You Suck, Part 2: Amy Chua in the Wall Street Journal

It is hard, given the space here, to do justice to the awfulness of Amy Chua's article "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior," so I'll try to distill it down to the essential issues:

It is racist.  Very, very racist.  And yes, Ms. Chua, you can be racist and a "minority."  (By the way, being Chinese, makes you a worldwide "majority," so stop milking the term and grow the fuck up.)

It encourages abusive child-rearing.  No, this is not a cultural difference of opinion.  Being a nasty bitch to your children and talking smack about other people's kids isn't proper parenting, in word or in deed, no matter where you live in the world.

It ignores the high rates of suicide and self-abuse that occur in cultures that encourage this kind of nastiness.  Yeah, your kid is a great piano player, but you beat the shit out of her self esteem to get her there.  You also denied her anything like a decent social experience, and you've made sure that she will grow up to be a career-driven, frigid bitch like you.  I hope you like the sound of Beethoven and resentment.

It is more about how Amy Chua thinks she is a perfect mother, against all evidence, than about her failed efforts at lauding the cultural superiority of a society that believes shame can fix anything.  Western society is slowly learning that guilt isn't the answer to all ills, and China is lagging behind.  Catch up, Ms. Chua, and join the modern world.

Ms. Chua confuses abuses brainwashing with filial gratitude.  Yeah, you berated, threatened, abused, ground-down and emotionally bludgeoned your kid into playing "The Little White Donkey."  You made her miserable, treated her like trash, made her feel stupid and worthless and alone, threw out her things, screamed at your husband, and acted like the most self-entitled, egotistical, living-vicariously-through-my-children's-successes sociopath I have ever encountered in the educated world.  And when your daughter finally gets it, when she finally succeeds, you think she is happy out of pride?  She's happy because you might leave her alone for a few minutes, you psychotic, self-righteous, nasty bitch!  I can beat a donkey until it climbs a hill, but just because it is a steep hill and the donkey couldn't climb it the day before, I'm still a lousy person for having done it.

Amy Chua represents the worst of academia; she is a cold, narrow-minded cultural imperialist that shouldn't be allowed near children, either hers or anyone else's.  She is arrogance personified, a holdover from the days when China thought itself the master of the world.  And like China, she will learn too late that the world has moved past her, and she will struggle to catch up.

Nice Work, Sarah Palin

But what else could you expect from a woman that loves to shoot animals from the open door of a helicopter?  A hit list that leads some psychotic republican to go on a shooting rampage is just the kind of thing that Sarah Palin would dream up.

Hell, the woman posted a map full of crosshairs aimed at her least favourite people.  With that many nut-case gun owners in one country, that many morons with internet connections, that many deluded weirdos living in cabins in the woods of America, polishing their rifles and muttering Bible versus to themselves, what else would Sarah Palin expect?

Of course, that question suggest that there is a functioning brain cell in that empty little head of hers.  There almost certainly isn't one.  Her gross ignorance, blind patriotism, and lack of a functioning vocabulary leads me to believe that she couldn't possibly predict that a map full of targets with people's names listed next to them might be misconstrued by her fellow militant right-wingers.

Foresight?  Ha.

Discretion?  Madness.

Welcome to Sarah Palin's America.

Are You Joking Me?

You know that friend that you have that constantly posts new profile pictures of herself (and it is always herself) on Facebook?  You know the ones.  The pictures are usually self-shot, often by judicious use of her bathroom mirror.  And rather than her smiling like a normal person, she's trying really hard to look all pouty and brooding, and she isn't looking at the camera, like she's trying to take a candid picture of herself, like she doesn't realize her own fucking camera is pointed at her.

Yeah, my wife has a friend like that.  (We'll call her "Missy Miss" here.)  She is as narcissistic and annoying as you would imagine someone like that to be, but she managed to surprise even me with the depths of her self-love when she requested that my wife send out a survey for her birthday.  My wife is supposed to collect the thoughts of all of her friends about what Missy Miss means to all of them.

Those ideas are great when someone does them spontaneously for you, but when you request one for yourself, you are a fucking train-wreck.  That's like planning your own surprise party.  No, check that.  That's like asking your friend to plan the surprise party for you and handing her the goddamn guest list and a list of ice cream preferences.

