"The street kids want to be the self-hating middle class without the self-hate."

Odds are they won't be. They may get to be middle-class, but then they'll get the guilt trips that come with it. Society hurls them like crazy. Though if they aren't white or protestant (even if you're no-practicing, the heritage alone is enough for the guilt trip) that will help. But I bet a lot of the black kids are protestant so they'll get that shoved at them.

I can't help but laugh whenever I see some middle class kid wearing a Che Guevara shirt. Che would have shot the wearer in the face and had a good laugh at the parents pain before and after the shooting.

Spoiled brats with a conscience are just as annoying as spoiled selfish brats, because both want generosity to come from other people, and with other peoples stuff.

NicoleK:

"The street kids want to be the self-hating middle class without the self-hate."

Odds are they won't be.

Odds are they WILL be.
It's their children who will have lost touch, after growing up in the suburbs.

I have seen these parents - new arrivals to suburbia - tearing their hair out, totally bewildered by their own kids. They either insist on all kinds of "uncool" things like summer jobs - or else totally coddle their kids.

I don't think the phenomenon described as "middle-class self-hate" really has much to do with SELF hate...on the contrary, these belief systems are usually a way of aggrandizing oneself while sneering at those less enlightened. C S Lewis explained the phenomenon very well in something he wrote more than 50 years ago. I excerpted it here.

"The poor, whom the white kids are slumming with, hate socialism. They want to live in a competitive system. They don't want to be on the dole any longer. They resent the welfare that the middle class people throw at them to belittle them and aggrandize themselves."

I'll believe this when they - or their parents - stop voting en masse for Democrats.

My boss (a lobbyist) made his son work at a construction job over the summer. He also makes the kid pay for his own vehicle and gas.

I don't know anyone else in that paygrade who makes their kids work. My former boss (also a lobbyist) has a son that didn't get his first job until after he graduated from law school.

It is odd how polemic writers always find little set pieces in which all the actors exactly conform to their stereotypes.

You mean, there is no diversity of opinions among black boxers in the gym? All the whites are wealthy socialists?

I ran a furniture factory for 10 years, eight Hispanic employees. Most of them thought Bush and the GOP were only for the rich, although their cynicism often extended to all elected officials, but doubly so in Mexico.

But many employees were apathetic, and there was a mix of views on welfare. Some regarded the wealthy as admirable, while others thought corruption was involved.

In other words, real life. So I don't have a slappy-happy set piece for readers.

It's doubtful whether "the poor" have decided to "hate socialism", given that they don't live in a socialist state, but rather a capitalist state. I find it unlikely at best that they pontificate on the difference between the two.

More likely "the poor" who, in this case, are busting their asses to realize a dream, have no respect for lazy people.

As to all the white kids being socialists: really? Lots of white socialist boxers running around out there these days?

This guy walks into the welfare office to pick up his check, and says to the social worker, "I am soooo tired of living on welfare. I wish I could just find a job."

The social worker replies, "You're in luck. It seems there's a wealthy real estate mogul who's looking for a chauffeur/bodyguard for his 23-year-old nymphomaniac daughter. You would live in a 2-bed, 2-bath apartment above his garage, uniforms would be provided, along with two meals a day. You would also accompany here on her European vacations and the pay would be 150,000 a year, and includes medical and dental."

The guy looks at the social worker and says, "You're bullshitting me!"

The social worker says, "Well, yeah. But you started it."