Spitting Images and Gentle Fails: A Bold Exploration of Parenting, Homelessness, and Racial Dynamics
Oct 03, 2023Season 1Episode 27
John Rosemond
Who would've thought that something as simple as spitting could tarnish a man's reputation, or that the well-intentioned concept of gentle parenting could potentially do more harm than good? I boldly delve into these intriguing topics in the first half of our discussion.
In the latter half of my discussion, I challenge the preconceptions of homelessness and a racially prejudiced nation, taking a hard look at homelessness, crime, and racial dynamics in San Francisco. I'll explore the links between fatherless homes and antisocial behavior, the perception of the rich as looting targets, and the need for a spokesperson within the black community. Using Savannah, Georgia as a case study, I offer a fresh perspective on the racial dynamics in America. Prepare to have your views challenged in this thought-provoking episode.
Who would've thought that something as simple as spitting could tarnish a man's reputation, or that the well-intentioned concept of gentle parenting could potentially do more harm than good? I boldly delve into these intriguing topics in the first half of our discussion.
In the latter half of my discussion, I challenge the preconceptions of homelessness and a racially prejudiced nation, taking a hard look at homelessness, crime, and racial dynamics in San Francisco. I'll explore the links between fatherless homes and antisocial behavior, the perception of the rich as looting targets, and the need for a spokesperson within the black community. Using Savannah, Georgia as a case study, I offer a fresh perspective on the racial dynamics in America. Prepare to have your views challenged in this thought-provoking episode.
Hello and welcome back to Because I Said so, or Welcome Is the Case May Be if you're a first-time listener. This is the only one and only podcast on the entire World Wide Web where you will hear the truth about the mental health professions, especially psychology, children and child rearing, or what is today called parenting a very odd word that I will deal with in upcoming podcasts. Today's podcast begins with an odd question. By the way, I'm your host, john Roseman, psychologist Authors, former syndicated columnist blah blah, blah, blah blah. Anyway, today's podcast begins with an odd question. It's an odd question for a podcast that presumably deals primarily with child rearing issues.
Speaker 1:
The odd question is why do men spit? Why do men spit? In the last several weeks, I've witnessed at least 10 men spitting spitting in parking lots, spitting on the sidewalk, spitting on grass, spitting on the golf course, spitting out their car windows, even spitting. What in the world is that all about? Okay, so before I go any further, full disclosure I don't spit, well, except after brushing my teeth, of course. My male friends don't spit either. I've asked them. They don't spit and they, like me, think spitting is a disgusting habit. But the only thing more disgusting than spitting in public, on a public surface is spitting a big hunk of chewing tobacco onto, say, the surface of a parking lot, where it then sits steaming waiting for someone to step into it. I mean gross. What is wrong with you guys? Someone out there maybe you Maybe wondering why a parenting expert on a podcast that deals with child rearing issues is talking about the compulsively spitting male.
Speaker 1:
Well, good question. I'm talking about spitting men because authentic masculinity is in enough trouble already in America, men need to band together to restore an authentic definition of what being a man is all about. What's being an authentic male all about? It's about forming and supporting a family. Period Well, not exactly period, but that's the primary thing. It's about forming and supporting a family. It's about being a proper loving husband and a proper loving dad, a proper role model to one's children. A man needs to demonstrate to his daughters the kind of man they should seek in a husband, and he should demonstrate to his boys, his sons, the kind of husband they should be. In that regard, men should not be giving their children or anyone else's children for that matter the impression that in some weird way, spitting is a sign of masculinity. That's why the compulsively spitting male must think spitting is masculine. After all, I don't see women getting out of their cars and spitting, or walking down the street and suddenly spitting.
Speaker 1:
So I mentioned this uniquely male habit to a guy once and he actually told me that maybe men make more saliva than women. What? You gotta be kidding me, dude. Men make more saliva than women. Alright, let's just go with that for a moment. So because they make more saliva, according to this guy's logic if that's what you want to call it, they have to spit like they have no choice in the matter. And anyway, if a man truly thinks he has overactive salivary glands, he should spare the rest of us his spitting and go see a doctor.
