. Otherwise, why not make it about adults?

You get huffy by an assertion that all boys are potential rapists. Sorry, but they are. And potential murderers, thieves, etc. As are all girls...potentially. Just as they are all potentially healers and saints. But there's work and worry for a parent in steering a child to the right path. That's the anxiety I hear in Sullivan's column. Try to get past your rage and see that.

I must have skipped over the part where she declared her undying hatred of all things male and universally condemned all men (including her own kids) as future rapists.

You didn't miss it. It's not there. It's people arguing with the voices in their heads again.

http://letters.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/05/01/duke_rape/view/

It's called "Duke_Rape" for a reason. It's not about parental worries, it's about "The Evil That MEN (Potentially) Do"

Perhaps I do't understand...are you pointing to a comment by another person about what the article is about as evidence of what the article is about?

I was pointing to what Salon, and the writer above, say the article is about. The link I posted

http://letters.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/05/01/ duke_rape

is the URL (look up at the top of your browser if you're still confused).

Thank you for the clarification. However, I agree with the person who thinks you may be reading a tad too much into what the technical person who loaded the file named it. Of course the essay pertains to the Duke rape story. It's a long leap, however, from the mere words "Duke rape" to "claiming that all men are potential rapists." And it's also a long leap from describing a perfectly normal (and foten fleeting) parental worry to "claiming that all me are potential rapists." I suspect that the people referring to that worry as "neurosis" do not have children themselves.

When I talk about people "arguing with the voices in their heads", what I'm describing is the phenomenon we see here: an angry reaction based on what some other writer or speaker has said (or even is alleged to have said) rather than the actual words under discussion.

Also, ". . ." means there's text missing from the sentence.

It can also indicate a pause. Generally, it only indicates text left out of a direct quote, not a statement by the writer himself. But this really isn't a thread about grammar, is it?

Humans don't form packs; they form groups or families or clans or tribes, etc., but not packs.

Tell that to the Shangri-Las.

But I do see my overly-paranoid, somewhat-dworkinist, Newsweek-loving sister in this article, complete with both her kids and her unending litany of fears.

This, I think, was the point I was making. Your reaction is more to your sister than Erin Sullivan.