• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

I really should read my own blog.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

We will not go back.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans do not trust women.

The willow is too close to the house.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / This Week In Blackness / For The Love of God, Don Lemon. Please Stop Talking.

For The Love of God, Don Lemon. Please Stop Talking.

by Elon James White|  September 19, 20142:36 pm| 69 Comments

This post is in: This Week In Blackness

FacebookTweetEmail

Don Lemon has stepped in it yet again. This time he has equated disciplining children with disciplining his dog: “You have to teach who’s in control. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fear or what have you, I’m saying this, because it stops you from doing it,” he added. And then he threw in some slavery mentions for good measure.

Please, CNN. Please stop letting this man have a platform. We’d suggest a muzzle, but we realize that people and animals aren’t the same.

Team Blackness also discussed how much a woman’s virginity is worth, the charitable natures of millenials, and Miss America versus conservatives.

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS

 

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Tree of Liberty Devours Six More Kids
Next Post: Parenthood »

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    rikyrah

    September 19, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    Lemon does not like Black people…this much is obvious.

    How many times does he have to prove it to you before you get it?

  2. 2.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 3:19 pm

    This is where Don Lemon hit his coworker on live TV, right? Isn’t that workplace assault?

  3. 3.

    srv

    September 19, 2014 at 3:23 pm

    This man needs to run for Congress (R).

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    September 19, 2014 at 3:24 pm

    I wish I had considered my virginity to be a little more pricey.

  5. 5.

    Woodrowfan

    September 19, 2014 at 3:28 pm

    who is this clown???

  6. 6.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    One one post today? What gives? (ha ha, a little FYWP jokey there, Glad the problems got fixed).

    Lemon is weird. He often seems among the saner and smarter at CNN.

    As I have said before, after forced exposure to CNN some months ago, I think all the anchors either are, or play, genial idiots. They are obviously very heavily coached by the producers to be on some BS attitudinal message about their corporate information news product.

    Maybe Lemon tries to get more creative than the rest, so he wonders off into overt and offensive la-la land more than the others.
    The others are just laff riots in the bland moron pompous news anchor stereotype, but compared to the the CBS guy (another Senior moment for this non-Senior) they are cheap copies.

    Edit: Pelley.

  7. 7.

    KG

    September 19, 2014 at 3:31 pm

    It doesn’t matter whether it’s fear or what have you, I’m saying this, because it stops you from doing it

    actually it does matter. the ends don’t justify the means. knowledge, wisdom, and reason should be guiding principles, not fear of retribution. because what you learn otherwise, is not why you should or shouldn’t do things; you learn ways to not get caught.

  8. 8.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 3:33 pm

    @Violet: As per my comment above, I wouldn’t be surprized if something close to what happened live on CNN was suggested or even rehearsed by producers.

    You watch CNN for a whole damn day, the very heavy influence of idiot producers on everything that goes on, on this supposed actual ‘breaking news’ news network is very obvious.

  9. 9.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 3:35 pm

    Maybe this is an appropriate thread to bring up the discussion that seems to be happening about corporal punishment of kids in the African-American community. How there seems to be a direct line to slavery and how some parents think it’s better to beat their kids to keep them in line than to have them act out and be shot by a white cop. Like those are the choices. This editorial by Michael Eric Dyson in the NYT was really interesting on the subject. Excerpt:

    Yet secular black culture thrives on colorful stories of punishment that are passed along as myths of ancient wisdom — a type of moral glue that holds together varying communities in black life across time and circumstance. Black comedians cut their teeth on dramatically recalling “whoopings” with belts, switches, extension cords, hairbrushes or whatever implement was at hand. Even as genial a comic as Bill Cosby offered a riff in his legendary 1983 routine that left no doubt about the deadly threat of black punishment. “My father established our relationship when I was 7 years old,” Mr. Cosby joked. “He looked at me and says, ‘You know, I brought you in this world, I’ll take you out. And it don’t make no difference to me, cause I’ll make another one look just like you.’ ”

    The editorial talks about slavery, and goes through how religion was used to justify beating kids.

