Chicken Tenders and The Decline of American Civilization
November 1, 2009 | 
Author Although raised in Montana in a traditional home, my husband is not technically a conservative man. His guiding principle is “live and let live.” So it is highly unusual to see him incensed by anything, no less a commercial for chicken tenders. But he was so irate that he has committed himself to never, ever buying the product they were selling and spent more than 45 minutes ranting about the decay of American civilization the following day and the need for everyone under thirty to be in therapy.
The commercial was a thirty-second spot in which a group of teenagers (“punks,” according to my husband) rushed into the home of one of the boys in the group. Within seconds they had taken over the kitchen opening every cabinet they could reach, offering unsolicited commentary—all negative—on the food they found there.
Rush to rescue…enter the servant mother with a tray full of freshly cooked (previously frozen) chicken (by-product) tenders.
“Yeah, mom,” they barely uttered as they flung her offering down their throats.
“No one I ever grew up with, tough guy or not, would have ever had the gall, the unabashed audacity to walk into someone’s home and, forget just rummaging through their pantry, but to criticize what they found?” He was clearly disgusted. “That’s just the height of entitlement. That’s insane.”
Who can argue with him? Even those of us who were raised in more open, less structured homes than my husband’s can see the problem in the scenario and, more importantly, the cultural calamity it forebodes.
He wasn’t done…“I would’ve gasped if any of my friends had done that in my home when I was a kid…or if I’d found out that any of the kids I raised went into someone’s home and behaved like that. God, I’d be thoroughly embarrassed. And today…if I was greeted with a horde of self-centered punks ransacking my kitchen and dissing the food that I’d worked hard to provide, I would not run out and hook them up with a platter of chicken tenders. Tender would be the last thing on my mind.”
(For the full article, please log onto http://www.opednews.com/articles/Chicken-Tenders-and-the-De-by-Judith-Acosta-091101-884.html)
Posted in Albuquerque Counseling, Blog, Holistic Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy | 
Tags: children, civilization, entitlement, parenting
What I deduct from those images your husband saw is the power of images in merchandizing. (Please tell me it was a commercial!:-() Merchandizing is guilty of using studies in trends and behaviorism towards the exploitation of the populous. It’s “patron saint” at its worst is Joseph Goebbles, Nazi minister of propaganda from 1933 to 1945. Images and attitudes are sent out for long enough that people begin to think the propaganda has to be true.
I dare those kids to go into the home of anyone I know in such public display of irreverence and not wind up with their rears in the street.
Sam, the people you know are probably not representative of the general population.
Yes, it was a commercial, but I've seen a lot of that kind of behavior with adolescents. It's scary. And it's being promoted (you're right) by the product merchandisers.