Over at the Huffington Post (yes, I do read a broad assortment of stuff, why do you ask?) journalist/writer Mona Gable – who LA Observed describes as “Gable has written for Health, Child, Salon and the Los Angeles Times, where her husband Joel Sappell is the assistant managing editor for interactive.” – has kittens when the military has the temerity to send marketing materials to her teenage son.
A few days after 11 American soldiers were killed in Iraq, I opened the mailbox to find along with the Pottery Barn holiday catalogue and other seasonal items a letter from the National Guard. Addressed to my 16-year-old son. I have no idea how they got his name and address. That’s not true.
I know perfectly well how they got it. They got it the same way Bush is getting personal information about the rest of us in the guise of fighting “the terrorists.” They tapped into some secret database and up popped my son’s name. It was right there under the category: Potential Cannon Fodder for Iraq.I felt like I’d been sent a letter bomb in the mail.
This administration has no respect for families. It never has. Why else did Bush with the eager support of the Senate ban news photos of flag-draped coffins of soldiers coming home? Many of them as young as 18. Did they think we wouldn’t notice the rising death toll? That families who lost sons and daughters would simply view it as the regrettable cost of war? Pretend it had all been a bad dream and then carry on? Not talk about it?
And people wonder how it is that some of us worry that the media are culturally incapable of dealing with war, or with the military.
Yeah, yeah, it’s only one – more – anecdotal point of data. Sorry for reading too much into it.
They got it the same way Bush is getting personal information about the rest of us in the guise of fighting “the terrorists.” They tapped into some secret database and up popped my son’s name.
“Some secret database”!?!?!? I mean, I’m pretty appalled at some of the Bush administration’s actions regarding personal privacy, but this is too paranoid for words. You don’t need access to “some secret database” to get the name and address of 16 year olds — unless you consider a roster of high school students a “secret database.”
Oh for crying out loud. ‘Secret database’ my ass. There’s nothing secret about it, it’s the same database colleges and other employers use to send out their recruiting material.
From the LAUSD bulletin regarding military access to schools (emphasis mine):
Under federal and state law, members of the military have specified access to school campuses. Members of the military may:
* Access school campuses to the same extent that prospective employers and representatives of higher education may access school campuses (20 USC section 9528; Education Code section 49603); and
* For purposes of recruitment, receive names, addresses, and telephone numbers of students ages seventeen and eighteen unless the parent/guardian/eighteen-year-old student has informed the school that this information should not be released (20 USC section 7908; Education Code section 49073.5).
Let me guess that the “journalist/writer” raised her son in a household environment in which a military future was not probable. That is, unless the kid had been raised as a perpetual child, screened from only prenatally-approved messages that gave him poor experience in evaluating advertising. Or if the child was shamed by having his autonomy devalued in public and joined the military to rebel against his parent.
umm, “prenatally” was meant to be “parentally”
None of this shocks me except….
They’re trying to encourage young students into the military with Pottery Barn Catalogues?!!!?? I thought they were trying to discourage homosexuals from joining the military. Seriously, wouldn’t they want to do something like video game advertisements or movie tickets or something a 16 year old boy might ACTUALLY WANT?
A few weeks before my 18th birthday, I got a Selective Service notification. It had my name and address printed on it; that’s how the post office got it to me. I opened it up, and found a little postcard: please fill out your name and address to register for selective service.
Also, it had a pair of boxes: “Male” and “Female.”
On a draft card.
Don’t know how they got my name; don’t particularly care. I was just amused that they managed to mail something to me asking for my name and address.
She’s definitely ordering too much froth on her latte.
oops, sorry the pottery barn was a red herring in the article. My bad.
RISIBLE SCALE – about a 4.
Picayune points – about 50.
As someone who graduated from high school during the early Clinton years, I can assure everyone that similar mail went out during his presidency, too. Even phone calls. Mona Gable probably wouldn’t believe me, though.
Actually I’ve read hundreds of pieces that are more or less exactly like this one. It’s a standard genre of editorial writing. There are a horde of female writers who specialize in this kind of stuff, like Ellen Goodman – though Goodman does not generally dip this low.
All of these stories take as their heroic archetype the liberal, white middle-class mother. They are full of lurid details about suburban life: children, diapers, soccer games, and so on. This is to establish the writer’s street creds as a genuine bourgeois housefrau from Squaresville – NOT, mind you, a sexless shrieking feminist or other such radical creature.
All these stories have the same punchline: “As a mother, I’m opposed to X.” X usually equals guns, war, or Republicans. In this syllogism, “I am a mother” is the major and minor premise, and “I’m against war” is the conclusion. The relevant logic is just something that you have to feel in your heart, and if you’re not a liberal white middle-class mother, you just don’t get it.
As a person who is excluded from motherhood by the prejudices of biology, I find these stories boring and offensive. I suspect them of pandering to people who think that women are incapable of thinking like rational human beings. The women who write these stories seem to take a perverse pride in the fact that their intellect does not transcend their own experience, so everything must be understood by lengthy reference to something their teenage kid did last Thursday. They act as if the world ought to stand still for Epiphany’s flute recital. History needs to drop what it’s doing and go home in time for dinner.
“I am a mother” is, of course, an assumption of false authority. It’s especially annoying when the writer is an obvious moron. Also annoying is the assumption that women are self-absorbed creatures of their environment, unable to think except by association with familiar things, and mainly interested in news stories about how fattening salad dressing is (presented by a female reporter, of course, else one might not understand it) and not icky stuff about war.
If I were a woman, I’d go to her house and defenestrate her Apple laptop to stop her from spreading her twisted misogynistic slanders.
Glen,
Ouch, that’s gotta sting. But you said what I wanted to.
A few weeks before my 18th birthday, I got a Selective Service notification. It had my name and address printed on it; that’s how the post office got it to me. I opened it up, and found a little postcard: please fill out your name and address to register for selective service.
Also, it had a pair of boxes: “Male” and “Female.”
On a draft card.
Don’t know how they got my name; don’t particularly care. I was just amused that they managed to mail something to me asking for my name and address.
They got it from a variety of sources such as motor vehicles or your high school. Since selective service registration is mandatory you are required to keep your current address up to date. Hence, where do you live now?
– Not that I ever updated my address 🙂
Glen –
I didn’t know Apple laptops had Windows…(sorry, couldn’t help that…)
A.L.
I’m of the male persuasion. I have been called a mother… more than once.
I carry it as a badge of honor.
So she is so concerned her son might want to help fellow citizens of her state!! After all doesn’t the National Guard help in times of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards and all other disasters by mother nature far more often that being involved with foreign conflicts. I guess he is just too good to be expected to do any service to his state or country. Bizarre!