    I saw Charles Barkley, among others, defending “whooping” your kids and having them cut switches from trees for their punishment. Don Lemon is doing the same thing here.

    Chuck Todd had the results of some survey on corporal punishment of kids. He mentioned the results and said there were variations by region, with the south being much more in support of beating kids.

  10. 10.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    Don Lemon needs an unpaid vacation and a mandatory trip to the Employee Assistance Program staff psychologist and a press release about how he’s working on some issues. Make it family therapy, his mom, his poor abused dogs, and any person he may be dating all need to be there.

    You need help, Don Lemon. Help.

  11. 11.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    @jl: Could be. I don’t watch CNN hardly at all. See it at airports or other places like that.

  12. 12.

    Mike J

    September 19, 2014 at 3:38 pm

    I assume this is about the asshat child beater footballer? Even if you thought spanking is ok, I can’t imagine any scenario in which you should draw blood from a child, short of laboratory tests or emergency snakebite treatment. Certainly not in the name of “discipline.”

  13. 13.

    Woodrowfan

    September 19, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    ah jeeze, he’s the “did a black hole swallow the Malaysian airliner?” guy…

  14. 14.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 3:40 pm

    Hey Don, take two Chris Carters and check back in the morning.

    Is Lemon the guy who opined we can’t rule out MH370 vanishing into a black hole? Believe that’s the first I heard of the guy, and it now seems to not be an anomoly.

  15. 15.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 3:41 pm

    @Woodrowfan: @Trollhattan: Yes, he’s the “Malaysian Airliner black hole” guy. So I’m really struggling to understand how jl could say this about him:

    He often seems among the saner and smarter at CNN.

  16. 16.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 3:43 pm

    @Violet: When relative had operation I suffered forced exposure to it for days, hours and hours at a time. Hospital and clinic staff apologetically said, yes it was irritating but the management preferred that they play it because it was ‘neutral’.

    Playing loops of the idiot news anchor on the old Mary Tyler Moore show would have been preferable. I should have suggested it.

  17. 17.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 3:44 pm

    @Violet: I guess if the “low bar” is subterranean….

  18. 18.

    cckids

    September 19, 2014 at 3:45 pm

    @Trollhattan: I can’t believe I’m defending him (not for the above instance, I’m not), but the black hole question was apparently asked repeatedly by viewers on CNN’s Twitter/email/Facebook feed & Lemon “passed it on”.

    Of the many, many ways “news” has gone downhill, the inclusion of the moronic twittese that gets airtime is one of the stupidest. If I’m watching the news, I could care less what anyone else feels about whatever is going on. Stop it.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    September 19, 2014 at 3:45 pm

    @Violet:

    I saw that too:

    Harry Enten over at FiveThirtyEight crunched some numbers on views of spanking, using the University of Chicago’s annual General Social Survey. The takeaways from his post:
    1) Support for corporal punishment is down in recent decades, but more than 70 percent of people still say it’s okay to spank your child.
    2) Born-again Christians are more likely to believe in spanking than others.
    3) Blacks are more likely to believe in spanking than whites.
    4) The South is more pro-spanking than any other region.
    These last two points would seem to confirm Barkley’s hypothesis. But if you look a little more closely, you’ll see that the gaps are actually not that big. While 85 percent of blacks agree with spanking, 73 percent of whites do, according to 2012 data.

    70% overall doesn’t surprise me at all.

  20. 20.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 3:50 pm

    @Violet: To be specific, 90% of CNN is fake teaser for real breaking news that will come hours and hours later (after it is no longer really breaking news), reruns of pre-packaged ‘news features’, or offensively ignorant and dumb anchors trying to put their own personal stamp on very repetitious and almost identical editorializing. And very weird expert panels that of people who are oddly mismatched in terms of what aspect of story they are talking about, and who are egged on by anchor for dramatic debate and disagreement, often in situations where such is completely pointless or idiotic.

    This is the routine except when they go on hallucinogenic, and endless special coverage jags (missing plane, anyone.. anyone… we got…. something (nothing) on MISSING PLANE). Or horridly incompetent noninformative coverage of real breaking news they have to cover like hurricane or bombing or something or forest fire or similar

    I guess CNN is inoffensive compared to Fox News.

