Zell Miller, for those who can’t remember way back to last year’s Republican National Convention, is the turncoat Democratic U.S. Senator who bashed Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry from the GOP podium and later challenged “Hardball” host Chris Matthews to a duel. But that’s not the weird part.
No, the weird part is watching Miller rail against Gangsta rap on The Daily Show while promoting a new book called “A Deficit of Decency.” Here I was thinking global terrorism was going to kill me, when in fact the real threat to Life As We Know It is 50-Cent and Ice Cube.
The Founding Fathers, according to Miller, didn’t intend for our children to listen to rap or watch suggestive music videos. I believe Miller on this, mostly because he looks old enough to be a Whig. If you asked him, Miller would tell you that it’s still 1955, Coca-Cola costs five cents, and Walt Disney is about to open something called a “theme park” in California.
But Miller has a point, however infinitesimal. There is a lack of decency, but it’s not because of rap music, Desperate Housewives or Fox News (okay, it has a lot to do with Fox News). It’s because of people, period.
The solution? Don’t make any more.
Sound far-fetched? A bit severe? Well, it’s already happening in Finland. These people invented SMS and have the most technologically advanced country on the planet, so they might be right about ending civilization in order to save it.
According to Finland for Thought, there is a “procreation strike” calling on Finns to stop having kids. The strikers want “the costs of parenthood be split evenly between all employers instead of weighing heavily on the employers of child-bearing women alone.”
All employers should share the costs? What’s next, affordable health care? A retirement system that allows people to retire? A GNP that isn’t weighted toward machines that kill people? Oh wait, Finland already has those things. My bad.
We should heed the Finns – not the brothers from Crowded House, but the forward thinking, anti-procreationists from Scandinavia. Just imagine, no more crying babies in Coach, no more Wiggles, and no more children’s books written by celebrities trying to humanize themselves. And best of all, no more crazy Southern Senators writing tomes of idiocy masquerading as intelligent discourse.
I’ll give Miller credit for one thing, though – it was decent of him to challenge Chris Matthews to a duel rather than threaten to bust a cap in his ass. Maybe there is hope for the Human Race after all.
Gary Goldhammer -- Strategic storytelling for brands, organizations and executives 
I believe that Jon handled the interview well, especially in asking the question as to whether there is a lack of decency in EVERY generation (perhaps Andrew Jackson’s generation didn’t have rap music, but they did have slavery).
Regarding the procreation strike: I haven’t followed your link, but one drawback of such a strategy is that there are fewer people paying into the retirement system, which means that the retirement system needs to be overhauled, which means that Finland’s Giurgi Biush (Finnish mostly consists of i’s and u’s) will suggest diversion of funds into private accounts, which REALLY won’t go over with the Scandinavians.
P.S. I found you via the Neighblogs feature of feedmap.