Friday, October 05, 2007

Swift Reactions 3

For the third edition of "Swift Reactions" (in which I highlight what you, the reader, have to say and feign interest), I would like to talk about our nation's youth. Like President Bush I've been thinking a lot lately about America's young people and the future of our country. In my pieces "Are We Tasering People Enough?" and "Bush to Kids: Grow Up!" I pointed out how spoiled and disrespectful many of our children are and how ill-prepared they are to fight the wars of the 21st century. And judging by some of the comments I've gotten here and reactions to my pieces in the blogosphere my fears are well-founded.

I've been writing about how lazy and coddled students are from the earliest days of this blog. One of the first pieces I wrote for this blog, "Financial Aid: Welfare for Students," in which I described how schools are turning kids into taxpayer-leeching liberals, is still getting a response. It received a comment just this week from someone named Jared, whose disrespect for his elders is equaled only by the arrogance of his youth. In response to my question "The better educated you are, the more likely you are to be liberal. What does that tell you?" Jared responded: "What it tells me is that die hard conservatives like your self just aren't educated enough to understand something as complicated as student aid."

But Jared's deep-seated, Supreme Court-worthy anger and lack of respect are nothing compared with that of the young Harry Potter fans who recently found their way to this site to excoriate me for writing "Harry Potter Is a Brat." (For a very thorough point-by-point denunciation of my piece, see this post at Ioannus de Verani's blog.) "Many thanks for the unintentional humor," said a cheeky commenter named Alyssa. "ITS A FRIGGEN BOOK! probably the best and most interesting book ive ever written, i saw harry potter when i was 5 and you dont see me doing witchcraft? i was young? CAUSE I WAS SMART ENOUGH TO NO IT WAS FAKE! and unless you think the world is entirely stupid to understand this you have a problem, and must be a sh---y writer for picking on an innocent book," said another young fan who apparently thinks she's J.K. Rowling, while another fan concludes, "I've always been told that conservatives were stupid ignorant prats, of course i've never belived them but now i do. You are downright stupid." Of course, I deeply regret giving anyone the wrong impression of conservatives, but my biggest concern is with the torturous relationship these young readers have with the English language, as I pointed out in a comment on a post by Two Knives. Harry Potter fans are apparently literary geniuses compared with Bratz doll fans, and Bratz doll lovers had Two Knives contemplating censorship of tween comments to spare the illiterate tykes embarrassment, though I think a little embarrassment might do them some good -- if they are able to feel embarrassment.

Who is to blame for the poor language skills and potty mouths of our nation's tiny tots? Perhaps Samuel at Desk Full of Clutter, who is an advocate of homeschooling, might know the answer. Here is his response to "Bush to Kids: Grow Up!" edited slightly to make it safe for the reading enjoyment of the entire family: "Assuming this [expletive deleted] is serious, I've got a nominee for the world's biggest [expletive deleted]. Go here, bring a garbage can up next to the computer in case you need to vomit. I really wish I could convince myself it's a spoof, but sadly, I think he actually thinks all this [expletive deleted] that tumbles out of his cold, bastard soul. Thanks to Daryl [Cobranchi at HE&OS] for linking to this [expletive deleted] and making my night less pleasant than it might otherwise have been."

You can imagine what a relief it is after reading such a vituperative attack to return to the protective bosom of my own blog and my (mostly) supportive readers who are coming up with real solutions to the problem of our wayward youth. "All kids should be left 'Home Alone' and they will learn how to fight off burglars using only household tools. Later these skills can be applied to hold terrorists outside the entire country!" Roderick suggested helpfully.

Malagent lent support to my argument that more young people should be tasered by pointing out that tasers don't kill people, people kill people. "It's kind of like saying automobiles caused the death in car accidents, it may be a factor but it's not the cause," he wrote. And they only hurt for, like, a millisecond, he added. Thank you very much for bringing your "aggressive common sense" (as your blog's tagline puts it) to my blog, but I hope I am not being too rude if I say that the even more aggressive feature on your site which redirects you to a page that tries to force you at virtual gunpoint to download Firefox if you happen to wander over there using Internet Explorer is not only extremely annoying but quite possibly un-American.

However, perhaps all this talk of bratty children has had a deleterious effect on some of my adult commenters, who appear to have regressed into attention-starved two year olds. Lord Higham-Johnson of the always fun to read blog Nourishing Obscurity was quite enthusiastic about the first edition of "Swift Reactions," calling it a "nifty scheme." But by the second edition of "Swift Reactions" he seemed miffed that I hadn't yet mentioned him: "Eagerly having written about you last week, Jon, I eagerly came over to look at the second edition and zilch - nicho, nix, not a sausage. Sigh. And it was a labour of love too," he wrote. Apparently, it all comes down to "me, me, me" (and by "me, me, me" I mean "you, you, you") for His Grace, or however one is supposed to address a Lord. But never let it be said I don't give my readers what they want and so this edition of "Swift Reactions" is dedicated to him, with my apologies for depriving him of the attention he craves. I wonder if I should start a new series consisting solely of reactions to "Swift Reactions," which I could call "Swift Reactions Reactions."

