Occupy Wall Street Reality

Hitting       The Nail On The Head

by          Marybeth Hicks.

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”

As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” – now known as “OWS” – whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for everybody.”

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on         “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:

* Life isn’t  fair.The concept of justice – that everyone should be treated fairly – is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But  justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, ”You can’t always get what you want.”

No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have  all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand  they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and  some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the  Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.

* Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t  operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and   the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I’m  pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not  free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens.  Real  people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are  advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are  made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow  money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans,  or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support  yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a  college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for -  literally.

* A protest is  not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making  a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what  isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you  are  doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth  Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look  foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

* There are  reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears,  facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the  sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of  college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a  mirror and         face the problem.