[Written in 1984, lost, and recently rediscovered. This attempt at a humor column reads pretty dated now; the concept of conservatism it presents is more a reflection of the show Family Ties than anything else...]
Something funny has been going on at my house, and I mean to put a stop to it.
The funny something is not overt, but then funny somethings never are. It is a subtle combination of oddities, some not easily interpreted, yet coming bare under this watchful journalistic eye.
It has to do with my daughter, and although some of my conjecture, in inconclusive, the truth is becoming clear: my daughter is one of the New Conservatives.
The first tip-off came last month over breakfast, when she used the words escalation, unilateral and Gross National Product in the same sentence. From that point on, I was alert for further signs.
I should have seen it coming, but the country club membership and the racquetball lessons went right over my head. And the battery-powered Space Shuttle mock-up (complete with anti-satellite armament) she gave her brother for his birthday seemed normal enough at first.
I was onto her, though, when her home video game center was replaced by a personal computer running a financial analysis software package. I’ve caught her budgeting her allowance and babysitting money on it.
The growing trickle of mail from E.F. Hutton told me the rot was spreading. Sure enough, our Time magazine subscription was replaced by National Review, and the Wall Street Journal supplanted our hometown weekly.
Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test vanished from the bookshelf, and its its stead appeared copies of Capitalism and Freedom and Atlas Shrugged. I located Wolfe, to my relief, in my daughter’s room underneath a mutual fund prospectus, apparently discarded after the first chapter.
By this time my ire was raised. She began balking at ABC World News Tonight for fear her brother would be exposed to Sam Donaldson. My coin collection disappeared, and the bank informed me that I suddenly have an IRA in my name.
What’s happened to this country in the last 10 years? I’m supposed to be the hard-nosed conservative! My kids are supposed to be strung-out protesters, listening to Pink Floyd and wearing each other’s clothes. I know how these things work; I watch All in the Family.
Well, I’m drawing the line before our daughter gets out of hand. The gray three-piece dacron business suit and the blow-dried Bruce Boxleitner haircut are a bit much. She wants a compromise; she’ll drop the William F. Buckley accent and the pipe if I let her keep the suit and haircut.
I’m considering it, but I feel I got to take a stand sometime. This has got to stop soon, of the Young Republicans will be meeting in my living room, and I’ll be paying insurance on a LeBaron...
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