Speaker 1:
Spitting is not a sign of masculinity. It's a sign of rudeness, crassness, it's anti-social behavior and there is no rational way for a man to justify public spitting. No rational way, period. It's a disgusting habit that gives men a bad reputation and it's definitely not good for children to get the impression that spitting is a sign of masculinity, especially boys. So hey, guys, if this applies to you, I encourage you, I plead with you, I urge you to make the world a better place and stop. Just stop today, right now, stop. Okay.
Speaker 1:
So that's part one of this relatively unusual podcast. Part two is titled Gentle Parenting is a Communist Plot. Am I serious? Gentle Parenting is a Communist Plot? Yeah, I'm serious. Gentle Parenting teaches children that their feelings, their emotions are a reality that everyone in their sphere of existence needs to honor at all times. What today's typical parent doesn't understand is the background story to this idea.
Speaker 1:
In the late 1960s, when I was in graduate school, psychologists began telling parents that children should be allowed to express their feelings freely, that not allowing children to express their feelings freely would cause all manner of psychological problems, and so, believing that people with capital letters after their names know what they're talking about which is true of chemistry and physics for the most part, but not true psychology parents began letting children express their feelings freely. This also told parents that a child's feelings contained lots of significant content that they parents needed to try and understand and accommodate. So parents started trying to understand their children's emotional expressions. The fact, folks, is that the meaning behind most of a young child's emotional expressions is simply you are not doing what I, the imperial potentate of the universe, wants you to do. As I often say to parents, children are by nature tyrants. That's what the so-called terrible twos is all about. The tantrums and defiance that characterize these so-called terrible twos are all about the child asserting his belief that he rules, that his parents should submit to his irrational demands. Why does a child throw tantrums? Because his parents are not doing what he demands of them. Very simple, not complicated, not psychological, notwithstanding the common sense fact that a child's emotional expressions are, more often than not, irrational, antisocial, pathological. Even parents began thinking that psychologists were right that if a child threw a tantrum they must be doing something wrong. That's what my wife and I believed with our first child and we created a monster. If you're interested in that story, last week's podcast was all about how we recovered from that horrifying experience and put our child during a proper course.
Speaker 1:
In the late 1960s, psychologists began recommending what is now being called gentle parenting. As I've said many times before, gentle parenting. Gentle parenting is nothing new. It's the same stuff psychologists began hawking 50 years ago, the same stuff that sent child and teen mental health into the tailspin. It is still in.
Speaker 1:
Parents who practice gentle parenting are told to help their children identify their feelings. They are told to talk to their children about their feelings, to help their children understand their feelings, to help them develop appropriate ways of expressing their feelings. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's a fact. Folks Write it down, commit it to memory the more you talk to a child about his or her feelings, the more feelings the child is going to have. Let me repeat that for emphasis the more you talk to a child about his or her feelings, the more feelings the child is going to have. And here's another fact Feelings can be very destructive.
Speaker 1:
They destroy relationships, they destroy the mental health of people. Feelings violate other people's rights. Yes, feelings are what makes us human, but that doesn't mean all feelings are good Because they're not Speaking. Personally, I've spent most of my adult life suppressing most of my feelings, trying to keep them under wraps, and I'm proud to say I have succeeded. As a result, my thought processes and my behavior are not driven by my feelings. My behavior, my thinking is driven by rational thought. That should be everyone's goal, dare I say. I will also dare say that having learned to keep most of my feelings under wraps most of the time, and never just blurting out some feeling that I have, has made me a better person and a much, much happier person. People with lots of feelings that they've never learned to keep under wraps are not happy people. You've noticed that, but you may not be paying attention to what you've noticed. The feeling that I express outwardly most often more often than any other feeling in fact is my happiness, and I've realized, belatedly, that even my near-constant state of happiness can be off putting to some people. So I'm very selective about letting other people know that I'm nearly always a happy guy. So back to gentle parenting.
