Men Who Create Fright

Leave it to Glenn Reynolds to make all the really great discoveries. I had been of course aware that Obama wants to kill your Grandma, which is fair enough, as that hideous old cobwebby bat has it coming. But leave it to Insty to explain that GOVERNMENT AGENTS WITH GUNS ARE COMING TO YOUR HOUSE WITH GUNS in order to FORCE YOU WITH GUNS AT GUNPOINT to accept the kind of pretty good, actually, health insurance you can get if you had just pulled your dick up by the pube-straps and gotten a job teaching at a public university:

Obama’s plan — and Big Government in general — is all about ensuring that we don’t have the right to decide how to spend our dollars but should instead let somebody else take them at gunpoint and decide how they’re spent. If the health care “reform” passes, you won’t have the option of directing your health care dollars where you think they should go (and I’m not so sure about your food dollars, either . . . ) . And to the pro-Obamacare folks, that’s not a bug, it’s the whole point.

Yes, if we had a very modest public plan, armed federal thugs would swoop down on you as soon as you tried to direct your "food dollars" at such verboten foodstuffs as, say, milkshakes, or cherry tomatoes, or haggis -- your sacred choice!

This is all so very stupid. Cheering on the government doing things at gunpoint -- as in, the government actually discharging guns quite freely and thoughtlessly in foreign lands -- was once all the rage in Insty-world, or it used to be, during the last administration. Now, not so much.

Yes, yes, I know, It's just Glenn Reynolds, clown prince of the shitheads. But sometimes you just have to step back and smell the stupid. The man has no clue what he's talking about -- the idea that right now Americans "choose" how to spend their "health care dollars" is nuts -- but he'll burble on about guns anyhow, because they go bang, bang bang good, government bad, bang, burble, bang, burble, burble, burp.

Oh, and then there's this:

THE WHOLE HOW NOT TO ACT OLD THING IS DEEPLY PATHETIC IN SO MANY WAYS, but it’s also a font of really lousy advice. For example, #145: Do Not Listen To Your Sorry-Ass Old Music. “When my daughter threatened to jump out the window of the speeding car, I hit on the idea of letting her download new songs for me, and in the process give me a musical education.”

My own experience is precisely the reverse: Like James Lileks, I find that “Techno does for me now what rock used to.” But my daughter and her friends are all into classic rock — at a sleepover Friday night they all watched Tommy. My daughter got me to put some classic rock on my iPod for car trips — The Who, Stones, Beatles, Zeppelin– and it’s actually encouraged me to listen to that stuff again after going years without doing so. But when I picked ‘em up from The Time Traveler’s Wife I was listening to “Acid Hustle” by the Plump DJs.

As a Suburban Dad myself, I could hardly imagine a more deliberately exquisite, perfectly fiendish torture for my children than to get way into "techno." And it's not like I haven't tried, either.

(Time: The Not Too Distant Future. Place: the Family Car.)

ME: Hey, son! Are you excited about going to the mall on this family trip so your mom can buy a new bra?

14-Year-Old: (Glares out back window, malevolently, silently)

ME: And you can help her pick it out! Won't that be fun!

14-Year-Old: (Hits head against glass)

ME: Oh, and, ha ha, if you have a sleepover, I guess you and your friends can watch Tommy! Your mom can sing along with you! (Sings) Ever since I was a young boy, I played that silly ball...

14-Year-Old: (Hits head against glass)

ME: Oooh, and here's something I know you'll "dig" and think is "cool"! Let me play you “Acid Hustle” by the Plump DJs! (Pops in CD, cranks volume, does funky Dad dance behind wheel at red light)

14-Year-Old: (Dies, explodes, of spontaneous extreme mortification)

ME: Hey! No exploding! Now who's going to help your mom buy a bra at JC Penny's?

I look forward with joyful anticipation.