Kids, huh?
They don't listen to parents. They don't listen to teachers. If you want to know the truth, kids today don't listen to anything but that darn rock and roll on MTV.
They steal our cars. They shoot each other. Sometimes they shoot us. Sometimes, when we get mad, we shoot them. Like, what choice do we have? They're completely out of control.
But maybe there's a solution. I heard about it on talk radio. You take the vandal/car thief/truant/body piercer. You get a big bamboo pole, rip off the kid's pants and bang some sense into him. It's called caning. One state legislator here in Maryland has proposed a caning bill. They're closing in on a similar law in Mississippi.
Makes sense, doesn't it? Try it at home. Hit a kid a couple of times really hard, and then the streets won't seem so cool.
Hit a kid and he'll straighten out. If you're already hitting him, try hitting him harder. If you're hitting him hard, maybe you should get a bat.
Swat a kid, and before you can say "hickory stick," he'll learn his lessons, respect his teachers, listen to his parents, turn off the TV, go to the library, help his fellow man, ignore the violence right outside his door or sometimes inside his door, grow up to be like us. Or else.
Or else, we'll . . . You know, maybe caning isn't enough. It sounds tough. But these kids, they're hard.
Take Michael Fay, who got caned in Singapore for spray-painting cars. Bleeding hearts got all upset, but they swatted him good anyway. They used a pro. And, still, when he came home, his parents caught him sniffing Butane and had to send him off to some detox center.
If we want to straighten our kids out, we may have to show them just how tough tough love can be.
We could bring back the stocks. We could bring back scarlet letters. Or, if it gets really desperate, we could make our kids listen to Michael Bolton. Halfway through the album of your choice, I promise you the kid will do anything you ask, if you just turn down the volume.
But, if we're going to cane, why start at 14-year-olds? Couldn't 10-year-olds benefit from an old-fashioned whupping? What about crying infants? What I'm trying to say is, let's make our point before they turn into hardened 5-year-olds.
And why stop at 10 swats? If we're serious, we'll give the kid a lesson he'll never forget, or maybe even live through.
You'll have to ignore the report by some bozo on a government grant -- spending money we could be using to build a new "star wars" system -- that claims kids who are hit are more likely to turn violent themselves. Forget the reports that say your typical 14-year-old car thief already got swatted plenty of times at home.
We know better. We should probably swat every kid, just in case. You know they've done something wrong.
I can remember a time when kids routinely got swatted and nobody said a thing. That's back -- cue the music -- in '50s America, when life was good, if you don't include the fact there was no cable.
There was no crime, either, to speak of. It was a wonderful time. Everyone (who wasn't black) could grow up to be whatever he wanted to be.
Parents were stern but kind. They'd swat a kid, but it was always for his own good, even if it meant using a belt or a hair brush.
If you grew up in a typical '50s town, you didn't lock your doors, you knew your neighbors and dogs ran free. And all the cars were American.
But then it all ended. And somehow we got where we are today, in a world gone mad. Whatever happened to the old songs, Mikey?
You know what happened. Dr. Spock happened.
He said not to spank your kids, that it would injure their self-esteem or something. So a lot of parents actually stopped. They started praising kids instead, like little Johnny was a budding genius instead of a budding juvenile delinquent.
Next thing you knew, their children grew their hair long, protested against a war, became counterculture McGoverniks. Suddenly, the streets were unsafe, every teen-ager had a baby. And Japan was making all the cars.
How do we get out of this fix?
We could spend a lot of money on education or on getting drugs off the streets or on erasing poverty.
Or we could just round up the bad kids and beat the living hell out of 'em.