In today’s article “Teenage Girls Stand By Their Man”, the New York Times tells us that many teenage girls “stand by their man.” In this case, we’re talking R&B superstar Chris Brown, whose much publicized beat down of America’s sweetheart Rhianna sent the American public reeling. But can you believe that many girls still support Chris Breezy? Here’s what two ninth graders had to say:
“I thought she was lying, or that the tabloids were making it up,” one girl said.
“She probably made him mad for him to react like that,” the other ninth grader said. “You know, like, bring it on?”
Turns out he was angry at her for reading a text to him from another woman.
Right. My first thought when I read this was, “Man, I probably could have hit Julie that one time I was really mad at her for reading my IMs over my shoulder and catching me cheating, and she wouldn’t have done anything about it. She probably even would have stayed with me.” My second [concerned adult] thought was, “My God, what’s wrong with the kids these days?”
My first instinct as an educated white male was of course to blame hip hop culture. After all, Tricia Rose, teacher of African-American culture at Brown “said that the singers and their young fans are a generation steeped in commercial hip-hop, which has influenced the smack-down tone of so many recent comments.” But then I considered that the headline of this story quotes a Dolly Parton song, and that made me think about how lots of country songs talk about abusive, alcoholic men and the women who love them. No one would say that country music makes Southern women take abuse, so I must assume we can extrapolate that lesson to hip hop. I.e., the music doesn’t make the person. Also, who could say that Southern drunks are more abusive than any other strain of man, even the dangerous Urban Stereotype? Not this writer.
A professor from Harvard, who must know better than that nobody from Brown, had this to say:
They’ve been taught, she said, “What really matters is that we don’t destroy boys.” Teenage girls think that if they speak out against an abuser, the boy’s future will be shattered, she said. “We have to appreciate that this is not simple for them.”
I’m not so sure about that, though, because I’ve seen girls destroy boys many-a-time, but instead of using their fists they use secret psychic powers passed down from generation to generation, much like the Da Vinci Code. In fact, I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness [induced by their relations with women], starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. And those were the ones who were the best off.
I think if we really want to understand why girls stand by abusive men, we must turn to Dayton, Ohio art rockers Devo, whose theory of “Devolution” has proven more prophetic than its bizarro New Wave roots would originally have led us to believe. Devo teach us that the spread of mass culture, particularly through the medium of television, but also deriving from a general public desire for cultural regression to a “simpler time,” augmented by the average person’s perennial disdain for those mentally superior to him or her, has led to a new era of Devolution whereby we are slowly moving backwards, culturally and intellectually speaking. Devo’s ideas have been echoed by such respected public voices as that of Lewis Lapham, former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine, who has said that “a new Dark Ages may be right around the corner.”
Where am I going with this, you ask? If due to lack of proper education and discipline children are no longer being civilized to function as decent members of society, it is no wonder that they are regressing to the level of peasants from the Middle Ages. And it’s a good thing, too! Thinking about it relaxes me more than imagining myself on a tropical beach with a cool, fruity drink on a little table at my side and a large umbrella (Rhianna shout out!) shading me from the sun. Ah, the Middle Ages, those were the days: when every woman expected her man to be an abusive sot, coming home stinking of cheap booze, slapping her around a bit, then having his way with her so that she could spit out another brat that would likely die of typhoid anyhow. Men worked in the fields by day while women tended to the children and kept the hut in order, when they weren’t gossiping or getting into catfights with the other townswomen, that is. How I wish for a simpler time!
The thing is, this dream is now truly within our grasp. With our infant mortality rates the highest of any industrialized country, I think we could make this bucolic vision of a better life a reality. It seems that our young men and women are willing to transport us back in time. And with no real jobs except soul-crushing menial labor for most of our high school graduates, the next generation will truly know what it was like to live under a feudal regime. If I could go back in time, I’d join the seminary and shoot for Archbishop…
