Oh yeah. You MUST read this column:
…In her new book, Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld claim the racial superiority of eight groups destined for success. They cite personal experience and statistics. What she completely lacks in fairness and social justice she makes up for in originality – when was the last time you saw Cuban exiles and Mormons praised in the same sentence?
In “The Triple Package,” the Yale University law professor and mother of two teen girls expounds on the parenting secrets of her 2011 best-seller, Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother, to explain why Iranians and Jews will rise to the top in life, and African-Americans, maybe not so much. With her smiling, beguiling, Chinese-American daughters at her side, here is a myopic mother role model I dare say no one wants to emulate.
Now playing on the big screen, August: Osage County is a drama of masterful maternal dysfunction, with Meryl Streep as a pill-popping mess. Yes, this is art, not real life, but the Pulitzer-award winning play by Tracy Letts offers us the larger than life view into one more example of a bad mommy…
Michele Weldon, did you read the book? Does it claim actual genetic superiority or is it cultural?
I suppose she must have read it to have such a strong reaction, although… I only read an excerpt of “50 Shades of Grey” in the Hollywood Reporter to go off on a rant of my own… So, perhaps she just skimmed it? 😉
Dearest V
What I found most dispiriting about the advertisement was just how worn out, world weary and ‘nearing the end’ the mothers appeared to be.
Can we really still live in a world where we believe that women’s lives end when their son’s leave home… I’m sure my mater would beg to differ!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I agree with you about Mater. 🙂
My “theory” is maters do love those man-boys, but it’s often with a nano-trace of regret and a whole lot WHEW and ZOWIE that they watch them strike out on their own… Theoretically speaking, of course.
Who in the pitch room thought the Old Spice would be funny? Men with mommy issues?
Watching it I’d say the pitch was tailored toward just post-pubescent males… You and I are SO not the target audience.