If you have a profile picture that you took yourself where you are looking away from the lens in a deliberate attempt to catch your best angle, close your Facebook account, shave your head, and go live in the fucking woods because you are too much of a waste to be part of my glorious new douchebag-free society.

Lurking Racist Trolls

Yeah, you know who you are.  You're the weaselly little KKK shit from Alabama that posts racist comments on the "I Have a Dream" speech on YouTube.  You're poor, ignorant, likely a regular target for molestation by family members, and the epitome of the word "white trash."  I went to watch said video the other day and couldn't believe how busy you've been trying to compensate for the abject nothingness of your existence.

Please feel free to perform fellatio on your 20 gauge the next time you get the urge to sign into your YouTube account.

And to the owners of YouTube, grow a fucking pair and start monitoring your site.  You'd swear that you were owned by the Aryan Nation the way that you jackasses cater to small-town America.  Not taking down racist propaganda isn't protecting free speech or avoiding censorship; it's giving tacit approval to hate.  Man up and clean some fucking house.

Happy New Year

This year, make a resolution to stop being such a narcissistic cock-face.  If you're a Canadian, resolve to quit being so self-righteously proud of a country that lacks an identity, effective government, or world presence.  If you're an American, stop barking about how your country is the greatest in the world; you don't even have free healthcare, something that all of the developed and near-developed world provides its citizens.  And if you're a Mexican, resolve to stop killing all those tourists.

If You Drive a Mercedes, You're an Asshole

You just are, and you fucking know it.

Mercedes makes big, clunky, gas-guzzling, ostentatious, expensive vehicles that are only purchased by people that are trying desperately to hide their insecurities.  If you're a guy, you buy one to make up for your tiny, tiny dick.  If you are a girl, you're purchasing power and masculinity.

What's worse, all of you Benz owners drive like you're the only person on the road, tailgate, speed, cut people off, don't signal, and generally behave like raging morons because you're staring down through that god-awful ugly hood ornament.

You and your stupid car are what is wrong with the world.

Direction of Blame

It’s the beginning of the Boxing Week season, and I feel for the people out there on the front lines.

I worked retail for a year or two when I was much younger.  Though I loved the people with whom I worked, I hated the job itself, and the pay was almost ludicrously bad.  Nothing new there.

You know what else shouldn’t come as a surprise?  I got yelled at by idiot customers on a regular basis.  They got mad at me for not having their book in stock, for not putting out enough seating for them, for not knowing the name of the product they wanted based on their piss-poor description of it, and for not having things priced the same as they have it on the website.

And 95% of these ass-hats were middle-aged women.

If you are one of these women (i.e. if you have ever been rude to a retail worker, under any circumstance, at any time) then I have something to ask you:

What the fuck is your problem?

Seriously, what is it that makes you such a stupid, entitled, miserable bitch?  Menopause?  Sexual frustration?  Drugs?  What?

You do realize that the kids getting paid minimum wage don’t make decisions, right?  You know that if they had their way, the stock would be full, the prices would be fair, and the music playing from the overhead speakers would be better.  But they don’t get their way, because they don’t have any fucking power or control! 

When you bitch at them, you do nothing but prove that you are a cowardly little shit that is so desperate to feel big that she’ll scream at an overworked, underpaid teenager about the checkout line moving too slowly when there are thirty thousand people in the store.  You prove that you have no empathy, sympathy, or respect for your fellow man.  You prove that you are a miserable person, a poor excuse for a human being that should do us all a favour by sailing into the wild blue yonder on a boat made out of crackers.

I don’t care if the retail worker was rude, ignorant, or unhelpful.  I don’t care if you couldn’t find what you wanted, or couldn’t find your size, or couldn’t reach the top shelf.  I don’t care because anyone that chews out a lowly retail worker is a piece of shit and deserves to be kicked in the throat. 

You want to yell at someone?  Go home, look up the number for the company’s head office, and scream at someone that makes some decisions.  Do some work to make sure that you are screaming at a person that gets paid enough to deal with it.  No one – no one – on the retail floor gets paid enough to take your shit.

Better yet, shut the fuck up entirely.  You don’t deserve anything from anyone anyway.  Be happy that anyone is willing to work at these stores and show some respect for the fact that they make no money, get no benefits, and work terrible hours so you can go out and buy your stupid shit at all fucking hours.

So the next time you feel like chewing out a worker at your local department store, think carefully about how much of an ignorant, small, stupid bitch you look like to the rest of us.