No, they will NEVER grow up

I’m introducing a new category, called The Perpetual Adolescents, and in that catagory we will discuss the stubborn refusal of some – not all, of course – but some parts of the left to grow up.

In the category we will include all of the aging schoolgirl columnists (bless Mark Steyn, forever, for that description).

And we’ll also include some things like this:

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING LINK CONTAINS THE “F” WORD. DO NOT READ IF IT WILL OFFEND.

It’s one of those cafepress sites, where cyberfolk with ideas go to sell merchandise. These drygoods are tee shirts and other geegaws proudly proclaiming the world F*** followed by Pope Benedict XVI and various other snotty remarks.

Shrug. You don’t like the pope, that’s your business. What I am wondering about is the strange fascination the left seems to have with the F-word.

I’m no prude. I’ve used it in my life. Particularly during baseball games. Through clenched teeth. Directed at the Boston Red Sox. I do not get a case of the vapors if someone, in a fit of pique, uses the word in my presence, although I do mind if there are children about.

But I’m so tired of the left’s complete overuse of this word, and the apparent sense of empowerment that they seem to find from it. Picture someone walking around with this tee-shirt, the F word proudly emblazoned across the pectoral muscles. Wow. Look at me! I’m DARING. I have the world F*** on my chest!

Yes. Rather like a daring five-year old who thinks she’s really getting away with something when she says “poopyhead!”

I remember, in the early 1970’s a Jr. High teacher of mine played the Woodstock album for the class. He was our social studies teacher, and this was somehow meaningful instruction. He specifically played the “Gimmee and ‘F”” part, and we got to listen to the crowd of people, all hopeless followers of trends, all communicants in the Church of What’s Happening Now, all conformists pretending feverishly that they were so, so not-conforming because they were such individuals, spell out the word and then cheer and scream as though they’d done something meaningful and wise. “Ohhhhhh, look at us! We used a baaaad word! We’re SO cool! We’re SO smart! We’re SO not-uptight.”

They are the most uptight people in the world, because they’re always so damned busy trying to prove something about themselves and what they “are” or “are not” and how that makes them superior to, or more noble than, everyone who came before or will come hence.

Gad, I can’t stand boomers. I am one, technically, but I have never liked this generation. Even back then, when I was 13, I hated this pre-occupation with ‘self’ that is so much a part of that crowd. Even back then, at 13, I thought the Woodstock Chant was lame.

The F-word is so done, SO overplayed. But the boomers and their limited progeny can’t let it go. The F-word is their calling card, their banner, their meaningless creed.

I bet if you asked the marketer of the F*** Benedict XVI shirts if he is a liberal, he would say he is, or that he is “progressive,” or something. When I was growing up, raised by classically liberal parents, I was taught that being liberal meant being open-minded, allowing others to live and let live – giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, and most of all, engaging in real, meaningful discussion, not flippant blow-offs. By those definitions I am still “classically liberal,” although I will admit that sometimes my temper gets the best of me (work-in-progress over here!) and I can be a little on the biting side.

Some who read me would suggest that because I am lately conservative, that I could not be “classically liberal.” But since the definition of what is liberal seems to have changed over the last 30 years, I believe I could still claim it if I wanted to, because no matter how much I disagreed with someone, I would never throw a pie, or salad dressing, at someone because I didn’t like their ideas or wanted to shut down their speech. I would never wear a F*** ANYBODY shirt…partly because to do so would be utterly classless, partly because it would be so LAME…but mostly because it would be so unnecessary, childish, immature and eternally adolescent.

If I were to do so…I would be SUCH a poopyhead! :-)