Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Impatient
Published Letters: 68 Editor's Choice: 9
I don't think parents should be allowed to bring their kid everywhere.
Kids now are all-too-often spoiled brats. If their parents are too lazy to discipline their kids consistently, then either stay home or hire a sitter. Do NOT inflict your failed parenting experiments on a world of innocent bystanders. If the choice is that you not be allowed in adult friendly public places with your little fiends, thus dooming you to prison with them at home, or to endure their miserable company in what would otherwise be a peaceful adult environment---do not expect the world of innocent bystanders to acquiesce just so you can have a work release furlough for a few hours.
The Supernanny is a tv show that is doing as well as it is because there are millions of parents in the world for whom "Sometimes it's just not worth fighting over" has become a parenting philosophy. What Jo Frost teaches is that only by being consistent in discipline do children grow up to be tolerable. Because parents are not willing to spank, or even to consistently insist on their way of doing things, their kids act like little beasts all of the time. How can they possibly stand by and watch this aappalling behavior and not be shamed into correcting it?
If you make your kids tolerable, they will be tolerated. If you allow your kids to be appalling behavioral messes, they won't be. That simple.
I think Cary is right. I am sympathetic to the boyfriend's plight in having lost the money, but it really was bad form to force someone else to fix the problem.
When it happened he should have just reassessed his new situation (Ok, hmm. All my money is gone. What shoudl I do now?) and figured out a way to solve the problem without making his host solve it for him. Immature is exactly what that was, and the gracious thing to do would have been to quietly wire family or friends for money, if he had no funds available on his own, and had them help him out. He made his host look bad, embarrassed his future father in law, and maybe he ruined the ruputations of innoccent housemaids, who no doubt also had to deal with the fall out of the entire incident.
This is why, when you travel, you use traveler's checks and why, when you travel, you get one of those little black canvase purses with the neckstring that allows you to carry your cash, next to your body, under your shirt.
Simple.
Dear Cary,
I am looking for clues. This letter struck me as being written by a woman.
How do you know it's a man?
The one thing I take issue with is the idea that "who knew Oprah was an eye for an eye kind of gal?" Are you KIDDING? Oprah has become the ueber republican! She hangs with Condi Rice, for god's sake! Who can forget THAT excellent television, when Oprah wanted to have Jennifer Aniston and Condi Rice over for one big hugfest pajama party, till Jennifer Aniston had the good sense to tell her "it's Condi or me."
She lives in a $60 million mansion with a glorified boy toy and five dogs. I would say a mature, reasoned and balanced point of view is not a hallmark of Oprah. What IS a hallmark of Oprah is teen-aged histrionics from an aging "gal". The only thing more disconcerting than watching her stick a rod up Frey's butt was watching her flip her white-girl hairdo around as she did it---very valley girl.
Oprah has become the ultimate mean girl.
I'd agree that it's great that these people are saving so much money. But it is ONLY great if they aren't doing it at other people's expense.
I suspect that someone whose husband is earning a moderate salary and who is managing a household with two small children is able to save $300,000 over a period of about ten years (calculating the ten years based on their being in their middle thirties) is doing it by taking advantage of other people.
I remember reading the Frugal Zealot books when Amy Daczyzn was publishing her newsletter and I was impressed because she was truly frugal in the best sense of the word. But how many people are frugal by accepting gifts wihtout ever reciprocating, by taking advantage of public services or facilities in ways that are unreasonable, or by taking advantage of things that are free but that were never intended to be taken to an extreme. I suspect that a woman who can't bring herself to spend money on a sweater at the Gap, as a Christmas present for someone who has presumably done a ton of things for HER is not being frugal, but is being selfish and cheap. It is not ok to keep taking without occasionally giving in return. No one is saying she has to fritter away her $300,000, but there is a happy medium.
Furthermore, Amy Daczyzn does point out something that I think is always worth remembering in these discussion of frugality. Just because things are free doesn't mean they don't cost. They may not cost the person who is taking advantage of the offer of their being free, but they cost someone. It costs the taxpayer to maintain parks and zoos, it costs the taxpayer to maintain libraries; it costs restaurant owners to provide water and crackers and butter and bread. It costs waiters and waitresses to supply service to people who don't tip. There is an issue of ethics in frugality that those who are frugal often seem to feel justified in ignoring. The bottom line is that it is fine to save money if you are being responsible and kind citizens and family and society members at the same time.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
