WTF CPA?!
So, have you even heard about this thing? By what I could make out, the news made a decent bang over here but got very little screen time where it actually maters. In a nutshell:
Vuk and Verica Nastic, Serbs who live in state of California, have been going through a real agony with CPA (Child Protection Advocacy) for the past six months...
...Their son and daughter have been handed to a Mexican foster family with no children after which the court is about to decide whether to separate them and put them into different homes...
...Our consul took his interest in the matter and on couple of occasions communicated with CPA complaining about discrimination upon Nastic family. As a consequence CPA complained to the State Department stating that Serbian Consulate puts pressure on them.
And all that because of - get this! - naked bath pictures! I have to ask - which one among you doesn't have their naked pics from back when you were kids? And how many of you find such pics disturbing, let alone sexualizing in any manner? AM I the only one whose first impulse was to cry McMartin? Yeah, I thought so...
So what's the problem here? The naked pics, the treatment the CPA is giving these people, the fact that the kids are now seperated and placed in two different foster homes, all that because an IT worker poked his nose into someone's personal files...? Or perhaps the fact that CPA is readily jumping onto something like this, yet child beauty pageants are perfectly all right?
(Well, maybe they could be all right. Personally, I find them disgusting. YMMV.)
No, the real issues here are as follows:
1. If the CPA is really jumping to conclusions and are really pulling a McMartin then ultimately, it's the very same kids they claim they're trying to protect who end up bruised the msot. Sure, the parents suffer in all this as well, but they are adults, they can cope. Kids are kids. They find it harder.
2. Whether the CPA is the bad guys of the story or not, a more general problem remains: what the hell is wrong with naked child pics to begin with?! Unless you're a pedo, nothing at all. And while being a pedo = naked child pics, naked child pics don't necessarily = a pedo.
2.a. So it's forbidden, or at least considered highly unappropriate for kids to see their parents naked in the meryy old US of A. Or so I've been told. From the same source, it's also mandatory for kids over four or five to wear bathing suits. Overall, it appears that what's truly mandatory is to teach your kids from day one that human body is something shamefull. Oh puh-lease! I watched a damned porn movie when I was, like, nine or something. If it left me deeply emotionally scarred, I failed to notice. It did make me giggle, however, me and all my friends alike. Well, did youu truly expect any other reaction from a bunch of nine year olds who rented the movie solely because it was something we weren't supposed to be doing?
3. Lack of data. So far, the only side of the story I heard was from the family's point. CPA didn't give a single clue. We have yet to hear about the supposedly incriminating pictures they based the whole thing on. While the whole thing does indeed reeek of McMartin, I'd still like to know more, and not just one side of the story.
3.a. If CPA indeed has something more substantial then a bunch of naked bath pics, then I'll have to say they were right in taking the kids out of there right away.
3.b. If they really have only a bunch of perfectly ordinary naked bath pics, coerced statements from the kids and little else, then the whole lot of them should be fired as quickly as the kids were taken away.
3.c. But to take a stand on this, you need more info. Otherwise, you can only go for what sounds "righter" at the moment. Which is not really objective at all.
4. And what's with that CPA anyway? Do we even need them if this is how they work? Why, of-fucking-course we need them! Call a Moulder on me when I say "I want to believe", but I really do want to believe that there are eally some educated, well-meaning, hard-working no-nonesense people working for the CPA and that witch-hunters such as these appear to be are an exception rather than a rule. But of there are witch-hunters marring their good name, then it's said witch-hunters that ought togo, asap. They make the whole organization look bad and I don't think that's really a good thing, do you?
4.a. That said, with all the PC policies that are currently all the rage, plus deeply ingrained 'moral' values that are nothing more than pointless monotheistic anti-body, anti-carnal, anti-sex leftovers from two and more thousand years ago, its high time to reconsider our stances on sme aspects of what we consider 'right' and 'acceptable'. Up to a certain point, protection of any sort is all fine and dandy. But after that point, it becomes pointless, a parody of itself. Which puts a bad name on all the things before said point as well. Which is, basically, an encyclopedia definition of shooting your own foot.
But all the philosophy aside - Fed the info as I am by the media, at this point I can't help but side with the parents on this one. And while I'm sitting here comfortably blogging away, a pair of kids just missed a New Year with their parents.
I may not like kids. It still doesn't mean I can't and don't sympathize with them.