Speaker 1:
A person's behavior is either driven by rational thought or it's driven by their feelings. There is no third way. At this point someone might say well, john, you're contradicting yourself, because you just said that your behavior is driven by your general state of happiness. Happiness is a feeling. Therefore, your behavior is driven by your feelings. Ha ha ha, not true. I am happy because, after much rational thought, I have come to the conclusion that a general state of dissatisfaction is irrational. Life is a wonderful gift given by his most wonderfulness, god. I don't think God is real. By the way, I know God is real. I know God gave me life and set me on this living planet for the purpose of being happy. That's not his only purpose for me, of course, but that is one of his purposes. For me to celebrate with every ounce of my being, his reality. That's not letting my feelings drive my thinking. I have come to those conclusions vis-a-vis rational thought.
Speaker 1:
All parenting I propose sets children up to be ruled in their thinking and their behavior by their emotions. A person whose thinking is ruled by emotion is, by definition, prone to irrational thinking. Every person listening to this podcast knows a person whose thinking is ruled by their emotions. That person is irrational, maybe not all the time, but a lot of the time he or she, a lot of the time, doesn't think straight. I began this segment of today's podcast by saying gentle parenting is a communist plot. Here's why For communism to succeed requires that people not be thinking straight. Gentle parenting, which is the latest name for the same old, same old parenting propaganda that the mental health community has been bombarding mothers with for the last 50 years, does not teach children to think straight. It teaches children that their emotions should drive other people's behavior. That's crazy. Therefore, I propose that gentle parenting must be a communist plot, as Socrates said I think it was Socrates if A equals B, if B equals C, then A equals C. So men need to stop spitting and women need to stop buying into the gentle parenting baloney farce scam.
Speaker 1:
And now the third part of this podcast. The third part of this podcast is titled. I Read the News Today oh Boy, which is a line from one of my favorite Beatles songs, a Day in the Life, which closed my second favorite Beatles album, sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the news today, oh boy, I read about the escalation of retail looting that is becoming rampant in cities where Democrats rule and have ruled for some time, cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Philadelphia. The looting is taking place in broad daylight. It's brazen In everybody's face, so to speak. The looters are not trying to hide the fact that they are looting and store employees, unfortunately, are under orders not to interfere with the looting because interference might precipitate a lawsuit. So the looters just walk into a store, pick up some merchandise and walk out and no one does a thing. San Francisco has probably had more public looting than any other city in America.
Speaker 1:
My wife and I used to go to San Francisco at least twice a year. We'd spend a few days in San Francisco, which used to be a great American city, and then drive up to Mendocino, stopping in Mill Valley, and then maybe drive down to Carmel, take the 17-mile drive through Pebble Beach and so on. In San Francisco we'd go to the shops at Union Square. Most of those shops are shut down today. Why? Because of the looting On the streets of San Francisco one finds homeless encampments.
Speaker 1:
The homeless encampments are not populated by people who have no other choice but to live on the streets. I recently heard an interview with a former homeless guy who lived in one of those tents. He says the people who live in those tents are criminals, drug addicts, sociopaths who choose to be irresponsible. He was once one of them, an irresponsible drug addict living in a tent on a sidewalk in San Francisco, so he knows what he's talking about. He got himself straight, he got a job, he got an apartment and he is living proof that the tent people are not people without choices, they are scumbags. The scumbags intense shooting up drugs and defecating on public streets are why my wife and I no longer go to San Francisco.
