{"id":31097,"date":"2008-12-08T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:00:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T03:00:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:00:31","slug":"if_times_are_so_tough_how_can_parents_afford_to_spoil_their_kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/12\/08\/if_times_are_so_tough_how_can_parents_afford_to_spoil_their_kids\/","title":{"rendered":"If Times are So Tough, How Can Parents Afford to Spoil Their Kids?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Folks, I\u2019m telling you, every story, just like it was Friday, every story is unbelievably hilarious if you look at it from the right perspective. It\u2019s a sitcom and we haven\u2019t even gotten to Obama\u2019s radio address on Saturday or his appearance on Meet the Press yesterday where he\u2019s going to do his impersonation of FDR, all his stupid public works stuff. For example, the highway program. ‘Oh, yeah, we gotta upgrade our highways.\u2019 When Eisenhower did the Interstate Highway System, it was done for the first time. We\u2019ll get to that in due course. <\/p>\n

This is from AP-Obama: ‘It\u2019s a tough economy out there.\u2019 You parents, listen to this, now. This story is an attempt at offering you guidance over the holiday season here. ‘It\u2019s a tough economy out there, even for a kid. And many parents are wondering how to broach the subject. Should they shield their children from the hard times and spend like there\u2019s no tomorrow,\u2019 as they have been, ‘Or is it better to share the reality that more families — often their own — simply can\u2019t have it all, even at Christmas? It can be a real dilemma. ‘I\u2019ve explained the situation, and I\u2019ve also avoided it,\u2019 says Mimi Chacin, a mom and business owner in Miami whose husband lost his job in advertising. The family is doing OK. And in fact, the children\u2019s cooking classes Chacin teaches have remained full so far — a sign, she says, that many parents are still willing to spend on some extras for their kids. ‘I find myself not wanting to put them under that stress, but also sitting down and explaining that things aren\u2019t easy for anybody right now,\u2019 Chacin says of her sons, ages 9 and 4. Rita Cortese, who owns a Plato\u2019s Closet store, part of a chain of teen-oriented secondhand clothing shops, has been hearing more of these conversations among parents and their children in recent months–‘<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s this. ‘Emily Collings, an 18-year-old college freshman from Washington Township, N.J., who works at the store, says she\u2019s noticed friends spending less money on themselves and others, and even making gifts for the holidays. She lives at home and also has had more frank conversations about money with her parents. ‘We always talk about it,\u2019 Collings says. ‘And they\u2019ve told me that it\u2019s not going to be so easy for me to say, ‘Mom, I\u2019m going out tonight. Can I have $20?” Okay, Plato\u2019s Closet, brand named, general used clothing store, right? So it\u2019s like Salvation Army type stuff. Maybe because I have foregone the joys and the ecstasies of having my own children, maybe I am this out of touch, but I can tell you, folks, I\u2019ve always vowed when I got older I would never be a fuddy-duddy, I would never say, ‘Well, the way things were…\u2019 you know, like your parents always told you they walked ten miles to school with no shoes in the snow, that kind of stuff, I always vowed I would never do that, but the concept of this is starting to make clear now how it is we elected Obama. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a tough economy and parents are asking should they shield their children from the hard times and spend like there\u2019s no tomorrow, or should they share with them the grief? I can\u2019t relate to it. This kind of question would have never been asked growing up. We were not poor, we weren\u2019t upper class affluent, but here\u2019s another: ‘At BabyEarth, a Texas-based baby products retailer that focuses on higher-end, eco-friendly products, officials say they\u2019ve seen a slowdown in sales growth in recent months, but that sales are still increasing. ‘Even in this economy, parents are still shelling out $900 on Orbit Strollers, $12 for spiffy BPA-free glass bottles, $395 on organic crib bedding and even $300 for organic crib mattresses,\u2019 says Cathy Hale, a spokeswoman for the company. ‘Eventually, they will grow up and face the same stress and challenges we all face,\u2019 Hale says. ‘What\u2019s wrong with spoiling them now? These sweet-spirited innocent years are so fleeting.”<\/p>\n

