Ranty McRantypants, aka Jack

(N.B. I'm not dead or incapacitated, I've just been busy.)

So the guest on tonight's The Daily Show was Christina Hoff Sommers, co-author (with Dr Sally Satel) of the new book One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance. The premise of this book is that, as a nation, we're doing kids a disservice by trying to encourage cooperation over competition and eliminating policies that enable bullying of schoolchildren by their peers. Sommers talked about how high self-esteem is actually bad, because sociopaths and murderers have high self-esteem, and conveniently left out the rather less-ridiculous fact that low self-esteem leads to eating disorders and suicide in children. She's also convinced that there's nothing wrong with traditional bully-friendly schoolyard activities like dodgeball*, and that school systems that ban dodgeball (rather than making it compulsory, which is what happens when it's allowed -- how many kids have you ever heard of organising a pick-up game of dodgeball where everybody actually wants to play and nobody who enjoys the game feels that it's diminished by the absence of hapless victims ordered into the circle by authority figures?) are going way overboard. Listening this woman made me want to get a bunch of people together to go to one of her book signings and throw dodgeballs at her as hard as we can.

Other things making my pants ranty of late: ( Buildings set up as subsidised housing for disabled people discriminating against 'younger' disabled adults and lying about it. )

Also: The comics title formerly known as ROBIN, currently known as Unreadable Garbage. HOW LONG IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO GET THAT ( predictable expletive )

OFF THIS BOOK?

Also: ( Weather. )

Also: ( Censorship on The Hallmark Channel. )

Also: ( Healthcare coverage for the disabled. )

*I have no issues with adults choosing to play dodgeball recreationally. Or, okay, I have issues with it, but they're my issues -- I'm not going to say that grownups can't or shouldn't get involved in their local dodgeball league if that's something they enjoy. But coercing kids who may or may not want to participate in a 'sport' where the OBJECT is to HIT other kids, in a school setting, is as horribly inappropriate as having a boxing tournament as part of a mandatory physical education curriculum for ten-year-olds.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled comics squee. Please stand by.

edited to add cut tags, because I, uh, kinda went off on some rants there...