Speaker 1:
Back to the looters. Such people park their yachts in San Francisco Bay. Rich people use dinghies to get to shore. The latest thing is for the looters to steal the dinghies motor out to the yachts and loot the yachts. They don't care if there might still be people on the yachts, because the looters know those people are going to be too scared to do anything about it. Mark my words. The looters are going to begin breaking into people's homes in broad daylights only a matter of time, not caring whether people are home or not, and taking whatever they want to take right in front of whosoever at home. After all, what's the difference between stealing what you want from Nordstrom and stealing what you want from someone's private home? There is none, no difference at all. And that's where this is headed. Folks, mark my words. Now.
Speaker 1:
Some people are going to think that what I'm going to say next is racist. If you do, I don't care. I'm not a racist. I know what I am. Racists are not happy people. As I've already established, I'm a happy guy. The most negative emotion I have is mild annoyance at times. Happy people don't hate other people. I'm not a racist. I'm not a white supremacist. I'm not even white. I'm sort of pinkish manila with, in the summer, a touch of ecru.
Speaker 1:
The looting in San Francisco is on video. Lots of it has been caught on film. Film doesn't lie. Most almost all of the looters in these videos are young and black. Is that an indictment of black people? No, it is not. It's an indictment of a government policy that rewards fatherless homes.
Speaker 1:
The sad fact is that most black children in today's America are growing up in fatherless homes. According to a recent survey, two out of three two out of three black children in the United States of America are growing up in fatherless homes. Sixty-seven percent of black children in the United States of America are growing up in fatherless homes. By way of contrast, one out of four white children is growing up in a fatherless home. Sixty-seven percent versus twenty-four percent, two out of three versus one out of four. And, by the way, most of those white children see their fathers every week. That's a huge difference. Once upon a time in America, nearly all children, black and white, grew up in homes where there were fathers and mothers. Fatherless homes are not a black thing. Sixty-seven percent of black children growing up in fatherless homes is a Democrat party thing.
Speaker 1:
It is an established fact that growing up in a fatherless home predisposes a child to all manner of problems, including the problem of antisocial behavior. Looting is anti-social. It's about as anti-social as it gets. In fact, anti-social behavior is behavior that disrespects the rights of others. Where is the visible black spokesperson who is speaking to this problem? The visible black spokesperson today are race hustlers from the Al Sharpton School of Race Baiting and Race Hustling. Where is Martin when we need him and folks we need him badly? America is not a racist country. That's a lie.
Speaker 1:
I was born in the South and I've spent most of my adult life in the South. South is not a racist place. I've lived here for uh, 46 years now. I don't know any racists. I spent the first seven years of my life in Charleston, south Carolina. Many of my playmates were black.
Speaker 1:
Back then, by the way, my mother and I lived in the historic district. We had no money whatsoever. The historic district was the cheapest place to live because it was run down and falling apart. My mother and I lived in a cold water flat To take a bath. My mother drew an inch of water into the clawfoot tub and then she boiled water in the stove and added it to the cold water, and that's how we took a bath. And then my mother remarried and we moved to Chicago.
Speaker 1:
There were no black people in my suburb None, zero. There were no black children in my schools? None zero. I had no black playmates None zero. I went to a high school of 5,000 students. Not one of those students was black.
Speaker 1:
The first black family to move into my suburb moved out the next day because the first night they were there a cross was burned on their lawn. This is Chicago folks. They got the message and moved out. Chicago, ruled by Democrats since the 1950s, is racist, was racist then, it's racist now. The North Carolina town in which I live is not racist.
Speaker 1:
As my dear mother used to say, put that in your pipe and smoke it. A black person once told me that Savannah Georgia, his hometown, is the least racist city in America. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. The Democrat Party elite want you to believe America is racist. That is a downright, dirty, rotten lie. The American black community does have a problem, though. The foggolist home is the problem, not racism, and when the black community wakes up to that fact and does something about it, we can make America great again, and not until and that, folks, is a wrap. Thanks for joining me. Tell your friends, relatives and coworkers about this weekly podcast and, as always, keep on rockin' in the free world, because if we don't rock it, we're gonna lose it.