Yeah. Happy New Year, you lot!
Vuk and Verica Nastic, Serbs who live in state of California, have been going through a real agony with CPA (Child Protection Advocacy) for the past six months...
...Their son and daughter have been handed to a Mexican foster family with no children after which the court is about to decide whether to separate them and put them into different homes...
...Our consul took his interest in the matter and on couple of occasions communicated with CPA complaining about discrimination upon Nastic family. As a consequence CPA complained to the State Department stating that Serbian Consulate puts pressure on them.
And all that because of - get this! - naked bath pictures! I have to ask - which one among you doesn't have their naked pics from back when you were kids? And how many of you find such pics disturbing, let alone sexualizing in any manner? AM I the only one whose first impulse was to cry McMartin? Yeah, I thought so...
So what's the problem here? The naked pics, the treatment the CPA is giving these people, the fact that the kids are now seperated and placed in two different foster homes, all that because an IT worker poked his nose into someone's personal files...? Or perhaps the fact that CPA is readily jumping onto something like this, yet child beauty pageants are perfectly all right?
(Well, maybe they could be all right. Personally, I find them disgusting. YMMV.)
No, the real issues here are as follows:
1. If the CPA is really jumping to conclusions and are really pulling a McMartin then ultimately, it's the very same kids they claim they're trying to protect who end up bruised the msot. Sure, the parents suffer in all this as well, but they are adults, they can cope. Kids are kids. They find it harder.
2. Whether the CPA is the bad guys of the story or not, a more general problem remains: what the hell is wrong with naked child pics to begin with?! Unless you're a pedo, nothing at all. And while being a pedo = naked child pics, naked child pics don't necessarily = a pedo.
2.a. So it's forbidden, or at least considered highly unappropriate for kids to see their parents naked in the meryy old US of A. Or so I've been told. From the same source, it's also mandatory for kids over four or five to wear bathing suits. Overall, it appears that what's truly mandatory is to teach your kids from day one that human body is something shamefull. Oh puh-lease! I watched a damned porn movie when I was, like, nine or something. If it left me deeply emotionally scarred, I failed to notice. It did make me giggle, however, me and all my friends alike. Well, did youu truly expect any other reaction from a bunch of nine year olds who rented the movie solely because it was something we weren't supposed to be doing?
3. Lack of data. So far, the only side of the story I heard was from the family's point. CPA didn't give a single clue. We have yet to hear about the supposedly incriminating pictures they based the whole thing on. While the whole thing does indeed reeek of McMartin, I'd still like to know more, and not just one side of the story.
3.a. If CPA indeed has something more substantial then a bunch of naked bath pics, then I'll have to say they were right in taking the kids out of there right away.
3.b. If they really have only a bunch of perfectly ordinary naked bath pics, coerced statements from the kids and little else, then the whole lot of them should be fired as quickly as the kids were taken away.
3.c. But to take a stand on this, you need more info. Otherwise, you can only go for what sounds "righter" at the moment. Which is not really objective at all.
4. And what's with that CPA anyway? Do we even need them if this is how they work? Why, of-fucking-course we need them! Call a Moulder on me when I say "I want to believe", but I really do want to believe that there are eally some educated, well-meaning, hard-working no-nonesense people working for the CPA and that witch-hunters such as these appear to be are an exception rather than a rule. But of there are witch-hunters marring their good name, then it's said witch-hunters that ought togo, asap. They make the whole organization look bad and I don't think that's really a good thing, do you?
4.a. That said, with all the PC policies that are currently all the rage, plus deeply ingrained 'moral' values that are nothing more than pointless monotheistic anti-body, anti-carnal, anti-sex leftovers from two and more thousand years ago, its high time to reconsider our stances on sme aspects of what we consider 'right' and 'acceptable'. Up to a certain point, protection of any sort is all fine and dandy. But after that point, it becomes pointless, a parody of itself. Which puts a bad name on all the things before said point as well. Which is, basically, an encyclopedia definition of shooting your own foot.
But all the philosophy aside - Fed the info as I am by the media, at this point I can't help but side with the parents on this one. And while I'm sitting here comfortably blogging away, a pair of kids just missed a New Year with their parents.
I may not like kids. It still doesn't mean I can't and don't sympathize with them.
Yeah. Happy New Year, you lot!