    Edit: point is, from my experience, a lot of the weird shit you see on CNN is product of a large corps of idiot producers.

  21. 21.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 3:53 pm

    @Kay:
    The data raise a red flag for me, in how thunderously at odds they are to what I observe and discuss among parents. It may be that people who “approve” do not do so themselves, and I’d prefer a poll crafted to tease that out. I simply don’t buy that more than two-thirds of Americans dish out corporal punishment in 2014. 1964, I can believe.

  22. 22.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    @Violet: There may be a connection to slavery because I hear white southerners talking about that cutting a switch thing all the time, but maybe not, because this was an area historically with few plantations (the cotton growers showed up late, not long before the war brought an end to all that) and there is a STRONG tie to Baptist religion and itinerant preachers spread a lot of stuff from town to town in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

    Beating children happens to unprepared parents under stress, think sharecropping days. As for culture, frankly there are cultural links back to Africa and stopping in the West Indies to support the notion that beating children was an acceptable practice. However, in Bantu cultural areas it is considered wrong to beat a woman once she reaches puberty, and in the West Indies you may not beat a male or female once they reach 13 (hence the birthday beating). But in the US this distinction is lost.

    Contemporary sources often talk about the fact that Native American parents loved on their children (I guess excessively to them) and didn’t really beat them. But German culture was really big on beating children and they were a huge and largely unremarked immigrant group in Colonial and post-Colonial America. Much of the immigration from the British Isles were convicts or desperately poor and were sent as indentured labor where they were subject to being flogged, so one wouldn’t be shocked if, when such people had children that they beat them. Free labor, such as it was, was deliberately paid in wages of alcohol so that they would fight with each other on pay day rather than sober up and attack the paymasters. 19th century sources talk about the role of alcohol in domestic violence and the cycle of poverty.

    Slavery isn’t a thing that happened one time. It was a continuing pattern of racial and economic oppression that continued after the Civil War was long over. The cultural attitudes that licensed the beating of children for the most part crossed the water with our ancestors, white and Black. The role of religion in disseminating and reinforcing and even escalating forms of violence against children and its justifications should not be dismissed. (This continues to this day–see Bill Gothard and the Pearls.) And continuing police brutality “teaches” parents to continue authoritarian parenting styles which mesh almost perfectly with frequent and excessive beatings. There is the parent who loves their child and beats out of fear for the child, and ignorance. Then there is the overwhelmed parent whose beatings are part of a pattern of abuse and neglect but who mistakenly believes that their capricious beatings are what they are ‘supposed’ to do. And then there are the truly ugly, malicious parents who enjoy the dependency, fear, and terror of their children. Their malice is shielded by a community which believes that corporal punishment is a necessary evil and who can’t imagine that there are parents who hate or use their children to feed their egos and fantasies.

    People will keep doing the authoritarian parenting thing because it works, after a fashion. And a lot of kids who are beaten turn out fine. But it’s funny how most of the sociopaths in prison who did violent, violent things were beaten. Maybe they were also hit on the head and verbally abused. But it’s easy for an unprepared parent to lash out in rage against a helpless child and cause the damage that lying preachers say the beatings are “lovingly” supposed to prevent.

    It’s a dangerous world out there. A lot of snakes in the grass.

  23. 23.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 3:56 pm

    @jl:

    By ‘fake teaser’ I meant ‘insultingly dishonest teaser’

  24. 24.

    shelley

    September 19, 2014 at 3:56 pm

    Yes, it’s ALWAYS a good idea for kids to be scared of their parents. Ass.

  25. 25.

    Belafon

    September 19, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    @Violet: Having been a child of the South (Texas), I will say, in this case, that’s it’s probably more of a regional thing than a black-white issue. My mom whipped me up until the day I stopped trying to get away from it, which was into my double digit years. It’s very much tied to the conservative view of the South.

    Are blacks doing it to keep their kids from getting into trouble outside the home? If they are, it’s the same reason my family would tell the story of an uncle giving his 17 year old son a whipping.

