New Haven Independent

posted by: jayfairhaven on October 5, 2012  3:57pm

“a wounded 62-year-old man…knocking the elderly man to the ground”

if 62 is really considered elderly, then i’m going to have to spend some time contemplating the creeping, cold hand of death, its unwavering touch growing closer everyday.

posted by: Wildwest on October 5, 2012  8:53pm

You have to wonder why the juvenile who hit people with stolen car doors was out on the street to begin with.

posted by: Edward_H on October 6, 2012  5:55pm

Good Lord!! Had that been my grandma the only reason to call the authorities would have been to pick my carcass up off the street after she gave me the whooping of my life. Sorry to offend the sensitive liberals out there but my generation handled things differently.

posted by: Gretchen Pritchard on October 7, 2012  8:00am

@ Edward:  Grandma had more sense than to run outside and try to physically restrain a 21-year-old male who was already out of control and beating the lights out of her neighbor, and who appeared to have a gun.  Calling the police was absolutely the right thing to do.

posted by: Edward_H on October 7, 2012  6:16pm

Umm. That’s exactly my point. These days Grandmothers have to call the police to deal with their grandchildren. Back in my day a grandchild who even though of raising their hands at their grandmother was subject to a beat down by all male family members. Funny how Liberals always forget that “takes a village” saying unless they are using it to propose raising taxes.

posted by: jhonn_m on October 8, 2012  10:18am

Ugh; why do snarky comments about liberals have anything to do with anything here. i’m no fan of broad generalizations.
either way, despite the fact that i’d probably fall under the liberal category (if i had to choose between that or conservative), i can certainly agree that kids really should be put in their place more often. i’m pretty young, but if i so much as talked back to my parents or anyone i’d get whoopin’.
of course i hated getting hit, and there is a limit to how far you should go, but discipline is a lost art.
and what kid would rob a 60-something man right outside his grandmother’s house!?

posted by: Gretchen Pritchard on October 8, 2012  1:18pm

People’s kids can take a bad turn whether they are brought up with whoopin’ or not.

I totally agree that the adult males of a family have a particular responsibility to the boys in that family; I personally feel that responsibility is more effectively discharged by example and thoughtful conversation than by whoopin’. 

I also agree that there is a crisis in the upbringing of boys due to the lack of constructive male role models in many households, particularly households in poverty.  I’m not naive enough to think there is only one cause for this crisis in male responsibility ... or that it’s unique or unprecedented.  All you have to do is read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, or listen to pretty nearly any traditional folk song or blues song, to know that absent / drunken / violent / irresponsible men have been a problem for women and children—particularly in poverty—ever since whenever.  And that the problem self-perpetuates.

My response was only to the idea that there would have been any effective deterrent to the grandson if the grandmother had stomped out of the house and tried to tan his hide on the spot, which is what I thought you were suggesting.