300-pound kids are not going very far

Hi Joe,

I am writing this in response to Edmund's interesting letter on today's young people ("A coarsening of modern American culture"). I imagine Edmund is about my age and yours (I'm 56). Remember we tend to romanticize the past in our case the 50's and 60's. As to be dressing like slobs and acting like louts, teenagers have always done this. Remember gangs in the 50's  and hippies in the 60's. I enjoyed my anti-social period.

The really important comment is about the teeth. The fact is that the young working class kids of this generation are very possibly in worse health than we were. Teeth are a good indicator and type 2 diabetes is another. I live in a predominantly minority neighborhood and it is epidemic here. Five-feet seven-inch kids weighing 300 pounds are not going to go very far in this society.

This is not the Bell curve and it is very dangerous to think so. If they are loutish, look at our foreign policy. Who's a bigger gangsta than Bush or whoever is the real boss. Many people here seem proud of the fact that our government says, "We don't negotiate, we bomb." Of course at the end of the day, you still don't have any teeth. And may I remind Edmund that American corporations don't expect newly hired college graduates to be able to write a letter.

Edmund mentioned in his letter that he lives in Wilmington, Delaware. Several years ago I was taking the train back from Washington D.C. to New York City. Trains are great ways to view deindustrialization. Going towards the Wilmington train station the track was surrounded by abandoned factories. Finally, I saw a new red brick building and thought, "Well, at least they are building something." As we neared the building, I saw the concertina wire on the building , which was of course a prison. What are the implications for the working class when the only new buildings are prisons.

Kevin