  26. 26.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 3:59 pm

    @Trollhattan: I think only a quarter to a fifth of parents admit to spanking regularly.

  27. 27.

    Tommy

    September 19, 2014 at 4:00 pm

    @Kay: I think I said my mom used to hit me. Said maybe I could think this was OK. I have thought about this a lot the last few days. Now will asked her about it.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    September 19, 2014 at 4:02 pm

    @Trollhattan:

    That’s interesting, because I would be likely to buy it. I think it’s pretty common.

    I didn’t do it, because I have this fuzzy idea about children and dignity that I have trouble articulating, but it’s something I value. I know “dignity” sounds like a funny concept for kids, but that’s how I feel. It’s tied to their lack of agency and autonomy, I suppose. I don’t want to take what little they have. I don’t like to see them humiliated, so beaten down. My sense was always that would do more harm than good, that they should retain some physical control.

    My daughter was small, even for a child, and she used to say “put me down” when people would scoop her up, and I completely got that. It’s really a pretty outrageous thing to do, just pick up a person without asking :)

    I can’t stand to see or hear it, but I think 70% is not that far off.

  29. 29.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:03 pm

    Ironically, if you read a lot of African American biographies, some of the most successful African Americans had parents who decided, rather than beat their children because “better their parents who love them than a cop or prison or bad guy who will harm them” that they would COUNTER the negative influence of a racist society and made their home a safe place where they would give their children daily affirmations that they were loved, that they were capable, that they could and would do great things. And they did.

  30. 30.

    dubo

    September 19, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    Heh, any excuse to post this:

    “Please don’t misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority.
    “The greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn’t realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain.

    “At eleven o’clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.

    “On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater. . . ”

    . . .

    “When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie’s way of saying. “Get lost!”

    “I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me ‘reason’ with Mr. Freud.”

    . . .

    “What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!”

    After describing thrashing the family dog, he notes this in the context of childrearing:
    “But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD — ONLY MORE SO.”
    “[I]t is possible to create a fussy, demanding baby by rushing to pick him up every time he utters a whimper or sigh. Infants are fully capable of learning to manipulate their parents through a process called reinforcement, whereby any behavior that produces a pleasant result will tend to recur. Thus, a healthy baby can keep his mother hopping around his nursery twelve hours a day (or night) by simply forcing air past his sandpaper larynx.”

  31. 31.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 4:08 pm

    @Tommy: You speak about your young niece frequently. Are you okay with her parents hitting her? That’s a real life example that could happen and maybe is happening now. Not what happened to you forty years ago or so.

  32. 32.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 4:09 pm

    @Another Holocene Human:
    Okay, that makes more sense.

    Spousal unit and I were raised in households that spanked, and at least for me that included belt and paddle (can’t recall which was reserved for the “greater” crimes). Thus raised, neither of us once considered the option with our daughter. We did not have the “should we/shouldn’t we?” conversation, we knew from our upbringing, and those of our friends, it was indefensible and worse than worthless. Same for my brother- and sister-in-law with their son.

    Proof, as far as I’m concerned, that this savagery can halt with a single generation. It need be no more complicated then that.

  33. 33.

    El Caganer

    September 19, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    Screw corporal punishment – it’s a cultural fossil that we can hopefully shed within another generation or so. I have no interest in Charles Barkley or Sean Hannity or anybody else telling me that they got their asses kicked and turned out just fine. So what if it’s “traditional,” or part of “rural culture” or whatever spin is put on it? Honor killings are “traditional” and parts of “rural culture” in other places in the world, and we sure as shit don’t condone them. Do we?

  34. 34.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    @Tommy: At some point in my life I rationalized all the spanking (not the beatings, but the spankings) but in the last few years I’ve come across research that linked the spanking to a lot of negative outcomes which I could really see played out in my life and explained a lot of things that didn’t make sense. (Of course, my mother has an explanation too–environmental toxins from using plastic jugs for milk and cider. Of course, that explains why I did worse in college and suffered major depression vs my high school classmates even though I had always done better on standardized tests! I guess it was all those fleishig days that saved them from the milk jug poisoning!)

