Family

In Washington recently, a special twelve-person committee was formed to address the problem of teenage pregnancy. You know, there used to be a two person committee that handled that, it was called parents.

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but family life has never been the Saturday Evening Post cover the conservative right would have us believe it once was. I mean, where's the Norman Rockwell painting entitled "Son Announces He's Gay over Easter Ham," or "I Saw Mommy Soul-kissing the Sparkletts Guy," or the classic "Menendez Brothers Give Their Parents a .22-Caliber Explanation As to Why They Didn't Want to Eat Their Vegetables"?

Face it, it ain't the old days. Lucy and Ricky have pushed their beds together and they're doin' it right in front of little Ricky now.

What can I say about today's families? I can say that many inflict the kind of psychic damage on one another that would make John Cassavetes wince.

We've all had that Thanksgiving dinner where your mother regales your date with the story of how difficult you were to toilet-train while you look down at the table and mutter, "You know I'm more fucked than this turkey." Christ, just thinking about it sends me screaming to my therapist for a double session of extended Jungian throw-down.

You know, the American family is more unstable than a hostage situation being negotiated by Crispin Glover. The concept of family is constantly changing. It has been altered more times than Luther Vandross's tuxedo.

My family was literally a nuclear family. I don't know about you, but my clan was so dysfunctional, MCI had an administrator on call twenty-four hours a day just to update our Friends and Family package.

Why are families so screwed up? Because for many people, trying to raise children in this economy is like Tom Joad trying to pay the utility bills at San Simeon.

They're struggling because just to stay afloat both parents have to work longer hours. Consequently, children have parents who are more exhausted than Paul Prudhomme bending over to tie his shoelaces.

Y'know, when we look to politicians for answers, what do we get? They parrot the phrase "family values." "Family values" has become a bigger catchall than the front of Rush Limbaugh's shirt after an all-you-can-eat nacho blowout. It's been pounced on to promote school prayer and decry film and TV violence and end the welfare state and attack single mothers. Interestingly enough, the dogs who bark the loudest about family values-Dole, Gingrich, Gramm-all left their first wives. Put that little nugget in your irony hookah and smoke it. These people should pay more attention to their own lives and stop trying to run the lives of others.

Newt Gingrich had an affair while married to his first wife, who had been his high school math teacher, a woman he divorced while she was recuperating from cancer surgery, and then he had to be pursued for adequate child support. Talk about the putz calling the kettle black.

Y'know, we've become a country of "don't do as I do, do as I say." We live in a society where people do more finger-pointing than Bill Clinton at a Dunkin' Donut.

Of course I'm oversimplifying, but that's what I'm paid to do. Look, folks, as troubled as families are, and as troubling as they can be, this essential societal unit must be preserved at all costs. For, you see, the human being is a social creature. Oh, some of us like to think that we're independent loners who enjoy the lives of craggy solitude that we've carved out for ourselves, but then we surround ourselves with a little tribe of like-minded curmudgeons that we can bitch to about what assholes everybody else is.

All I'm saying is never take sides against the family, Fredo. 'Cause it's lonely out there in the rowboat.

Even if your wrists and ankles are raw and chafed from your family ties, just remember, without them, well, who are you?

Your family are the people who cut you the most slack and give you the most chances. I mean, when Richard Dawson says "Name something you find in a refrigerator" and you say "A dictionary" and the rest of America is screaming "You moron" at their TV sets, who's clapping and saying "Good answer! Good answer!"? Your family, that's who.

Families keep everything in perspective. You can grow up, get out in the world, become a big success. You can control fortunes, corner the market, forecast financial trends, steer your company into the twenty-first century and beyond, but you go home to your family and you know who you are? You're just the kid who got tricked by his brothers into drinking a glass of pee.

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.