Personal responsibility

I know it's an old fashioned concept, but I really think its time for a comeback!

I don't want to play the game of 'blame the victim' - although that's a trend that's been around since Puritan times - even if the phrase was coined in the late 70's by William Ryan in his book of the same title. (The phrase originally summarized his theories about intergenerational poverty and the attempts, subtle and not so much, to divert responsibility away from the complex societal structural factors which promote and sustain wealth inequity to the more simple concept of behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.)

We contemporary humans tend to be like that...we prefer our difficult issues reduced to simple ideas and ten second sound bites.

Two recent cases brought home these thoughts which, in my mind got crystallized into the simple "what the hell were you thinking?"

I'm sorry, but when you take your 13 yr old daughter to a rock concert dressed like a 'ho' in 5 inch fuck-me- now heels, a see through white mesh skirt with black bikini panties underneath, a tube top whose 'tube' is about the size of a travel tube of toothpaste and makeup applied with a trowel, don't be surprised when some guy, jacked up on concert hormones and god knows what else, takes her up on at least one of the mixed messages she's sending!

See idea expressed above about reducing complexity and, for males, ratchet it up a thousand percent - subtlety and nuance aren't exactly in their wheelhouses, ya know!

If you DO decide that's the way you, and she, want to express her individuality and your cultural identity (although I didn't realize there was a Prostitute Nation, excuse me) then the least you could do to safeguard her is to keep her on a leash!

Likewise, kiddo...if you don't want to be perceived as a thug, then I suggest you stay out of stolen cars in which large sums of cash, drugs, three other gang members and weapons, including a submachine gun, are being stored!

Your protestations about how you're a 'good kid' didn't fall on deaf ears, but IF the worst you're guilty of is having lousy taste in friends, that's still gonna buy you time in Juvenile Detention - where, no doubt, you'll meet more of the same people you don't know.

You might want to reconsider who you accept a ride from next time you're "going to buy some clothes." You might also want to rub two brain cells together and ask yourself -If your 'friend' didn't own a black Escalade this morning, how the hell do you think he ended up with one tonight?

There's another old fashioned phrase which springs to mind here...

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck...it's a

I'm just sayin'.