Shouting Down From an Ivory Tower of Shitty Writing

This is probably going to be the essay I use to get in to the crappy old man gentlemen’s club when I’m AARP aged, but bear with me my beloved readers. You know that I don’t care much for the old people and their old ways, but on one thing I think we can both agree on is that young people without kids can shut the fuck up about parenting.

I’m reminded of this need to tell these whippersnappers to shut the fuck up every time I read a college newspapers or one of these late twenty something managing editor’s who’ve just entered act two of their adult lives and suddenly have become the expert on whatever topics their reading pamphlets about. Mostly marriage, the inevitability of kids, home finance, you get the idea. What’s most annoying is all the prefacing that goes before they began to speak out of the echo chamber known as their ass with the: “I know that I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m gonna, cuz I can and I think that I have an idea so I’m gonna” motif, then proceed to baste their lack of intelligence with delicious hyperbole, and I really hope they have kids soon so they can be too tired to think and just churn out the clichéd “my baby’s poops” or “I’m so fucking tired, and I’m still at the presses crying next to a spool of paper stock cuz I was up all night with the baby”. Ceaseless, worn tripe that fills our nations papers!

Here we have Tommy Felts, a up and coming Managing Editor. (Preface)As a sidebar, I’d like to comment about the soul patch in his byline picture:

You can’t honestly think you’re being taken seriously with that thing are you Tommy? It’s 2011! Maybe this picture was taken when you were stupider…erhm, I mean younger, but still it looks like you’re trying to grow an asshole on your face.

Here he is with his take on the whole parenting thing. It’s couched in the girls gone wild as of late, and his preface is great:
…I’ve been advised by readers in the past to steer clear of these [parenting] topics when writing. But, honestly, given the state of many youth today, the act itself of having children clearly doesn’t make a person an automatic expert on parenting. So, I figure I’m just as qualified to share my two cents.

First, I’m sure this is just a writing disease that affects those of current generations, but is he being paid by the word? As a managing editor I think he’d be the first to acknowledge that he could excise a bunch of these words in his editorials and still make his point. I’m just a humble blogging man, and I think my verbosity is most heinous. I understand Tommy, you have a Journalism degree, but this mish mash of ten dollar words and the inability to use the semicolon or comma is absurd. And, the whole “But comma” or “So comma” this is blog. website aggregate, page view money generating, AAA ball team writing junk! At the very least you’re in the AA ball club so cut it out with the lazy writing style.

You see, I’m already lining up my seat at the gentlemen’s club! I’ve gotten off course! Ahem.
The fact that he’s been advised and cares nothing for it is great. As it provides the perfect example of that prefacing buffoonery that plagues this generation of editorial writing. He goes on to correct course and twist in to a, in my opinion correct, critique of kids these days (including us!) being completely useless making adult decisions, lacking structure, being self-important ass wipes. Who will then go on to critique us when they get old enough to be the managing editor at a mid sized paper. Calling Generation X and Y cynical, blameless, blowhards who have a lot to say about everyone but themselves. At that point I will be old and not be able to hear because I blew out my eardrums listening to crappy rapcore music when I was their age. And, I’ll be hunting the most dangerous game!

While I adore and appreciate the temerity of ignorant people hopping in to unknown, choppy waters of topics they have the slightest grasp of, you have to be in the shit to really speak to it. It’s called armchair quarterbacking in certain parts. Sure you got a precursory knowledge of the game. Yes, you could’ve made that play, read that coverage, on and on. But you’re at home, with ability to see the entire play unfold. You have limitless time to read the play, then you can bask in the aftermath and know the true outcome. But, you weren’t there, and I’m sure if it was you, it’d probably turn out worse.

As grating as it is to read those articles where the parent writes about their shitheaded kids and horrid nicknames for their spouses, at least their’s is a common knowledge and understanding that when a twenty something starts trying to tell it like it is “just cuz” that I can’t help but think “Yea, no” and skip the editorial entirely. Truth is, you don’t know shit, and I don’t think you’re opinion of the topic is relevant in any way. Coupled with the fact that, in the cast of Tommy, it has to be coupled with a critique of previous generations to pad out a word count and actually make a point. No one’s surprised that Billy Ray Cyrus is a shitty dad. Honestly, how many kids with never present parents turn out to be well adjusted adults? Instead of disciplining children and actually trying to correct their behaviors we ply them with sedatives and push them through under funded, over worked public schools and then are surprised when they become the monsters we raised them to be?