In today’s Boston Globe there’s a profile of famed anti-tax ideologue Grover Norquist. His famous line, of course, is that he wants to starve the federal government until it’s “small rnough to drown in a bathrub”. If you want to know how he got that way, look at his dad’s actions:
It’s the same message that first gestated in his mind when his parents would take him and his younger siblings for ice cream after church on Sundays and his dad would confiscate large bites out of each of their cones, explaining, “This is income tax” or “This is property tax.”
Grover’s dad was interesting in other ways:
THE TRAINING BEGAN when the boy was just 9. His father, a Polaroid executive who prized precision, would tell the boy: Go to the encyclopedia, choose a topic, and then give me one-minute speech about it. The boy would do as he was told. When he was ready, he would stand in the living room, planting himself between the fireplace and his father’s wing chair, and deliver his speech for an audience of one. When the boy was finished, his father’s response would always be the same. Do it again.
So young Grover Norquist would do as he was told. Again. Again. Again.
Fifteen times the boy would repeat this exercise, honing his message a bit more and referring to his index card of notes a bit less with each run-through. Only after the 15th attempt would the father begin to offer his firstborn son detailed critiques.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-18/magazine/31199550_1_pig-farm-rocky-ledge-speech
I don’t think it’s right that the rest of us have to suffer because Grover’s dad wanted more ice cream.
So Grover’s dad was Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation? That makes perfect sense.
To bad they didn’t both choke on Fudgie the Whale .
Just being named “Grover” would scar a child for life
It sounds like 'ol Grover was toilet-trained at gunpoint. That would explain a lot, actually.
Now I’m beginning to feel sorry for him. We should be blaming his father for the enormous debt, not him. It doesn’t surprise me that his father was an executive at Polaroid, a perfect example of failure to plan for the future and accept reality.
Grover Norquist was interviewed by Samantha Bee on the Daily Show, where he said he wrote the anti-tax pledge when he was 12 years old.