Oh, so I guess we\u2019ve done a turnaround, it\u2019s important to spoil kids \u2019cause their futures are bleak. It\u2019s important to spoil \u2019em, especially when they don\u2019t know they\u2019re being spoiled. These are babies in the crib. Now, the point of all this, ladies and gentlemen, is, at least my point is that this is tantamount evidence that if we\u2019re in a recession and people are thinking like this, then most of the people who are being interviewed for these stories — and I don\u2019t know what cross section of the American population this represents — but if we are in a recession and people are still thinking this way, then most people have no idea what a real economic downturn is, and they still don\u2019t, because this cannot be that bad if people still have this attitude about how to deal with their circumstances while in it. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I checked the e-mail during the break. ‘Come on, Rush, do you have to nitpick everything parents do? You\u2019re not a parent. It\u2019s none of your business. Do you have to nitpick everything? Okay, so some parents are worried about what to do with their kids during tough economic times. You can\u2019t relate, so shut up about it.\u2019 Now, ladies and gentlemen — see, this is the whole point. The whole point is, if parents can go out and spoil their kids during a recession and bad economic times, it ain\u2019t bad economic times! This is the point. Peggy Noonan wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago, it\u2019s amazing, we\u2019ve got all these horrible stories about how rotten it is out there and every time you go outside, it looks the same. There are cars on the streets, there are people in the stores, the lights are on, peoples homes are heated, or air conditioned — ahem — as may be the case. People are driving around. Christmas lights are everywhere. It looks the same. <\/p>\n

Now, here\u2019s why this is important. It\u2019s why I\u2019m going to tolerate those of you sending me these caustic, mean-spirited e-mails of disrespect. After 20 years, I still can\u2019t believe that some of you regular listeners have the audacity to question me — ahem — a little Obama impersonation there. Seriously, if things are so bad that parents can choose to go out and spoil their kids to shield them from how bad it is, it ain\u2019t bad. But if you think it\u2019s bad, you\u2019re gonna sit around and you\u2019re gonna let Obama take over as much of this nation\u2019s private sector to fix it, when it ain\u2019t bad, as he wants. We\u2019re talking here about attitude versus reality, perception versus reality. The perception is that we\u2019re in soup lines. The perception is that it\u2019s the Great Depression, 25% unemployment, nobody has any hope, nobody has any future. Yet every time you go outside, everything\u2019s the same. ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, look at all the unemployment from last month.\u2019 I know. I know. A lot of it\u2019s in the media. (clapping) And a lot of it is from businesses downsizing, getting ready for what they think is a big wallop coming from Obama, and if they heard him on television this weekend, they\u2019re right. There\u2019s a huge wallop coming from Obama. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you an illustration. It\u2019s an innocent little story. Here from AP-Obama entitled: ‘Obama Hopes to Avoid Clinton Health Care Missteps — President-elect Barack Obama and his aides are determined not to repeat the mistakes the Clinton administration made 15 years ago in trying to revamp the nation\u2019s health care system. That means applying some of the lessons learned — moving fast, seizing momentum and not letting it go. The strategy begins with giving people the chance to highlight their concerns and experiences. Daschle invited people around the nation to hold what amounts to house parties from Dec. 15-31. Obama\u2019s transition team will gather the information from those meetings and post the material on its web site, change.gov.\u2019 Anyway, let me get to the meat and potatoes here of this. The meat and potatoes is that Obama wants national health care. He wants socialized medicine. In order to get it, two things have to happen. One, you have to think it\u2019s over in the private sector. You have to think that things are so bad that the only way we can preserve our nation is with government taking things over. Because we can\u2019t count on GM to give us our health care, and we can\u2019t count on the window company in Chicago to give us our health care. And we can\u2019t count on our own bosses to give us health care \u2019cause they\u2019re rotten SOBs. <\/p>\n

Nope, the only people that can do this are government, \u2019cause they care about us. Tom Daschle, who\u2019s Obama\u2019s Health and Human Services, whatever he is. ”Details kill,\u2019 Daschle said. ‘If we get too far into the weeds, if we produce a 1,500- or 1,600-page bill, we\u2019re going to get hung up on all the details and we\u2019re never going to get to the principles. Let\u2019s not put it down, let it lie there for months and months and figure out a time when we can get back to it later.\u2019 … Daschle did not provide any details about how the incoming administration would pay for expanding coverage. Instead, he made the case that not dealing with health care would worsen the economic problems because companies such as General Motors spend more on health care than steel and Starbucks spent more on health care than on coffee.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t make either circumstance right. It kind of gives us a heads-up on what\u2019s wrong, doesn\u2019t it? You\u2019ve got a coffee company spending more on health care than coffee and you got a car company spending more on health care than they spent on steel, i.e., to make cars. Okay, so you see it\u2019s not working. We can\u2019t count on GM. Why, now we can\u2019t even count on Starbucks, and we can\u2019t count on a window company in Chicago. The laid-off workers have had to take over there. I don\u2019t know how they\u2019re going to pay themselves, but they still have taken over. <\/p>\n

