SlowpokeBlog

I know I haven't rapped at ya in a while, as Jim Anchower would say. My recent travels have caused me to fall behind on my virtual-world responsibilities.

The e-mail described in the cartoon has been around for a while. I first read it in a small-town newspaper a couple years ago. It was popularized by then-Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden in his column of December 30, 2003. (For those of you not familiar with the Washington Times, it is a laughable right-wing rag owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Moonie cult, who has referred to gays as "dung eating dogs.") Judging by my conversations with other people, the e-mail has gone remarkably viral over the years. You can read a version of it here. I love this line from the original:

We fell out of trees, played with BB guns until we got a .22 rifle on our 12th birthday, fought "war" with dirt clods, broke bones, lost teeth, stepped on nails and caught fishhooks in noses. Nobody's daddy had a lawyer.

I know I was certainly shooting my .22 rifle all over the place when I was twelve. Good times!

The e-mail in question was recently sent to me by a dear family member who is most definitely not a right-wing nut. I think the message of letting kids be kids (as opposed to pampered, overscheduled little brats) appealed to him, and it appeals to me too. But there are memes in there that need addressing, and my duty as a cartoonist called.

It goes without saying, but those of us who survived a lack of seat belts, air bags, lead paint, and (god forbid) rifles in the hands of 12 year-olds are the lucky ones. Plenty of kids didn't, or were harmed along the way. Lead paint is still a problem in poorer housing areas. If anything is responsible for the end of idyllic neighborhoods filled with roving bands of frolicking children, it is suburban sprawl designed around the automobile. The minivan-driving, "playdate"-scheduling parent is a result of the destruction of walkable communities. Kids are hardly having their childhood ruined by safety features in cars, which still kill 45,000+ people every year. Not far from where I live, five people just died in a horrible car accident. They were drinking and not wearing seatbelts.

And anytime you hear a wingnut complaining about lawyers, consider how they never complain about corporate attorneys, who can be very aggressive about using (and bending) the law to their benefit. It's always the lawyers for the little people that they hate. Hell, the 2000 election was won very dubiously by lawyers. And not the kind that you or I could afford.