PHOTO: http://flickr.com/photos/jackbox/78992080

LA Weekly’s Malina Saval writes about teen boys in LA in her article, “The Secret Life of Boys”:

“Mason was 14 years old when he spent 94 days in a tony youth rehab center in Los Angeles…”

“Lee Mason is an Indie Fuck. The membership rules are as follows: Have hair in front of your eyes, own at least two shirts promoting bands too obscure for anyone but another Indie Fuck to know, have a Livejournal.com or Myspace.com account, drink way too much, own the Royal Teitelbaums DVD, be not-so-sure-you’re-gay-it’s-sad, and listen to music by the likes of Modest Mouse, The Shins and Elliott Smith, preferably the post-humous stuff”

“A few months back, Mason’s mother caught him screwing some girl in her tidy house up on Mullholland…”

“Vincent Estrada has to wait until Tuesday to find out if he’s the one who gave an ex-boyfriend chlamydia.”

“Freddy Vasquez is an Outlaw. A rebel. A Tagger. The 19-year old has spray painted, scrawled and marked the word TIKAL across more schools, parks and cars than the Hollywood High Senior (he flunked a year and had to repeat it) cares to remember.”

Drugs, dropping out, flunking class, tagging, doing rehab, hating yourself, hating your parents, hanging out….haven’t we heard this garbage since at least 1955 when Nicholas Ray directed, “Rebel Without a Cause”? Why do these indie writers have to adhere to their own ideological interpretations of teen boy self-destruction? Who ever sees a story about the ones who do well, who get fine grades, who contribute something to their community and are still cool for doing so? Is there ever a teen starring in these LA WEEKLY exposes who doesn’t say, “So I started hanging out with some people, you know, got drunk at their houses, smoked a lot of pot.”

“Adolescent naivete has sadly gone the way of the dinosaur”, Saval writes. Oh really? Was an adolescent, like Gore Vidal, (who grew up reading Homer and Plato in 1930s Washington, DC) somehow less “sophisticated” than the mobile phone carrying,self-indulgent teens of today who download I-tunes and hang out for 10 hours a day in front of their Imacs? If you live in Silver Lake and your mom is an actress with shaggy hair and your dad was once a drummer for Inxs surely you possess more savoir faire and insight into life than any 40 year-old. Is being smart and aware only about parroting the styles worn at New Community Jewish High School in West Hills? When most high schools stopped teaching Latin, geography, grammar, and calculus in the 1970’s, did the graduates who emerged from those degree factories suddenly become the most hip and well-educated humans in human history? Or did we become a nation enamored of dumbness who confuse fashion and slang with education and wisdom?

In LA Weekly, one never hears about the people who aren’t covered with tattoos and taking every pharmaceutical under the sun while whining that they have ADD. Subjective casting of outcasts, and not statistical facts about the vast majority of boys, is what created this article.

One hears ominously about the Christian right agenda to brainwash America, but one never hears why they might feel compelled to do so. LA Weekly, the great sage of liberal thought, somehow thinks the worst qualities in our children are worth praising and exploring without ethical or moral judgment.