So you see, it\u2019s so dire, and while it\u2019s dire, you have the opportunity of not telling your kids. You go out there and buy a Wii at Walmart on their website today. You could go out and buy a Nintendo. You can take \u2019em for a Happy Meal 15 times a day because McDonald\u2019s is showing a profit and it\u2019s cheap. You can shield your kids from every bit of misery, but it\u2019s dire and stressed and we need health care and we need it now, it\u2019s so bad, screw the details. Just do it. You wonder what the reaction of the Obama voter is gonna be. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,\u2019 tongues on the floor licking it all up. ‘Yes, yes, give me my health care, and give me my Wii, and give me my window company job, and give me this and give me that and make it better.\u2019 Obama, ‘No, no, no, no, it\u2019s not going to get better, it\u2019s gonna get much worse.\u2019 <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Here\u2019s Judy in Detroit. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi. It\u2019s, Jody, but that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Snerdley, he also spelled Las Vegas wrong a moment ago. He still hasn\u2019t gotten over the Cowboys losing to the Steelers yesterday. He\u2019s so distraught it\u2019s distracting him.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, not as distraught as my husband is being a Lions fan, but I say our elected officials are not our servants, hence my call and not my child\u2019s servant, either, and I think a lot of the problem is these children feel that they\u2019re entitled, and the parents buy into it. They think that they\u2019re entitled to college, which I don\u2019t believe. I have a 23- and 25-year-old, two girls, they both paid for their own college —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wait a second, now, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Kids are kids. Were they born feeling entitled?<\/p>\n

CALLER: They might have been, but that was changed early on.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, not yours, no, no, no, you said kids feel entitled. They feel entitled to college, they feel entitled to a big house when they\u2019re 25 —<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, who made \u2019em that way?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Their parents.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: And their grandparents made their kids feel that way.<\/p>\n

RUSH: But why, why do their parents and grandparents do it? Why did they all of a sudden take a 180 and spoil their kids to the point that the kids have no understanding of the reality of the life they face?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, I think the older generation wanted better for their kids so they worked very hard to give their kids what they couldn\u2019t have, and somehow that got skewed along the way and turned into entitlement.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You and I are very close on thinking on this, but I think it\u2019s pretty common. I think every generation of parents has hoped that their own kids have a better life than they had. What has happened here — and I don\u2019t know how many generations, maybe two — no, no, no, it cannot be 50 years because I\u2019m 57 and it was not this way when I was a kid, there has been an effort, by the way, it\u2019s not just in the homes, this has been practiced in the schools, too, wherever you find kids, there has been an effort to eliminate all suffering and discomfort. Whenever there is suffering or discomfort or hurt feelings, the parents, everybody, oh, no, no, no, no, we can\u2019t allow this to happen, there can be no suffering, there can be nobody with hurt feelings, nobody can be upset. It started innocently enough with education where there were differences in kids\u2019 scores and so forth, that led to, we can\u2019t have that, that\u2019s humiliating others, and I think this whole idea, it\u2019s embodied here in the lead of the story, parents are confused now, okay, we\u2019re in bad economic times, do I shield my kids from this?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Absolutely, they\u2019re not going to learn. Everybody has to suffer to learn to some extent. I don\u2019t want to see my kids on the street, you know, homeless by my stretch, I\u2019d be happy to help \u2019em but you have to teach \u2019em to work, you have to teach them to have self-respect —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: — to be good citizens.<\/p>\n

RUSH: See, I\u2019m —<\/p>\n

CALLER: — educate themselves.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019m sitting here as host of the program and one of my responsibilities as host of the program is to make sure that whatever happens on this program is not boring. Now, wait, now, wait, I got a point here. Twenty-five years ago, for you to call and say this would have been so understood by everybody to be the way it is, the way it should be, that it would be considered boring. Today I wonder how many people have heard what you just said and are thinking, ‘Wow, you know, that makes a lot of sense, I never thought of it that way.\u2019<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well — (laughing) — that\u2019s the thing.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It\u2019s all starting to make sense here. There has been a slow encroachment of our culture. Obviously it\u2019s not that slow. It\u2019s gotten to the point where things are — well, a lot of us do not recognize things the way they are, and this election seems to have opened our eyes even more.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Fran in Reno. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. First off I want to wish you a very merry Christmas because I know I won\u2019t talk to you again before Christmas.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you very much. Same to you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Thank you. Also, you know, sitting here listening, waiting to talk to you, there\u2019s 101 things that a person could talk to you about.<\/p>\n

