Parents Who Don’t Parent
Some kid and his parents are due a good whuppin’:
DETROIT, Michigan (AP) — Apparently, one 12-year-old visitor to the Detroit Institute of Arts doesn’t think much of abstract art.
The boy stuck a wad of gum to a $1.5 million painting called “The Bay” by Helen Frankenthaler, leaving a stain the size of a quarter, officials said.
What the heck is he doing chewing the gum there in the first place. He was on a school trip, fer criminy’s sake!
Holly Academy director Julie Kildee said the boy had been suspended from the charter school and says his parents also have disciplined him.
Probably for the first time ever, it sounds like.
“He is only 12, and I don’t think he understood the ramifications of what he did before it happened, but he certainly understands the severity of it now,” said Kildee.
Excuse me? By 12 one should damn well know that chewing gum in a museum, let alone taking out of one’s pestilence-hatchery of a mouth and affixing it to an exhibit, is not something one should do. What did his whimpy-a$$ed parents say?
“Now snookums, you know that you’re supposed to stick your gum to the frame, and not the picture.”
People | Mr. Bingley | 
March 1, 2006 2:07 pm
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My kid would have been beaten senseless, even for a POMO POS like that.
I don’t think much of abstract art either, and if it had been a Picassso, I still would have whupped him, but I would have been laughing behind his back while I did it (especially since I’m not sure how you could tell if there was a stain on most Picassos and their ilk). On the other hand, the painting he did deface looks pretty cool for this genre, so he deserves a double whupping.
http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/pd–10055055/Bay.htm
Yeah, I’ve seen it John. Still trying to figure out how anyone would have noticed.
The problem is that by the time the kid is twelve, a whupping isn’t likely to have much affect. You have to start early in teaching kids right from wrong, if they don’t know the difference by the time they’re 12, they will likely never know.
It’s the parents that should get the whupping.
Point taken, Mike.
Man, these places won’t even let you take pictures most of the time, because of the flash. GUM? Dude.
“But Jack, you said I could help you improve the paintings…”
Plus, by the time a child is 12, he’s already been indoctrinated on how to call the Welfare should a whupping suddenly commence. (Major Dad has always suggested the child call an ambulance at the same time he calls the Welfare…)