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Editor’s Note: I read
it... I still don’t believe it!
Human Events...
Adult Baby Syndrome
by Michelle Malkin
05/20/2011
Welcome to the land of the freeloaders and the home of the depraved. No
image captures America’s regressive ethos better than that of
30-year-old Stanley Thornton Jr., self-proclaimed “Adult Baby.”
Profiled on a recent National Geographic reality television show,
Thornton claims to suffer from a bizarre infantilism that leads him to
wear diapers, lounge around in an oversized crib and seek constant
coddling.
The nappies may be extreme, but let’s face it: Thornton Jr. -- let’s
just call him Junior -- is a symptom of our Nanny State run amok, not
an anomaly.
Junior came to Washington’s attention this week when Oklahoma GOP Sen.
Tom Coburn challenged the Social Security Administration to probe into
how the baby bottle-guzzling 350-pound man qualified for federal
disability benefits. A former security guard, Junior is handy enough to
have crafted his own wooden high chair and playpen.
Junior can drive a car and has sense enough not to go out in public in
his XXL footie pajamas. Yet, welfare administrators treat him as an
incurable dependent. Also collecting taxpayer-subsidized paychecks:
Thornton’s adult roommate, a former nurse, who has indulged Thornton’s
baby role-playing for the past decade.
Junior, naturally, threw a tantrum when his government teat-sucking was
called into question. He wiped his nose and un-balled his fists long
enough to type out an e-mail to The Washington Times: “You wanna test
how damn serious I am about leaving this world, screw with my check
that pays for this apartment and food. Try it. See how serious I am. I
don’t care,” Junior threatened. “I have no problem killing myself. Take
away the last thing keeping me here, and see what happens. Next time
you see me on the news, it will be me in a body bag.”
Not from nowhere has this stubborn, self-destructive sense of
entitlement sprung. As I reported last month, a record-breaking 12
million Americans have been added to the federal food stamp rolls over
the past two years, and the bloated $6 billion AmeriCorps social
justice army has been converted into a publicist corps for the welfare
machine.
Just this week, a Michigan man boasted that he’s still collecting food
stamps after winning a $2 million government-sponsored lottery prize.
“If you’re going to ... try to make me feel bad, you aren’t going to do
it,” he told a local TV reporter. Embedded in his rebuke is the eternal
refrain of the self-esteem-puffed teenager: “You can’t judge me!”
Diana West, author of “The Death of the Grown-Up,” traced the modern
abdication of adulthood to the Baby Boomer generation. “The common
compass of the past -- the urge to grow up and into long pants; to be
old enough to dance at the ball (amazingly enough, to the music adults
danced to); to assume one’s rights and responsibilities -- completely
disappeared” after World War II. A culture of behavioral restraint gave
way to “anything goes” and morphed into the current generation’s
“whatever” attitude.
Look around: Junior’s infantilism is of a piece with the refusal of
celebrity mothers Dina Lohan and Tish Cyrus to act like parents -- and
instead serve as best friends and tattoo parlor pals for their wayward
daughters Lindsay and Miley. They’re the kind of women who shop at
Forever 21, buy beer for their daughters’ prom parties and give them
Botox certificates for high school graduation.
Junior’s penchant for pajamas is of a piece with perpetually stunted
Hugh Hefner’s fetish for velvet robes 24/7 and self-indulgent
decadence. Junior’s giant playpen is a cringe-inducing symbol of the
Farmville-tethered, “funemployed” class of self-gratifiers who continue
to live for today and spend like there’s no tomorrow.
Adult Baby Syndrome isn’t an isolated pathology. It’s the new American
Way. Or, I should say, the new American Wahhhhh.
Read it at Human Events
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