June 6th, 2006 came and went. “666″ is supposedly the day when the Anti-Christ will be born. I contend that several million currently walk amongst us.

Last weekend, one of my kids during a passing conversation said that, with all due respect, some in our generation are kind of “computer challenged”. I had to remind him, with all due respect, that it was our generation that created computers and the Internet. It’s his generation that simply uses them.

The more and more I think about it, I have to admit, I hate kids today. There are times I can barely tolerate my own.I’ve come to despise those we used to call “soccer moms.” You know, those women who are slavishly devoted to her kids and will drop everything to drive them here, cook several different dishes for several different “orders”, go to all the PTA meetings, sell hot dogs at all the Little League games, basically give up most of her waking hours to kids whose last thought it is to issue a simple “thank you”, and at the end of the day think they’re better than the rest of us because they care about their kids more than the rest of us do.

(The following is the commencement address I should have read….)

Now that a lot of high school commencements are over, complete with student speeches describing how they’ve grown, how much they’ve learned about themselves, and how much all of this was always all about them, I’m going to be one parent whose going to tell them just how much (or little) I think of them.

A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton publicly commented on how she believes this generation thinks “work” is a four-letter word, and how they feel oh so entitled. Her daughter then publicly launched into her and Hillary backed down and apologized. This woman wants to be president, yet can’t stand up to her own kid who because of family name, graduated from two pricey colleges and is now earning six-figures. But what else would Chelsea expect?

How many times do you tell a kid anything with him or her responding “I know….”, but when you ask them why they did something bad, their response is almost always “I dunno….”

In a few short years from now, these kids are going to be running the show. God help us as these kids are already breeding more self-absorbed brats.

A lot of the blame for this lost generation is some of us parents and an intrusive government system that acts like they own our kids. I’ll personally never forgive pop culture and Hollywood that continues to portray parents as punchline buffoons and the kids as wise-ass geniuses. Be it the whiny, social skills-challenged babies on “The Real World”, or the entitlement-sickening brats on “Sweet Sixteen” which is probably the worst show ever produced for kids, they can out-sass us and that’s supposed to be cool.

Government intrusion in family affairs is a big problem.

Not that I advocate abuse, but why can’t we smack the crap out of our kids anymore? Surely when I got smacked as a youth it was because I pushed the envelope and did something really bad. After the smackdown, I thought long and hard before I did it again. Because of do-something politicians and make-work government employees in your neighborhood Department of Social Services (they should just take the D off of DSS), kids have been encouraged to report parents who attempt to discipline them.

Shouting at them is “emotional abuse.” Spanking is “physical abuse.” The result are parents who are powerless to address the many instances of malfeasance by back-talking, no-conscience youth.

In a prelude to their liberal indoctrination to come in their later academic years, kids today have been taught that they have “rights.” Parents indulge them by letting them wear whatever they want, pierce themselves more than Africans, provide them their “crack” (cell phone minutes that they always seem to run out of despite the pricey plans their parents obtain), and seldom do we get any gratitude. Instead, kids go right to the fridge, eat more than than their share, and give your family provisions to their friends who aren’t supposed to be in your home when parents are not for all the obvious legal reasons. Rules are constantly broken because kids feel entitled to do whatever they want. Deal with it, Chelsea.

There are no “no’s” that are binding. Telling a kid to avoid MySpace because of the obvious hazards, results in an eye-rolling that makes the back of our hands tingle, yet we all know the moment we walk out the door, both AIM is activated and MySpace is opened.

I wish I could have had an “emotional day” off when I was younger. On those occasions when I knew I was in for a traditional ass-whuppin’ from a school bully, a day off would have been nice. Bullying was not a crime in those days and we all had to learn how to embrace our fears, and more times than not, the ass-whuppin’ never happened. Today’s kids are wimps.

They cry on national television reality shows when things don’t go their way. They are devoid of personal responsibility, and when they hang out amidst riots and get hurt (or worse), it’s everybody else’s fault. They go to spring break, drink while underage until all hours, and should some evil befall them, we never ask why they were there in the first place doing what they were doing. That would be insensitive.

We’ve created shortcuts in life they now expect. Instead of paying their dues and growing naturally in a craft, we prematurely reward them as American Idols, and their careers are mediocre at best. We watch them complain about how hard their short lives have been constantly on MTV. What kind of generation is this going to be? I fear for the future….

One afternoon a few weeks ago, I heard a fairly loud and arrhythmic banging outside our home. I peeked through the blinds and saw one of the kids in my extended family taking Barry Bonds-like swings with a baseball bat on the doors of his car and rear taillight. Apparently, instead of performing the routine maintenance required as responsible car ownership mandates, he blew the money he bums off his mother elsewhere, and when the car started to fail, it was the car’s fault.

I can only imagine what would be going through my mind if people bought the house next door and within their first month in a new neighborhood, we all witness a kid bashing the hell out of his car in their driveway. I’d be talking about them in the most unflattering of terms. What kids do to embarrass their parents is the last thing in their minds, because God knows, their response as to why they do what they do is always “I dunno….”

And in all fairness, my youngest son is a habitual liar and thief. If not for the fact that he is the fruit of my loins, it pains me to admit that there is nothing that would make him someone I’d want to hang out with if not for his being family. So, what will the future bring?

This generation can’t write new music or a decent movie script. Rap artists will be sampling radio jingles soon after they deplete the Time-Warner music library for hooks. There are hundreds of bad, old television shows and movies that today’s movie executives will remake, and it’s only a matter of time before we have a reality show based around a toilet cam. Today’s youth will really find that funny.

I’m sure many of you will be extremely upset that I show so much disdain for today’s kids. Maybe I am getting old and this is a cyclical sentiment. I remember my Dad’s generation looking down on us, but they could at least get some satisfaction by issuing a good old fashioned spanking that eventually got our minds right. Again, I’ve never advocated child abuse, but you can’t tell me that there haven’t been times that some of you parents haven’t felt like chaining your spoiled brat to a radiator when you know they’ll defy a justified grounding.

If this rant sounds unreasonable, think about this: this generation of kids are some of the most heartless we’ve ever seen. They’ll take over a whole neighborhood, participating in violent gang activity that makes those in “West Side Story” look like pansies. They plot to shoot up and bomb their schools, and are yet dumb enough to document their plans on blogs. Some succeed.

They’ll show no mercy for their parent’s bank accounts as they rack up more minutes on their cellphones (that we stupidly justified giving them for “safety” reasons), and they’ll pout when we reign them in because we just can’t afford to pay over $100 a month so they can talk to their friends constantly on a cellphone instead of the boring home phone.

Besides computer viruses, what will they create? That would take imagination, and those who are capable will be denigrated by their peers. They’ll be called “geeks” because they’ll actually see the value of studying and later getting a job. I couldn’t wait to get a job when I was younger. These kids act as though you’re telling them to enter a gas chamber.

“666″ came and went. We, as a society, will have to deal with a generation of youth who may not be the devil’s spawn, but they sure do act like it at times. If there was ever a time to pray for the second coming, now would be a good time to start.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 6:40 am and is filed under Bob Parks, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.