    Others on this blog have asked, Do you remember what you got spanked for, or the spanking? And I can honestly state I only remember what I did for one punishment, and it wasn’t a spanking, although spanking was involved, I figured I could take the spanking and not pick up my blocks, and my father did not let me get away with that. However, as to actual spankings, no, I remember the spanking and the aftermath. I only have a vague notion as to what motivated them. The stupid thing is that a lot of the dumbest shit I ever did as a kid I didn’t get spanked for. I’m pretty sure I got spanked for night-time routine stuff after my siblings were born and I refused to follow a rule that I thought was unfair. And it happened a lot. Until I guess I gave up inside.

  35. 35.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 4:13 pm

    @Kay: It doesn’t surprise me either.

  36. 36.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:15 pm

    And I do have a bit of a problem with authority to this day. The funny thing is that there’s been times when that’s played in my favor because as a union steward I’m perceived as being tough on management when, actually, that reflexive distrust, arguing, and attitude is not serving my members well and is something I’m trying to work on because I’m not thinking when that happens, I’m just reacting and feeding the rage because it feels good.

  37. 37.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 4:15 pm

    @Kay:
    I desperately want it to be a much, much lower number than that (say, 27%) because we’re raising yet another wounded generation if it’s two-thirds. Am serious that I do not know one parent who admits to spanking their children. Some may well do it on the down-low but if so they’re sufficiently ashamed to never admit it.

    ETA Growing up, each neighborhood kid knew which parents hit their kids, how they did it, how bad and who to be scared of. Not only did we get stories, we were also witnesses. Believe me, there were houses we never entered when the wrong parent was present.

    If there’s anything positive to be gained from the current conversation, perhaps it’s parents who hit their kids hearing for the first time that it’s a horrible thing to do.

  38. 38.

    Tommy

    September 19, 2014 at 4:16 pm

    @Violet: There is no chance of that I think. My brother is ten years younger than me. Parents changed how they raised me. How they raised him. I deal with the way I was raised. You touch her, have a belt taken to to ass I will come for you. I don’t think my brother or his wife would do that,

  39. 39.

    gelfling545

    September 19, 2014 at 4:16 pm

    @Trollhattan: Was this survey conducted only among people who are currently raising children or were those whose child-raising days are long past, are yet to come or who are not parents included?

  40. 40.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 4:17 pm

    @dubo: Is the old coot, Dobson, who said that still around. He was convinced that God loved him dearly too.

  41. 41.

    Skerry

    September 19, 2014 at 4:21 pm

    @Tommy: I was hit as a child. I remember having to pick which belt my father would use. I remember my mother hitting us with a wooden spoon and when she broke a yardstick hitting my brother. I remember being told that Santa would leave switches for bad kids.

    My parents deny all this. They admit to an “occasional” open handed smack on the butt. My brothers and I know different.

  42. 42.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 4:23 pm

    @Tommy: Might be interesting to ask your brother and his wife about their views on corporal punishment in light of the discussions around it at the moment. Is your brother’s wife’s family the family that is ultra rightwing? If so, you might be surprised.

    Also interesting that your parents changed their parenting style. Any idea why?

    @Trollhattan:

    Proof, as far as I’m concerned, that this savagery can halt with a single generation. It need be no more complicated then that.

    It can but people have to understand the connection. They have to think about it. And not be swayed by religion telling them it’s okay or their own parents or extended family telling them to do it. Not always as easy as it seems. Education can help.

  43. 43.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:23 pm

    @dubo: Who is this? His hatred of babies is astounding. Of course his understanding of babies is all wrong, babies can be born collicky or not and there’s not a damn thing you can do about that once it happens (some believe you can prevent it prenatally with nutrition, not going to rule on that b/c I don’t know), and while it’s true that a NEGLECTED child will cease to fuss (or even move about or react much at all, think Iron Curtain orphanage) a well cared-for baby is not going to be screaming and acting out much at all because baby and guardian have a rhythm and good communication. And later on in development that child will feel more secure and be less anxious about being separated from caretakers for periods of time whereas the baby whose needs are not well met becomes clingy and anxious and acts out.

