Vikie Shanks And Parental Double Standards (A Minor Rant. Or Perhaps A C# One?)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

It says much for adults and what they deem fit for children that Phillip Larkin’s surly prose has been a standard text in British secondary schools for English for longer than anyone cares to remember (despite the embarrassing revelations from his letters he was a misogynist old racist hopelessly addicted to sadistic pornography in the days possession of which merited a jail sentence), yet his most famous and best – ‘This Be The Verse’ (a nod to Robert Louis Stevenson) – remains banned from classrooms thanks to the opening lines of the first and second stanzas.

But it demonstrates equally the double-standard of today’s parents cotton-woolling children against a world they perceive (thanks to a sensationalist media, but equally a society where stupidity is prized and culture is damned) as being out to intoxicate, rape and troll them at every juncture – especially any with a different skin colour (ironically such belief is found to be double in those creatures using tanning salons until their skin goes crispy), yet happy to humiliate them for a moment’s hilarious anecdote to friends and family.

In the internet age, what makes the offence more insidious is it is up for all the world to see – including the child’s own peer group. Including those wishing to do them harm.

Take for example one Vikie Shanks, another of those rendered micro-famous on the ‘sore paw’ media circuit, whose particular interest is the rights of those with one of the many varieties of Autism which appear to exist today – rather like the proliferation of cough medicines where once-upon-a-not-so-long-ago one bottle per brand did perfectly well thank you very much. Marketeers have much to answer for, in this life and the next, but particularly in the world of medicine where everyone qualifies as having Asperger’s today for one reason or another.

(Been there and told them to shove their diagnoses and anxiety medicines up their arses. Shyness is not a ‘medical condition’. Awkwardness is not a ‘medical condition’. It’s what makes us what we are, full stop, not an excuse for a pity party or a Get Out Of Fail Free ticket every time we f**k up).

‘Having had so many negative experiences with the authorities and schools trying the achieve the best for my disabled children, I have developed a passion for doing whatever I can to change the system so that children with Special Needs no longer suffer.’

Nice mission statement, shame about the proof reading.

Pity she comes out with this.

Never happened – except in a 1996 episode of ‘Friends’:

First sign of a fourth rater – plagiarising old jokes and trying to pass them off as real family experiences.

This was bad enough, but she compounds the offence by later making fun of her own daughter’s dyslexia (if this one ever happened either):

‘She never lived it down, bless her … but it’s all very good humoured.’

Four years later:

‘…although they appear to be coping ok, they’re really in a state of high anxiety the whole time.’

Yeah. So would we all if we had a dipshit mother posting up all your pratfalls for entertainment on the internet. One who would be the first to go running to the authorities demanding action on the bullying of her autistic children if anyone else did either of the above to them.

For the above you could cherry pick a billion other examples from Facebook and Twitter (the preferred homes of the hardcore internet arsehole) from a billion other parents. You know what they say about most people whom have suffered mistreatment it was at the hands of those closest to them: should we be any more surprised that it turns out the same is true when it comes to it over the World Wide Web?