'Meanest mom on planet' sells son's car (1 Viewer)

[Mort Corey]

I think the whole thing is pretty funny. If the kid is embarassed by his moms ad, let him get a job and take out his own in rebuttal.

Mort

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

...or buy a car she doesn't hold the title to.

 

[Holadem]

You are kidding, right? Did you really just invoke First Amendment rights? Damn!

I would love to hear you bring up your First Amendment rights, say next time your wife says you said something hurtful to her. I want to see how long you remain married after you've done that a couple of times .

Surely, reasonable people can agree that interpersonal communications fall under more stringent rules than what the US Constitution allows. Rights do not enter this discussion.

Taking away the car for good is pretty harsh but I don't know the history of this kid. The newspaper ad is just silly. The kid is no longer 10. At his age, that sort of stuff can seriously damage their relationship in the long term.

Mostly, as usual, we don't know all the facts. A short article like that paints a simplified picture which may be seriously shortchanging the truth. It sounds like she went to the car, found the bottle and coldly decided to place the ad. Perhaps they ended up having a shouting match. Perhaps he was very rude to her and she lashed back with the ad. Who knows.

And there is no way she could have predicted the attention the ad is getting. Which means that it was probably not intended to humiliate publicly humiliate the kid. Des Moines has 200,000 souls, it's not a village where everyone knows everyone, so it's not like random people were gonna know the kid just from the a used car ad, no matter how original. Unfortunately, the ad did catch some journalist's eye and here we are. She certainly seems to be welcoming the attention...

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H

 

[Nathan*W]

Actually, I'm right on board with everything else you've said here.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Not to fight any one else's battles, but I think you misread Holadem:He wasn't attacking you. He was merely drawing a comparison to show that, just because we have a right to say anything to our family members doesn't mean we always should. Ie. Just because the mom has a First Amendment right to run the ad in the paper doesn't mean it won't piss off her son.

 

[Radioman970]

These were my words exactly when I heard the story. To the letter, almost.

 

[Nathan*W]

That is of course your opinion, but his point didn't need to be made at my expense. Adequate comparisons may be drawn without the need to bring forum members personally into the topic at hand (Which you did a great job of, in your second quote, BTW).

 

[Holadem]

Exactly (thanks Adam! )

No part of my post was meant to be personal -- it was a throwaway example. Heck as I was writing, I wondered "is this guy even married?" but decided the point would come thru anyway. Substitute wifie for any close family member (or frankly, any acquaintance) and the point remains.

But as I write this, I think I've figured it out: IIRC, we met at Scooterpalooza. It's only just now occurring to me. I had completely forgotten about that (please do not take offense, it has been a couple of years

). And your wife may have been there as well. In that light, I can see how my comment could come accrues as unnecessarily personal. It wasn't meant to be, my apologies.

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H

 

[Robert Crawford]

Come on guys, let's remain calm about this article. There is no reason for any of us to get into a pissing match with each other over that article.

Furthermore, I would hope that many of us will acknowledged the simple fact that alcohol mixed with driving is a bad combination and is a major problem in this country. Somehow, someway we need to deal with this issue because too many people are losing their lives in alcohol-related car accidents.




Crawdaddy

 

[Nathan*W]

Apology gratefully accepted. While you and I occasionally come down on opposite sides of a topic, I greatly appreciate the intelligence you display with your postings. (except the times that you disagree with me. )

And speaking of Scooterpalooza: yes, we were both there, although I didn't think I made enough on an impression to be remembered from then.

And when will that great institution be reinstated? Scooter? Scooter??

 

[Paul Padilla]

I don't get the indication that her "right" to place the ad is in question. There are an enormous number of things we have the right to do with our children, or at least are not specifically precluded from doing. Some are proponents of corporal punishment, others decry it, but when it is implemented within reason it still falls within parents' rights. My only qualm is with the propriety of using humiliation as a tool.

