Le Mean Maman: Are French Moms Meaner (And Are Their Kids Better Behaved as a Result)?
Mon dieu! Some news (well, okay, not news so much as opinion) from across the pond: French moms are not just thinner than their American counterparts; they’re meaner, too. (And Amy Chua thought she had cornered the market on tough.) A friend just sent me this link, to a 2007 article in an U.K. paper (the Telegraph) by an American journalist married to a Frenchman. Janine diGiovanni may (inexplicably, to my ears) describe non-French mamans as “Anglo-Saxon” mothers (who, me, Anglo-Saxon? My people are from Sicily!), but she makes excellent observations (some of them uncomfortable to modern American parents’ …Keep Reading
Holiday TV Special Redux: Why “Rudolph” Would Never Be Made Today
Just this morning, I was reading an excellent op-ed in Newsday, the Long Island, New York newspaper. A writer friend of mine, Claudia Copquin, wrote about Rudolph. I’ll put the link here for those of you who may be Newsday subscribers or Optimum Online customers (which you have to be, dang it, to get access), but for the rest of you, here’s the gist: A professor at a local university came out with a self-published e-book called “No More Bullies at the North Pole,” contending that all the adult figures in the 1964 holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are …Keep Reading
Plain Vanilla, Please: No “Schweddy Balls” in Our Ice Cream!
And now for something a little lighter: ice cream. Specifically, how a new flavor of ice cream is creating a bit of a firestorm among the sort of moms who would like to keep their (and, presumably, our) children’s worlds completely free of anything offensive (their definition of, I guess), immoral (ditto), scary (says who?) and … whatever. Fill in the blank. The world our children live in should be BPA-free plastic bubbles surrounded by rainbows and, I don’t know, Bible verses (the non-violent ones. Presumably). Ben & Jerry, those godless liberal Vermonters (need I say more?) unveiled a …Keep Reading
