Thursday, February 18, 2010

Green Police busybodies

Sitting around work yesterday, a colleague who should have been doing actual work was busily flipping through one of those celebrity rags commenting on the lives of those featured and judging them as good bad or indifferent. Under the best of circumstances I find that fascination with the "celebs" is the province of whiny people who either are insanely jealous "what's so beautiful about Angelina Jolie" or so uncertain about their own tastes that they need Oprah to choose their reading and Martha to decorate their kitchen.

Yesterday, after snippy remarks about sundry celebs the focus turned to that family who has the twenty kids. Without reading the "story" she pronounced the family "disgusting, just disgusting", not because of their behaviors or because they are dependant on the public largesse...because there is no reason to believe they are..just because of the fact of twenty children and the perceived detriment to the polar bears and snail darters. She waxes boringly philosophical about how people should have licenses to have children to preclude this sort of excess. This colleague generally thinks that having more than two children is "disgusting" and stated that she "hated" anyone who had a van or an SUV. In fact, I guess you could say that she professes the sort of liberal orthodoxy that keeps talk show types like Limbaugh in business.

Like many of these people who'd like to dictate what we can drive, what we can eat, what sort of home we can own and how many children we can be "permitted" to have, she is a forever young unmarried lass in her mid-forties with NO children. Maybe her disgust for those of us who have families and nice homes is firmly rooted in sour grapes and jealousy, "if I can't have it, nobody should" Maybe she spends her little life plotting this philosophy, who knows. But I had had enough. I finally spoke up against this nonsense and said "it's none of your business how many kids someone chooses to have". She was very defensive and stated that if there was a magazine feature about someone that their lives became her business. Flapadoodle.

My annoyance with this person has been growing for some time, but yesterday I just had to say something. Both of my parents came from families of eight and nine and there was nothing disgusting about them. My grandparents raised their kids without help from the public trough and without advice from Oprah, Dr. Oz, Martha Stewart or this childless wonder, sterile cuckoo busybody. Their kids all became productive citizens and had families of their own. Nothing "disgusting" about it.

Perhaps most amazing to me is that if a woman chose to have multiple abortions or chose to live a totally "me first" life, this colleague would be singing her praises and admiring her courage. Love of family and focusing on the future (unless its the future of meerkats or lemurs) apparently is the choice of the weak and selfish. Only a life without posterity is good and meaningful.

Jealous or stupid?