Melissa Crosses the Nasties

Apparently MSNBC is new to the parents-rights mini-movement. This week, they've been wringing hands and trying valiantly to be amused by winger bloggers and Fox talking heads slamming Melissa Harris Perry.

At the bottom is a segment in which Chris Hayes and she seemed surprised and even stunned. The Fox-ies had spent much of the week literally ranting and feigning high-pitched outrage. She had only called for larger community involvement in ensuring the safety and successful development of children.

The winger drama centered on her saying that a family's children are not the sole responsibility of the parents, that the community can help and should help. Of course that is a simple, generally religiously based concept going way back to Old Testament days and before. The idea that if there are problems, you're on you own, is a more recent, destruction and cold one.

Yet, winger media are always eager to pounce. They have been outdoing each other depicting these old fashioned values as collectivism, communism and other such drivel.

Hayes and Harris Perry were generally confused about where all this overreaction originated. Welcome to the world of parents rights.

That subgroup of wingers claims legal and moral ownership of their children, be it in how they are educated or whether parents can beat them freely and on any whim.

I did a series here (search for parents rights). One post links to several others by their emphasis. MSNBC folk can be sure if they again dare call for community involvement in helping kids, and particularly if they use the expression that "our children are not our own" as the metaphor for people helping each other, these vipers will pop out of their holes.

---

---