Our Kids

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children: Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the household's, then we start making better investments.     Melissa Harris-Perry

Back in the 90’s, our President  was President Bill Clinton. President Bill had a wife named Hillary Rodham Clinton and she had the biggest brain in the United States. President Bill loved Hillary Rodham Clinton. He loved her so much that he had an “inappropriate relationship” with a chunky intern. Let's just say every marriage is a mystery and this one was complicated.

Hillary wrote a book back then titled It Takes A Village. It was a New York Times bestseller and she even won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio recording of the book. (How would have liked to have been nominated in that category and learn that the First Lady is one of the other nominees?)

When it first came out, I remember people saying it reminded them of their youth when everybody in the neighborhood looked out for each other and if Mrs. O’Malley came by and told you to shut up, well then, you shut up. Things were so much better back then when adults could just whack a kid for looking like a goober.  I was looking forward to my chance to show a little adult muscle.

Turns out that’s not quite what she meant. She meant that the “Village” is the “government” run by President Bill and his buddies (but not the chunky intern-she was doing, um, other things) and the Village would take care of the “needs” of the children like food, healthcare,education, midnight basketball and school uniforms. Therefore, the Village would need more “money” for the “needs” of the “children”-that’s where the rest of us come in.

Well, It Takes A Village was just one of those pleasant memories of the 90’s like full employment, a balance budget, and Tiny Toons Adventures (“We’re tiny, we’re toony, we’re all a little loony”) until Melissa Harris-Perry recorded a commercial for MSNBC.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry is a professor at Tulane University and has her own show on MSNBC. This means Dr. Harris-Perry’s brain is almost as big as Hillary Clinton's, if that is possible. As part of having a show on MSNBC, Dr Harris-Perry had to do a promotional spot for the Lean Forward slogans. (Lean Forward was the best slogan MSNBC came up with. Second place was DIE! REPUBLICANS DIE!)

In the commercial, Dr. Harris-Perry basically updated the It Takes A Village theme to the swinging 21^st century. She begins by saying we have this quaint notion that “Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility”. I’m not sure if Dr. Harris-Perry has ever ridden on an airplane or eaten at a restaurant, but there seems to be a lot of parents who don’t seem to understand that their kid is their responsibility.

Then she goes on to say, “We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children”. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m sure it is going to be on the final exam. I always thought our collective notion is that your kids are your kids and you raise them as you see fit. I realize that is a silly idea.

“So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities”. I thought the idea that children belong to their parents is a very public idea and not a “kind of private idea”.  I know when I had to pay for braces, the “whole community” did not come through with any scratch at all and my kid had two stages. I think it cost a total of 4 million dollars. Thanks for nothing, village.

 Dr. Harris-Perry began her commercial by saying, “We have never invested as much in public education as we should have”.  Speak for yourself, Doctor. My son went to public school and I can tell you we bought Sally Foster Wrapping paper out the wazoo.

Actually what Dr. Harris-Perry said was this: We need to raise taxes because the kids are stupid and getting dumber by the minute. You don’t have lean forward to understand that.