Instapundit points to this article in the New York Times: The Messy-Kitchen, Parking Spot War

He describes it as "Liberal Mother Syndrome".

Me, I just think the lady is stupid.

I sometimes wonder if the NYT isn't just trolling everyone with items like these, as they are bound to get all sorts of commentary on the thing.


6 comments:

  1. I'm with Eric. The...woman...is ate up with dumb.

    And so is the boy's mother.

    Eric Hines

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  2. Anonymous9:38 PM

    That's . . . pathetic. And boyfriend and daughter both could do with a good swatting. If I'd ever tried that with my parents, I'd still be in low Earth orbit, I'd have gotten booted out of the house so hard!

    LittleRed1

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  3. I think you're right about the trolling. Somewhere there's an editor scouring submissions for articles like this, dreaming of the traffic the outrage will generate.

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  4. It's probably possible to categorize NYT Trolls in much the way that the TV Tropes website works.

    A partial list:

    1) Sensitive Man articles: 'As a man, I felt very uncomfortable during the silent meditation at the Buddhist retreat, and the ritual enemas were hard for me to take. In the end, though, I felt completely cleansed by the experience. I am on the way to getting in touch with my feminine side and becoming a better person.'

    2) Mommy Wars articles: 'Although it's controversial, half of all mothers are terrible people.' Repeat next week with accusations against the other half.

    3) The South Is Hell articles: 'Half church and half Klan rally, this little town we visited for an hour is emblematic of everything wrong with the South and conservatives.' (No actual churches or Klan rallies appear in the article.)

    4) Republicans Hate Women-and-or-Science articles. 'Imagine my surprise to learn that my doctor was a Baptist and a donor to conservative causes! Immediately I ran back through twenty years of health advice given me and my children to see if I could spot any signs of ideological hate. Here are my free-association notes from that process.'

    5) Racism Is Alive (but only from white people). 'The following anecdote about a particularly stupid clerk at a store I visited last week will demonstrate that white people are completely blind to the evils they inflict on the whole rest of humanity.'

    Others?

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  5. Liberal Mother syndrome seems to involve a lot of passive-aggressiveness.

    No one in the family has a very tight grip on what's what. Dad has converted to some kind of part-time, mail-it-in status that no one even bothers talking about. Whatevs, Dad! Mom's not sure she's the grownup. Daughter's not sure she not the grownup. Boyfriend thinks he has the run of the place even when neither Mom nor Daughter is home. Very weird.

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  6. Boyfriend's getting the only thing that interests him, free for the asking. And it's not girlfriend's Mom's digs or fridge.

    Interesting, too, that boyfriend prefers girlfriend's Mom's digs over his own.

    Eric Hines

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