Monday, October 15, 2007

The negative doesn't accentuate the positive

Kids these days. Not only do they not know the fun that can truly be had with lead toys, not only are they expected to get laptops for their homework assignments, not only are they one of the reasons that we can come up with as to why Perez Hilton still has legions of sycophantic fans, but now we learn that making fun of them won't actually work to achieve the opposite result.

Don't believe us? We're not the ones that did the study showing that teasing kids about their weight won't encourage them to get thinner. That was within the realm of the University of Minnesota, who studied teenagers for five years to gather their results. Not only did they find unhealthy habits (such as binge eating and purging) to be just as prevalent among the overweight as among the thin, but those that were teased about their weight were twice as likely to be overweight at the end of the study.

This seems to fly in the face of all the teaching (although maybe teaching is the wrong word) that we gained while in our own formative years. After all, who among us has heard a gym teacher bemoaning about a kid being "too fat" to do certain activities? Who was told that they just weren't tough enough or smart enough for certain classes? Now we learn that, instead of teasing, being pushy, and overall trying to make people feel bad about their negative features, we should ease off, be more encouraging, and not worry too much.

In fact, given these new ideas, we're going to take them into the political arena. For example, we no longer will call Hillary Clinton "too mannish to win". We'll instead say that she's "full of masculine energy." Fred Thompson is not "dull", he's "pleasantly calming". And GDub isn't an "idiot". He's just an "over-achiever surrounded by mental giants."

Cheney still eats kittens, though. There's just no way to sugar-coat that one.

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