|
 hose
of us who live in the bush — that is, beyond the great metropolitan
areas — find ourselves in unfamiliar
and unsettling territory this Mother’s Day
weekend. The problem
is this: We are beginning to feel superior to our widely acknowledged
superiors. This is very bad, for pride is a terrible thing. Unfortunately,
the temptation to strut and flutter is getting harder and harder to
resist.
The problem
didn’t start yesterday, though as it happens yesterday did bring
news that Mother’s Day had been banned in an upscale Manhattan school.
Brother Goldberg, who attended this school, has hung his head in
magisterial shame. We weep with him. However, the fact is that kind
of thing would never fly in the bush, where we still love momma
— and daddy as well, who has also gotten the bum’s rush.
In fact, we
tend to believe that what has happened in New York is worse than
a communist plot. After all, it’s safe to say that had the commies
taken over the United States, they would have known better than
to attack motherhood. That’s the kind of thing invaders from outer
space would do in order to sever civilization from its roots.
As some bush
philosophers advise, that is exactly what is happening in the superior
regions. They point out that the sophisticated elite are lining
up behind the ban — and, as usual, insist that theirs is the
morally superior position. A New York holy man put the point perfectly:
"In my judgment, children who, for whatever reason, have no mother
should not have to sit in class while cards are being made for the
mothers of others. We assure you that the commandment to honor parents
is taught faithfully at Rodeph Sholom. But so is the commandment
to ‘love thy neighbor as yourself.'"
Even a Sunday
morning gin guzzler, a definite bush subspecies, knows that to be
a highly selective reading of Holy Writ — which, after all,
includes fierce condemnations of the very lifestyle (which still
goes unnamed in many parts of the bush) that reportedly inspired
the ban. Those of us who avoid theological disputes have a different
question: How did Father’s Day survive all the sad-eyed children
of war orphans? Didn’t they feel left out, too — or didn’t
their feelings matter?
The larger
point is that Mother’s Day is gone--and parents are afraid to go
on record in its defense (out of fear of reprisals, one told the
New York Post). This is cowardice, pure and simple, and cowards
are inferior beings. In fact, between a coward and a full-throated
hick who nonetheless will speak up for momma, you just have to go
with the latter. That these parents pay up to $20,000 a year to
send their kids to a school that will not allow their children to
honor them is another sign that the serf mentality is well advanced.
As it happens,
another mother took a serious blow a few weeks before in San Francisco:
Mother Nature, who was found wanting by the local government. The
issue was sex-change operations. The locals agreed, after due consideration
and perhaps some arm-twisting, that sometimes, as a news report
explained it, women and born into men’s bodies, and vice-versa.
To correct this natural disaster, the pols agreed to pay for sex-change
operations for city employees of a year’s standing or more.
The idea of
women being born into men’s bodies (and the opposite) is fairly
interesting in a theological sort of way, something along the lines
of a botched “ensoulment.” But this idea is, at the very least,
highly speculative. By current scientific knowledge, which is taught
at the community-college level here in the bush, we know that sex
is not a state of mind. Ergo, even if you sew a custom-built love
appendage on a female, that’s not going to make her a real man.
Or, as a local professor of anatomy put it on talk radio the other
day, “Just because someone pins a tail to my ass, that’s not going
to make me a dog.” Some also wonder if the city will write a check
for those who don’t want to change their sex, but instead their
sexual orientation. Out here, we’re figuring probably not.
Bush people,
to be sure, have plenty of reason to be humble. We eat too much,
drink too much, sleep too much, and have unleashed terrible plagues
upon the world. But when one of us kicks momma, the rest of us tie
him to the railroad tracks and wait around for the evening train.
Civilization demands as much. Our superiors used to know that, but
they don’t know it no more.
|