    And the notion that a newborn can be conditioned, never mind engages in conditioning, is completely preposterous. Newborns don’t even have a concept of cause and effect. That’s why they cry when their diaper is wet, when it’s being removed, when they’re being cleaned up, and when the new one is put on and only shut up when they have a clean, dry nappy and a cuddle. Their nervous system can only process one thing, discomfort. After a few weeks or months they will start to distinguish in their cries what is wrong–hunger, gas, diaper, tired. But when born it’s just discomfort–>fuss–>cry–>wail. And then wail because you’re wailing and that’s uncomfortable.

    What hatred must lie in someone’s heart to project malice and manipulation on a helpless baby.

  44. 44.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 4:24 pm

    @gelfling545:
    Exactly. Knowing nothing of the survey methodology it’s impossible to say.

    “Do you think snoking should remain legal for adults if done where it does not affect others?”
    is very different from
    “Are you 18 or older and do you currently smoke?”

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    September 19, 2014 at 4:26 pm

    @Kay: I get that EXACTLY.

  46. 46.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:28 pm

    @El Caganer: 18 months ago Sean Hannity of hate radio fame and Michelle Malkin, the mind behind “Twitchy”, the right wing Twitter flying carnivore monkey brigade, were ranting on air about how they were beaten with a belt and more and turned out “just fine” and it’s as if the whole liberal blogosphere cried out and said “No, no you’re not ‘just fine’.”

    http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/04/michelle-malkin-sean-hannity-mike-rice-video/63884/

    Hannity: “My father hit me with a belt, I turned out okay!… Except in the minds of liberals.”

    Malkin: “Same here! …Oh, I certainly did. And with more than a belt. I’m sure the left thinks we are warped minds.”

  47. 47.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 4:29 pm

    @gelfling545: @Trollhattan: It’s from the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey. 538 has a better article on it. Link to survey data is in that article. I can’t add third link to it.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    September 19, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    @Another Holocene Human: Someone gave me a child-rearing book at my baby shower. I’d never heard of the author, but later, when I was reading through it, I noticed a recurring theme: IGNORE YOUR INSTINCTS, i.e., if the baby is crying, let her cry it out or you’ll spoil her. I tossed it in the trash because how could that not be bullshit? I was unsurprised later to learn that the author was a fundamentalist Christianist asshole.

  49. 49.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:33 pm

    @Skerry: My experience, too. Mom has a VERY selective memory. We kids know better.

    Some survivors of horrific family abuse have had the parent and sometimes even surviving siblings tell them they are liars, it didn’t happen or it was not that bad. I have a lot of sympathy for the family that posted an obituary about how their mother was a monster. Especially then but even now the law looks the other way when mothers attack, abuse, and even kill their children. The surviving children get called liars and ungrateful and other names. The truth is that there are hateful, spiteful, evil people in this world and some of them are mothers. There are children who have never known a mother’s love. Stop judging them. They know what they’re talking about.

  50. 50.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 4:36 pm

    @Betty Cracker: That’s so sick. Ran into another version of that in Boston, back when I used to babysit some fancy child psychologist had convinced a lot of professional parents that you had to teach a kid to sleep through the night by letting her cry herself to sleep. Otherwise she would be anxious and clingy and would never learn independence. Same attitudes claimed cosleeping, even by siblings, was child abuse.

    Well, I couldn’t let my charge cry herself to sleep. It was wrong. I went in there, read a book, talked in a soothing voice and she was asleep in less than 15 minutes. Now how the fuck hard was that?!?!

  51. 51.

    Mandalay

    September 19, 2014 at 4:39 pm

    @jl:

    I think all the anchors either are, or play, genial idiots.

    Yep, “genial idiots” is the perfect description of CNN hosts. They frequently react to news in the manner they imagine Bill and Betty Bozo in the suburbs would react: “President Obama said X today, but last week he said Y – what’s THAT all about???”, with raised eyebrows and a look of fake confusion and concern.