200,000 is a healthy size city not to mention the global nature that the ad has taken on. However, the point is not the number of people who specifically recognize the son. It is the knowledge in the sons mind that quite literally the entire world has been made aware of his mistake that I feel can carry a bigger punitive toll. Do we still use dunce caps in school? No, for the reason that we have a better understand of the damage that willfully inflicted humiliation can cause. Her ad served no other purpose IMO than a personal attack. Sell the car...sure. Make the kid donate time and/or money to a DUI related program...great. Make the kid take actions that drive home the seriousness of the infraction and illustrate the reality of the consequences. I think making it public can only damage the son, the relationship with the mother, or both.

 

[nolesrule]

So true. You never know what kind of emotional damage that this type of public humiliation may cause long term, and what might happen as a result of that damage.

 

[Nathan*W]

Or if it causes any damage at all. Like you said, it's an unknown.

 

[SD_Brian]

Much ado about nothing.

I don't get how the ad constitutes public humiliation since it doesn't even mention the kid's name. The only people reading the ad who would have known who it was talking about would have been family friends who knew their phone # and those people would have probably already known the whole story anyway.

Besides, if kids didn't have humiliating stories to tell about things their parents did, millions of psychiatrists and stand-up comedians would be out of business.

 

[nolesrule]

Sure, but why risk it? If he goes on to shoot up a mall full of people because of this, guess who's getting dragged to court in a civil liability suit.

I would actually say the way the mother is handling this with the text of that ad is proving that she is just as irresponsible as her son.

Nice example to set. (yes, that's sarcasm)

I remember the one time I was "publicly" humiliated in a Spanish class during my senior year in high school when my teacher told the whole class I got an F on a vocabulary test. I was angry. I walked out of the classroom, straight to my assistant principal and told him I would never set foot in that classroom again.

I never did, but still got a B in that class for the year. Of course, I sat in on a higher level spanish class (which was way above my level) and met with a tutor once a week.

 

[nolesrule]

Do you really think a 19 year old is going to make the distinction between his name being in the ad or not? We're talking about teenagers here. The CNN story has his mother's name, his age and where he lives. It wouldn't take much to figure the rest out.

And his mother is certainly encouraging the increased publicity.

 

[Paul Padilla]

Again, humiliation at it's heart is the psychological and emotional effect on the individual, not just the act of humiliating by the mom or those who may know the family. The sons relative anonymnity to the public at large doesn't necessarily diminish the impact.

 

[Nathan*W]

What I read is that she's a bitch for taking out the ad. My response is that it's her right to do so, nothing more or less. Maybe I'm reading them wrong. It's not really that important in the grand scheme of things.

 

[SD_Brian]

If we were talking about a 10-year-old, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. However, he's 19, old enough to be tried as an adult and held accountable for his actions. Had he been caught by the police, underage, with booze in his car (open OR closed container) society would have taken away his driving priviledges and his name could have been listed in the police-beat section of the local newspaper--and probably without the wit that his mother displayed in her listing.

But, as has been pointed out several times in this discussion, none of us actually know this family or its history. The son may be a meth-addict for all we know, the mom may beat him regularly with a wire coat hanger and force him to wear a dress and heavy make-up while standing on the front lawn holding a sign that says, "Mommy's Little Drag Queen." She may, in fact, be the meanest woman on the face of the earth--Des Moines' own Leona Helmsley and her son may be the worst kid since Damion in "The Omen." Or they may both just be players in a story that's been blown way out of proportion.

 

[KevinGress]

First, this didn't happen in Des Moines, but Fort Dodge. A lot smaller city. Although I work in Des Moines, I hadn't heard of the story until I read it here. CNN is the one that took the Des Moines Register story (which, again, I didn't see, or hear about until I came here) and blew it up. A brief aside, one can actually see the ad on Cars.com through the Des Moines Register website (hardly front page).


I think we concern ourselves much too much about 'emotional damage'. He's a legal adult - attending college from what I hear. I think worse damage would have been done if she'd allowed him to keep the car after finding out he'd broken the contract. Unfortunately, too many parents are apt to do that.

Again, I point out, if he'd only followed rule #2 (lock the car) it's very likely she'd never even known that he'd broken rule #1.