Letters to the Editor
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More About the Parents
The vignette about gym class is pretty funny; but the ode to grinding and young teen sexuality isn't, and more of a sad reflection on the parents' abdication of responsibility to at least TRY and teach their children that there can be more to life than the hypersexualization and hypercommodification of postmodern western culture.
It's sad that any parent would pay for a 100-person plus sweet 16 "party" replete with drinking and guys groping and grinding on 15 and 16 year old girls.
And if you want to take the liberal cop out that such activity is just free expression, youthful identity formation, harmless rebellion and coming-of-age experimentation, etc., with no negative consequences-- think for a second about the America and the world we live in now, with girls objectified as sluts like never before, a shallow and docile rising generation more interested in being good consumers than doing anything about the devestating wars or immoral and growing social inequities that plague us, and a political system so corrupted by money and corporate interests that affecting change is increasingly impossible.
Does one teenage party with little studs and sluts lead to all of the above? Of course not. But it is a real reflection of a how more and more adults are utterly without a compass, moral or otherwise, and utterly incapable of teaching their kids anything beyond embracing hedonism for all its worth and watching TV at night while the country and the world slide a little closer toward the abyss for all our entertainment.