    Like Limbaugh, and all the rest of them (including Hayes, Maddow and Matthews), they are primarily entertainers. Their role is not to provide news or opinions. It is to get you to watch ads. Fox’s shtick is to be rabid attack dogs on the right. MSNBC’s shtick is to be outraged attack dogs on the left.

    And CNN’s schtick is to be as bland and dumb as Bill and Betty Bozo.

  52. 52.

    Mandalay

    September 19, 2014 at 4:39 pm

    .

  53. 53.

    Kay

    September 19, 2014 at 4:42 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    Thanks. That’s a relief, because I can’t really describe it.

  54. 54.

    Trollhattan

    September 19, 2014 at 4:45 pm

    @Violet: Thanks. They’ve been asking the same question since 1986, which is good from a consistency standpoint. The question itself is a doozy: “Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking?”

    “A good, hard spanking”?

  55. 55.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    @Trollhattan: Yep. Pretty crazy question. It does rule out the idea that by “spanking” they meant a small slap on the hand or something, though.

  56. 56.

    Mandalay

    September 19, 2014 at 4:50 pm

    @Another Holocene Human: From your link:

    And so it should be noted that Malkin herself has spoken up in some of her various feuds to voice her opinion that being called bitch, hoe [sic], and c#nt crosses her red line of inappropriate language in public or private.

    So for Michelle Malkin, sticks and stones can break her bones, but names will always hurt her. And always be courteous when you beat your child.

  57. 57.

    WereBear

    September 19, 2014 at 5:02 pm

    @Violet: variations by region, with the south being much more in support of beating kids.

    The south expects the schools to do it, too.

    When you look back, it’s amazing that this is now frowned upon… in Germany, pre-WWII, there were manuals on how and when and where.

  58. 58.

    Linnaeus

    September 19, 2014 at 5:05 pm

    I’d been hit by my father when I was a child – I can’t say it happened frequently, but there were times that he was angry enough to slap me, use his belt, or even punch me. It stopped, not surprisingly, when I’d grown enough that I could fight back if I chose to.

    In time, my dad has come to see that it wasn’t right to do that. My father also talked about the punishments that he was subjected to by my grandmother and the punishments that my grandmother was subjected to by my great-grandmother. They were in some cases worse than what I got and they were used more frequently, which doesn’t excuse what my father did, but I’m glad that he did to some degree attenuate the cycle of physical punishment.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    September 19, 2014 at 5:05 pm

    @Another Holocene Human:

    It was probably Babywise, which is the secular version of the execrable To Train Up A Child with slightly less outright child abuse.

    I suppose that technically when my toddler niece cried when I tried to put her to bed and then immediately wanted to play a game, she was “manipulating” me to get what she wanted, but what she wanted was for me to continue playing with her, so it was kind of hard for me to get mad. She still had to go to bed, though. :-)

  60. 60.

    Another Holocene Human

    September 19, 2014 at 5:10 pm

    @Mnemosyne: learning how to “manipulate” the environment is a crucial part of child development

    having a solid structure which includes physical security, regular mealtimes and consistent sleeping patterns is extremely important for physical and cognitive development as well

    to call a baby manipulative sounds like projection, a problem with authority that stems from childhood, a defiant “I’m grown and you won’t tell me what to do!” and that rage is now directed against a helpless infant, you’re going to show that infant who’s boss but it’s actually misdirected rage against the parent who abused you … toxic stuff

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    September 19, 2014 at 5:10 pm

    @Linnaeus:

    One of the saddest stories I ever heard on NPR was a doctor who called in the police when one of his toddler patients was failing to thrive and it turned out that the child’s mother (who had no social support whatsoever) was depriving her child of food as punishment because in her mind, it was better than the beatings and physical abuse she had been subjected to as a child. She was really angry to have her child taken away when she had tried to do better and rolled up her sleeves to show the marks where her parents had burned her as punishment, demanding to know where the social workers had been when her parents were doing that to her.

    She did eventually get custody back after intensive parenting classes, but it was horrifying that she was coming from a background so abusive that starving her child as punishment actually seemed like a kinder option.

  62. 62.

    Linnaeus

    September 19, 2014 at 5:22 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    That is really sad, and if my dad was holding himself back in some way, it’s hard for me to imagine what he had to deal with. He told me a few stories, but I’m guessing there’s a lot more he didn’t say and won’t say.

