Today the Kansas City Star printed the following letters (names omitted here but you can read the whole thing here.
Now I’m not here to debate the merits of helmet laws, and the accident these girls’ father suffered is certainly tragic. But blatant emotional appeals like this piss me off. If you want to make a reasonable argument for a law, go ahead. Don’t try to play on my pity by having your daughters write sad notes to the paper. Eight- and eleven-year old girls can’t grasp any part of the issue except “daddy’s gone,” and using them as tools to try to influence public policy is horrible.
Your Daddy was obviously drunk off his ass, probably after having a celebratory few hours at the strip club after work, and was on his way home to be sexually rejected by your Mommy for stinking of beer and lapdances, and definitely would have found his way down the hall to your rooms sooner or later. It is with this very outcome in mind that this office will fight against nasty helmet laws.
Why shouldn’t they? Congresspeople have the right to give less weight to the views of non-voters, but that’s it. By that argument, women should not have been able to petition before 1920.
Because third-grade teachers have to be able to have something for the class to do on a day when the teacher is hungover. “Class, write a letter to all 100 state legislators urging that Hunter S. Thompson be named the official corpse of Colorado. There, that should keep the little bastards busy. Naptime!”
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using letters from kids to influence policy: I have no problem with a 10-year-old kid writing a letter to his congressmen asking for stricter DUI laws because some drunk ran over his dad.
Kyyrewyyoae, ignoring the particular issue at hand, I agree with Walter - I see nothing wrong with letting kids write these letters, or the newspaper publishing them. It injects a little reality into what is usually an abstract debate.
However, this is just mind-blowingly stupid when applied to helmet laws. Why didn’t the little twerps just ask their DADs to wear the damn helmet, instead of begging a congressman to force them to do it?
The next time I see some little brat screaming in the supermarket, instead of asking him to shut up, I’ll write my representative and ask him to pass a law forcing all kids under 12 to be gagged and muzzled when out in public.
I mean, really folks, are we not mature enough to make decisions about whether we sould wear a helmet or not? It should be a personal choice. If said moron got hurt in the forementioned accident, I guess Darwin wins…
I do agree with Absolute that the kids should talk to their dads instead of writing the government. My previous post was in response to this from the OP:
This suggests that reasonable arguments can’t include the feelings of children, because they can’t “grasp” the issue. I think that policies can directly affect children, and that keeping people mindful of that through the words of children is perfectly legitimate.
It’s the responsibility of DA daddys to wear the proper safety equipment, not mine, yours, or the gov’t’s.
They can’t stand wearing a helmet lest they be percieved as something less than macho!
While I would sooner emasculate myself with a spork than ride sans helmet, this:
Is freaking hilarious.
Honestly, if you want to ride without a helmet, then you increase the odds that you won’t be able to reproduce. Not always a bad thing, to my way of thinking.
Couldn’t it be, that the little girls heard about the potential law and decided to write on their own? It is possible that a child that age might decide to write a letter to the paper about something that they “know”. I don’t know that any adult put them up to it at all. I wrote a letter to the local paper as an 8 year old child myself, about endangered species (After seeing a National Geographic special on elephants) in fact. It got printed.
Ah, yes, in an ideal world where people (especially men) take responsibility for their actions. I live in a country where everyone wears a helmet because if you don’t and you get caught, you get a big fine. I think this is a fab idea and I wouldn’t have it any other way - I do not want to pay to keep anyone on life support because they were stupid enough to not wear a helmet.
It would make sense to have a helmet law for children up to, say, age 15 or so, because a kid doesn’t fully understand what can happen when a skull connects with pavement at high speeds. An adult does, and if they want to take a chance at getting a head injury or worse, let them.
I clearly remember when Jimmy Carter spoke of talking to his daughter Amy about an issue to see what she thought on the subject and he cricified for doing so.
We, the adults, are smarted than the kids. Yes we really are. This "and a child shall lead them’ is total bullshit. The only place a kid is going to lead you to is a candy store inside Disneyland. These little girls have no idea what caused their father’s ‘accidents’. They porbably don’t know what ‘operator error’ means.
If we let little girls write our laws well all be riding ponys to work with pink ribbons in their manes and on their tails. That’s not a world I want to live in.
