Where have all the parents gone?

So, here's the plan, little Tyrone and little Lucrezia have been putting on the avoirdupois at a significant pace, and they now qualify as being "obese". Have you noticed that in these caring times porky kids aren't to be called "fat", they are to be referred to as "obese?"

OK, and now all the forces of niceness and caring in our Nanny State have vouchsafed the idea of slapping a tax on soda pop since not-so-little-any-more Tyrone and Lucrezia are scarfing back this liquified tooth-rot to the tune of multitudes of bottles and cans per diem. Therefore, tax their Cokes and Pepsis just like tobacco and booze are taxed. Great plan. Notice how those taxes virtually eliminated cigarette and alcohol consumption?

Anyway, in our drive to have everybody live forever, let's hope the powers-that-are-whether-we-like-it-or-not shift this boneheaded and state-controlling-of-everything-we-do idea to the dustbin it deserves. Not that I necessarily approve of the holus-bolus consumption of a substance that when I was growing up was given "special treat" status in the Lidster household, and in most other households I was aware of in those days. It's just that, as is the case of virtually anything we might want to do that might not be good for us, we are capable, or not, of exercising our own good judgment.

The question I have to ask in this regard is, where are the parents? If a generation of children are growing up as little porkers, where are Mom and Dad? It's up to them to establish controls in their households. There was a pointed and apt letter from a teacher in the paper just recently in which she asked, when did it become a school's responsibility to invigilate what Tyrone and Lucrezia stuff into their greedy maws? And, of course, it isn't a school's job. It's a parent's job.
It's a parent's job to get T and L to get their fat little asses away from computer games and out onto the playground. It's a parent's job to make certain that T and L don't have huge quantities of cash with which to buy the aforementioned soda pop and other crud they might be stuffing in when they go to the store or eatery at lunchtime. I date myself when I say we weren't even allowed off the schoolgrounds at lunchtime, so that draconian bit of age-old discipline nipped junk-food store-treks right in the bud.

I reiterate. Where the hell are the parents? Are they the same alleged parents who permit their daughters to trot off to school looking like two-bit-a-go hookers when they are only 13? Are they the same parents who are relieved when T and L come home pissed as nits on booze, because "at least they weren't using drugs." As if, as T and L would say. Anyway, I suspect they are the same pseudo parents as the ones who let their charges, barely past pre-teen age, gather in masses in public parks late at night, on school nights. How terribly sad this all is. Why are these fake-parents so afraid to establish standards. Standards that T and L might eventually incorporate into their own lives.

Anyway, I have nothing against pop. I drink it rarely, but when I do drink it I enjoy it and I'll be damned if I want to pay an extra excise tax just because some public do-gooders want to establish even more controls and, at the same time, let those who should be responsible for their kids' behavior off the hook, yet again.