Why are actual adult humans, some of them elected officials, lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse?
Kyle Rittenhouse has shown—or at least been advised to pretend to show—some awareness of the gravity of having killed two people and maimed a third. Some of his elders have not. On the Blaze's Morning Zoo podcast, co-host and apparent adult human being Sydney Watson said it was "impressive" that of all the people Rittenhouse could have shot at, he "killed probably two of the worst on the planet," going on to actually congratulate him. Rittenhouse replied that the killings were "nothing to be congratulated about," and that in retrospect, it was "not the best idea to go down there." If Rittenhouse is aware that what happened was a mistake, how long can an 18-year-old hold onto that idea when he's surrounded by adults—wealthy adults, famous adults, important adults— who are rewarding him for that mistake with the love and attention for which he's clearly starved? Keep things bubbly and light. With 15 books, 2782 named characters, and thousands of pages, it's no easy feat. Ken Kragen was magic. I didn't know this until two years ago, when I met him. I had never heard the name Ken Kragen, as you may not have, and thus was ignorant about how much musical joy the guy had brought into my life, and yours, and the lives of millions of other people from Hartford to Hanoi. Kragen was no singer, no virtuoso of any instrument. He possessed a different kind of genius, a genius he was born with and later nourished at Harvard Business School, and which he employed to great good over a lifetime in the go-go music business primarily of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The finest, fullest manifestation of his genius came in 1985, when he brought together forty-five star singers in one night to record "We Are the World." I'm not talking about what's appropriate. I'm talking about what's worth it. Forrest Gump, Top Gun, Breakfast Club? They aren't ready. Many people I know have parents who are suffering from Early Fox News Dementia, ranting about the perfidy of Anthony Fauci and the possibility of catching critical race theory from an open jar of mayonnaise. But at the same time, they want to give their children parental advice and guidance, though now through the prism of their separate bespoke realities. They want to remain parents, but only on their own racist and hurtful terms. My counsel to these children—stemming from what my closest friends and I experienced, all of us immigrants in our forties from different parts of the world—is to orphan yourself. |
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