Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
If children are cursing, blame the parents; battle of the sexes on "Family Law"; since when is Jeeves an Internet character?
Oct 1, 1999 |
Where have all the Eddie Haskells gone?
BY KAREN KARBO
(09/24/99)
I shook my head as I read Karen Karbo's sorrowful lament about her lack
of coolness in the presence of her stepdaughter's friends. There are few
scenes more pitiful than that of an adult in
search of lost youth and acceptance among her child's peers. It seems
that ocean America is teeming with parental invertebrates who lack the
courage and the good sense to stand up for what they believe is right.
How can parents expect children to make the right decisions, to use the N-word (no) when many parents can't bring themselves to use it? To her credit, Karbo gets it right when she says, "The baby boomers' Achilles' heel is that we need to be cool. We want to be mothers, but we don't want to be the mother, the one who says no." Boomers need to get over this silly obsession with being cool. Deal with it and move on.
The fact that Amber felt free to use the F-word in front of her friend's mother and then punctuate her statement with a graphic visual aid says as much about the mother's lack of presence as it does about Amber's substandard upbringing. All in all, it makes for sad commentary on the state of the American family.
-- Richard Morris
Eddie Haskell certainly could have been sure that neither June Cleaver nor his own mother would ever have claimed to "use the F-word as liberally as the hero in anything written by David Mamet" when the kids aren't around. I personally am lost past the initial shock that almost universally today, otherwise well-bred, extremely classy professional career women, in senior management positions no less, swear like longshoremen in public. If today's adult leaders can't hold themselves to a higher standard (and believe me, our kids know what we're up to), how can we expect civilized behavior from our kids?
-- Robert Maistros
Ashburn, Va.
I don't think Karen Karbo quite understood the dynamics happening at her stepdaughter's birthday party. Amber was flirting with you. It was your "cool mom" test. My guess is that she was trying to make you laugh, inviting you to be more than a cake-serving, interloping stepmom. Study the comic timing of the seemingly offhand remark -- it popped out of her mouth just as you plopped truffle cake on her plate! She offered up an icebreaker, and did you flirt back (a shriek, some eye widening, a bit of laughter, for God's sake), thrilled at her audacity in using bad language just for you? No. You ignored the brave child.
And you failed the cool mom test.
The only question lingering in my mind is: What would your mom have done at the party? Sounds like she was way ahead of her time.
-- Roz Hawley
D-I-V-O-R-C-E TV
BY JOYCE MILLMAN
(09/27/99)
Joyce Millman's review of "Family Law" fascinated me; having watched the premiere, I couldn't help but wonder how a show with such a fundamentally ludicrous premise -- a husband-and-wife law firm on the splits, where one spouse literally steals the entire firm (lock, stock and client list) out from under the other's nose, virtually overnight, without the wronged party even having the tiniest whiff that something was amiss until she walks into the freshly emptied room -- ever made it on the air.
But apparently this was a mere device to usher in the real raison d'etre of
the show: the gleeful embrace of naked misandry writ as uplifting
empowerment. Can anyone imagine a network television program in 1999
with a male character hiring a divorce lawyer who promises not only to win,
but to leave the soon-
It makes perfect sense, though, in the world of "Family Law," since there are no good men. Every male character is either malignant, sleazy or stupid, or at the least weak and hopelessly confused. Even the male children are faulted -- when the 11-year-old son of the addict mother acts out in anger at mom's attempts to regain custody (after abandoning her children for her habit) by leaving a rock of crack cocaine within temptation's reach, he is accused of being (gasp!) "childish."
Indeed, the only "acceptable" males in the premiere episode are either hunks to be ogled, or sources of much-needed cash. The lone male attorney who is accepted into the ranks of the newly reconstituted firm of Holt & Associates makes the cut because he is both -- first mistaken for a beefy moving man (and summarily ogled), then accepted, albeit grudgingly, because even though he is a sleazy personal injury attorney who does commercials advertising his services, the firm will get a bite of his sizeable, um, billables.
The underlying message of the show isn't even underlying: "Family Law" announces in bold and certain terms that Men are Scum -- except for the ones we need for cash or sex. As a signpost of the popular Zeitgeist, it sends a chilling message: Payback may be a bitch, guys, but wait till you meet her lawyer.
-- C. Spector
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