Spectator Life

In recent months, much has been made of "FAFO parenting." Touted as the backlash to "gentle parenting," the philosophy of "Fuck Around & Find Out" seems to be that children should learn the natural consequences of poor decision-making. While gentle parenting advocates empathy and respect, reasoning and explanation, FAFO parenting dictates that rather than going nine rounds with your small person to persuade him or her to go to the bathroom before going out / to put a raincoat on when it’s pouring / not to pull the cat’s tail, you should let them see what happens when they have the temerity to exercise their own free will.    Reading about how widely endorsed FAFO parenting apparently is on social media, my immediate reaction wasn’t: sounds sensible.

I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin; I’ve been pretty and I’ve been plain – ugly, even. Throughout this, my self-esteem has stayed generally constant, as if you’re going to base it on something as ephemeral as physical beauty, you’re going to run out of road very quickly indeed. This objective attitude to my own appearance reminds me of a funny story from the infant days of the internet. Imagine my surprise one morning to receive a message from an unknown recipient informing me that they had film of me masturbating to online pornography which they would make available to a wider audience should I fail to pay a ransom. (Don’t judge – I was young-ish and frisky and it was all so new – I soon grew out of it.

I was born in Santa Monica, California. So were four of my children. When I was little, Santa Monica was still a sleepy backwater with mom-and-pop stores, a quiet local beach that was never crowded and virtually zero crime. A place where murder or mayhem or even robbery were unthinkable. Then, sometime in the 1990s, Santa Monica was discovered by the rest of the city as a “really nice place to live” and was targeted for destruction. In Los Angeles you are not allowed to have nice things. Every Christmas, Ocean Avenue along the coast was lined with 13 historic, life-size scenes depicting the complete life of Jesus. These famous and beloved displays started in 1953, but in 2015 the city banned them after atheist groups complained.

On NPR, they were busy ignoring the Charlie Kirk assassination story by focusing on what really matters: this year’s Emmy Awards, which took place in Beverly Hills. I realized I didn’t recognize a single show – or actor. Then I remembered that I haven’t watched an actual television series in years. What is there to watch? At its core, the reason is because everyone in Hollywood hates you The Emmys are a celebration of TV stars I’ve never heard of, shows I don’t watch and a never-ending succession of narcissists delivering the same woke diatribes into the microphone. You hate Trump, too? That’s one we’ve never heard before, how original. The nation is eager to hear from the best supporting actress winner about how the right must atone for causing Kirk’s death.

Why is anyone even remotely interested in regime-changing a nasty, far-away foreign country that hates America when there is a nasty country much, much closer that hates us, too? OK, technically California is not a country, but it’s about the same size as Japan and Sweden. Its GDP – $4.1 trillion – is the fourth-highest in the world, behind the other 49 combined United States, China and Germany. It has as many residents as Canada. More people live here than in Spain or Saudi Arabia (and more than in our 22 smallest states combined). California is a monster in every way. That used to be a good thing: its powerful allure and economic might attracted the best and brightest from all over. Einstein taught in Pasadena, at Caltech.