  63. 63.

    Violet

    September 19, 2014 at 5:23 pm

    @Mnemosyne: What a horrifying story. I’m glad at least she got help and got her kids back. Hopefully she learned how to be a better parent. It sounds like she loved her kids and was trying to do better.

  64. 64.

    jl

    September 19, 2014 at 5:31 pm

    @Mandalay:

    ” They frequently react to news in the manner they imagine Bill and Betty Bozo in the suburbs would react: ”

    But what strikes me is that they all try to put a personal spin on almost the exact same editorial schtick, so my conclusion is that a small army of idiot producers are more or less scripting what happens on this ‘news’ network.

    And, I have seen the real reaction of ‘Bill and Betty Bozo in the suburbs’ to it, and most of them think it is too stupid but to laugh in an attempt to make the intellectual pain go away. Which is consistent with their ratings, come to think about it.

  65. 65.

    bemused

    September 19, 2014 at 6:03 pm

    When I was in grade school around 1960, there was an incident in school I have never forgotten. A native american boy probably around 11 or 12 got beat up by the school principal. He was a foster kid, think his parents were alcoholics and not surprisingly he had a lot of anger and acting out issues. I was sitting in a homework class with a bunch of other kids when it happened. I don’t remember what the kid did but the principal came in, grabbed the kid by his shirt, shoved him up against the blackboard and proceeded to pummel him repeatedly in the stomach. Did I mention that the principal was a former boxer? No one dared to breath or move a muscle. It was the worst thing I have seen an adult do to a kid then or since.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    September 19, 2014 at 6:39 pm

    @Linnaeus:

    My dad definitely made a lot of mistakes and screwed me up in many ways, but among other things, he never tried to berate me into not breaking up with an abusive boyfriend like my grandfather did to one of my aunts. (Apparently this man had thrown a glass of wine in my aunt’s face at a family dinner, and my grandfather didn’t see anything wrong with that. She did break up with the guy and married someone much nicer who is still my uncle today.)

    Obviously, it was easier to understand and forgive (A) as I got older and got into therapy and (B) he and other family members started being more willing to talk about the things their parents had done.

    And then fucking Fox News wrecked a big portion of that, but that’s a complaint for another day.

  67. 67.

    JMT

    September 19, 2014 at 7:28 pm

    I know this thread is no longer active, but I just have to say that anyone who gets in a pissing match with a dog and has to resort to physical punishment has a crap relationship with his/her dog and has no idea how to train with empathy and respect and lots of rewards. And to use abusive dog training as an excuse to physically punish children purely nauseates me.

  68. 68.

    Eric U.

    September 19, 2014 at 7:52 pm

    @Kay: I work for some people from a different country that think you effectively have to emotionally abuse people to get them to work. On the contrary, I am pretty sure most Americans that you would want working for you in the first place will feel more than adequately punished if you express disappointment. So I think you have to be careful about that. What I see is that people that are getting this treatment do as little as possible because they know that unpleasantness follows hard work just as much as it follows goofing off. This is very similar to corporal punishment of kids. You can beat them, but there is going to be a fairly high bar for beatings. So it’s ineffective, because the kids will constantly test the limits of what they can get away with without the beating. If, instead, you treat them like the self-regulated beings that they are and tell them when they are acting poorly, that in and of itself will keep them from misbehaving. In fact, they will not want to be told that they are misbehaving, so they will not.

  69. 69.

    Gus

    September 19, 2014 at 10:11 pm

    I’ve watched enough Don Lemon to know the man is just plain dumb as a box of rocks.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - beckya57 - Copper Canyon, Mexico, April 2025
Image by beckya57 (7/31/25)

World Central Kitchen

Donate

Recent Comments

  • Eolirin on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 12:52am)
  • Bruce K in ATH-GR on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 12:51am)
  • Captain C on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 12:48am)
  • Eolirin on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 12:48am)
  • Michael Bersin on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 12:40am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Feeling Defeated?  If We Give Up, It's Game Over

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!