RUSH: The best bet is to stick with the original thing you called about.<\/p>\n

CALLER: That\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do, and that\u2019s about our kids nowadays. The problem with our kids nowadays is the parents. Because the parents feel they\u2019ve gotta give \u2019em everything that they didn\u2019t have before. And like when it comes to Christmas, you ask them for a Christmas list, and they want iPods, they want Wiis, they want laptops. What happened to the old Christmas list of, oh, I\u2019d like to have a doll or a car or a truck, you know.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah. I know. I think this is a sign of American prosperity. We had a story earlier, in case you missed this, folks, one of the reasons here that Fran is calling, we had a story earlier: ‘It\u2019s a tough economy out there, even for a kid. Many parents are wondering how to broach the subject of the tough economy. Should they shield their children from the hard times and spend like there\u2019s no tomorrow on their gifts and so forth? Or is it better to share the reality that more families, often their own, simply cannot have it all, even at Christmas? It can be a real dilemma.\u2019 I read that and I knew there are parts of this country that I am indeed — proudly I will admit I\u2019m out of touch. I do not have children. I have five nephews and nieces, and sometimes they suffer. Their parents tell \u2019em no sometimes. They all love coming down to see Uncle Rush. They all love Uncle Rush\u2019s arcade room; they love Uncle Rush\u2019s swimming pool; they love Uncle Rush\u2019s cook; they love Uncle Rush\u2019s macaroni and cheese and chicken strips and Uncle Rush\u2019s 55 televisions. <\/p>\n

One day this past summer, it was asked of me if the two eldest could come down for a weekend, I said sure. The other three wanted to come, parents said no, can\u2019t go. Two of them threw a fit. (crying) There was agony because the parents don\u2019t like to see their kids suffer. But, the original answer was stuck to. And the two kids — this is interesting — the two kids that were allowed to come did not lobby for the other three to be able to join them. (laughing) They went and patted them on the head, ‘It will be okay, you\u2019ll get to go next. You\u2019ll be able to go Thanksgiving.\u2019 People don\u2019t want to see their kids suffer. Look at this from ABC News: ‘For more students nationwide, the grading alphabet ends at ‘D,\u2019 as school districts eliminate policies that allow children to be given failing marks. At public schools in Grand Rapids, Mich.,–‘ here we go, Michigan again. ‘–high school students will no longer receive ‘F\u2019s, but instead will earn the letter ‘H\u2019 when their work falls woefully short.\u2019<\/p>\n

‘H\u2019 stands for ‘held.\u2019 Now, first we got rid of the red pencil. Remember, it wasn\u2019t long ago teachers could not use a red pencil in grading papers because that was too threatening, too intimidating to the students. Now ‘F\u2019s. And the headline of this story: ‘Are Students Coddled?\u2019 Yeah. They are. It\u2019s just different. It\u2019s not just trying to give \u2019em things that you didn\u2019t have as a kid when you were growing up. It\u2019s the idea they shouldn\u2019t suffer, and that\u2019s not good because they\u2019re gonna suffer. I mean everybody suffers. The worst kind of suffering is self-inflicted, and everybody does that to themselves. Everybody makes themselves suffer. You know it and I know it. But there are things that happen in your life that you don\u2019t do to yourself that are still gonna cause you pain. It\u2019s impossible to go through life not feeling emotional pain, physical pain or whatever. This effort to shield young kids from this has been going on a long, long, long, long time. It\u2019s not good because reality is going to hit them as adults and they\u2019re not going to know how to deal with it.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I have been rethinking this ‘H\u2019 business, the ‘H\u2019 instead of an ‘F,\u2019 then this stupid idiot kid flunks, instead of saying it\u2019s an ‘F,\u2019 they get an ‘H,\u2019 the grade is ‘held.\u2019 This actually could be great preparation for when your kid gets a mortgage and then is unable to pay for it and expects the bank to not foreclose on him. It\u2019s an excellent way to prepare him for his future, or hers, as a future homeowner who has no business owning one. Democrats will see to it that somebody will pay for your house. That\u2019s what this is all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Folks, I\u2019m telling you, every story, just like it was Friday, every story is unbelievably hilarious if you look at it from the right perspective. It\u2019s a sitcom and we haven\u2019t even gotten to Obama\u2019s radio address on Saturday or his appearance on Meet the Press yesterday where he\u2019s going to do his impersonation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nIf Times are So Tough, How Can Parents Afford to Spoil Their Kids? - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/12\/08\/if_times_are_so_tough_how_can_parents_afford_to_spoil_their_kids\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"If Times are So Tough, How Can Parents Afford to Spoil Their Kids? - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Folks, I\u2019m telling you, every story, just like it was Friday, every story is unbelievably hilarious if you look at it from the right perspective. 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