Before I leave you, I just want to point out that this modest blog has had the great fortune of selling three ads this week instead of the usual zero, although no one has bought the special discounted $65,000 ad yet (which I only need to sell one of, as MW astutely points out). I hope you will all take a look at what our fine sponsors are proffering, which must be worthy since they have had the good taste to support this blog. And if you have even more time to while away this week, head on over to the 2007 Weblog Awards site and reward some of your favorite blogs with a nomination.

18 comments:

Dee Paolina said...

I'd just like to point out thatI knew it was satire. Sam was the one who was fooled and went ballistic.

Navi said...

apparently, Malagent's blog is also capable of realizing IE tab is still Firefox. I had to actually open IE to view the un-American page.

Anonymous said...

The President's mother intimated on a public service announcement that eating dinner as a family together would take care of the problem of "bad" children. What a simple fix to a world-wide problem. I'm just wondering what exactly she did since her "child" was into drugs and has just about destroyed our country and our freedoms. Simplistic fixes probably don't work if you take her "success" to heart.

James Higham said...

Here's my other cheek to slap too, Jon. Perhaps you missed the tongue firmly planted there. :)

Swift Reactions Reactions. Now I like the sound of that. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Jon,

The redirect you speak of is actually very American. I have advanced JavaScript features and IE does not render the pages well. Resulting in lots of very angry emails from IE users blaming me for their browser's deficiencies.

I don't consider it rude of you to point it out, a few people have expressed dislike for it, well four to be exact including you. But there are security issues in IE and the script is only supposed to show if it detects those flaws, note the comment that states that it would not show up when accessed with IE Tab and the real IE had to be used to invoke the page.

But it does not seem to make much of a difference on my traffic stats as I've only been gaining visitors for the last year solid. Oh, and I get paid for each download as well. Which is capitalism at work, and it does work well.

Regardless I think I will be removing it soon as 95% of my visitors use Firefox and I don't make nearly as much money on it as I used to.

Oh, thanks for the mention, I received 7 visitors from the link on this page thus far and two of them downloaded Firefox.

Unknown said...

however one is supposed to address a Lord

As an Irishman, you should be addressing him as "you f-cking English C-nt."

Anonymous said...

I think if we all fully embrace the President's policies of de-scientification and go God, we will all soundly conclude that vaccinations and most medicine is actually the work of the axis of evil.

All these vaccinations are just allowing young nare-do-wells to live unnaturally long lives.

www.theskinofmyteeth.com

David

James Higham said...

jadyett - Muslim name, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Actually greek/yorkshire/alcoholic. We're a mongrel breed.

Mauro said...

By the way, Jon, I think you ought to be careful with Swift Reactions lest people start reacting in such a way as to end up in Swift Reactions on purpose. Some of your fellow conservatives may begin posing as liberals with silly liberal thinking just so that you will react to them, like what has happened with the foul and godless but conservatively manly (he knows the alphabet!) Maddox.

cognitorex said...

Apropos of nothing, I thought you ("Jon Swift") might like this.

70,000 DEAD IN MID-EAST AUGERS GLAD TIDINGS IN WAR ON TERRORISM
.
Professor Adolph Von Euclid revealed today new math formulations which indicate that continuing massive deaths in the Middle East herald increasing success in the war on terror.
The newly revealed postulates show that at present for each thousand miscarnaged civilians nine point seven terrorists are killed. An ancillary formulation to the miscarnaged postulates shows that in near simultanity seventeen new terrorists are created per thousand miscarnagees resulting in a dead/arisen terrorist ratio of negative fifty seven per cent, plus or minus an Arab or two either way.
Using Third Reichian formulae, adjusted for lack of Jews in the study, genocidal statistics show that the number of new terrorists arising per thousand expunged civilians will eventually peak at thirty one point eight while the the number of terrorists killed per thousand collateral accidentists will increase non linearly due to the massive influx of new terrorists and the time honored normal war time change in methods of recording so many damn dead, dead, dead people.
The so postulated formulaic conclusion is that at one hundred twelve thousand innocents slaughtered the terrorist dead to terrorists arisen ratio should geometrically swoop into the positive range heralding a pleasant advance in the war on terror:
All going well, that is.

Anonymous said...

Jon -- I see you are still doing your very best Dale Carnegie impersonation. Unfortunately, it seems as if you've continued to alienate the ignorant and generate hostility amongst the hopeless masses.

Sorry it isn't working out better for you.

Anonymous said...

This is all well and good but we're I come from in New Zealand, there is a bill before the Government trying to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12.

I don't think it should stop there, I believe criminal responsibility should be apportioned at birth and that all children should line up every month for a tasering.

That'd keep the little buggers in line.

Yours

Benny Watch

Anonymous said...

Jon Swift embodies the heart and soul of conservatism. How can anyone think that his writings are satire?

Unlike the filthy satirists at Townhall.com who mock conservatism and conservatives in general, Jon Swift is consistent and true to his principles.

He is like a streak of bat piss. Or, in other words, he illuminates the dark like a shaft of gall.

J. said...

but we're I come from

Perhaps someone can put a bill before the New Zealand govt. requiring the teaching of english in schools.

Anonymous said...

Yeah I got that as soon as I wrote it, tried to correct it but was too slow.

Touche sir.

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Baldwin said...

Well, I do not actually imagine it is likely to have success.
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