It’s Not Like Intellectuals Hating Their Stupid Parents Is a Cliché or Anything
23rd January 2013
The Other McCain decides to vent.
Being clever and funny about the stupidity of one’s elders is one of the more vicious habits of youthful ingrates, and it’s generally impossible to appreciate one’s elders until you are yourself compelled to cope with the burden of responsibility and authority. Even then, some people are so smugly satisfied with their own superiority that they can’t recognize maybe they owe a little bit of respect to their ancestors.
Part of the problem of modern Youth Culture is that it teaches young people that they are smarter than their parents because . . . Well, mainly because old people are always stupid and young people are always smart. This is the basic theme of every network sitcom, and it’s also the basic lesson that smart kids learn in school, because (a) everybody with an IQ over 110 knows that being a teacher is the crappiest job in the world, which is why (b) if your kid has an IQ above 110, it’s only a matter of time until they realize they’re smarter than nearly all their teachers.