Hello, it’s the Cubes Fan back again to tell you something you probably won’t like. It’s been a little bit since I’ve written because I was dealing with things I didn’t like, such as Craig Counsell wasting an opportunity to get his team to the National League Championship Series, but I’m not here to talk about that.
I am here to tell you that almost all the people who have become “role models” in contemporary American Society are probably the wrong people to be role models. Charles Barkley told everyone this truth in 1993 when he literally made a commercial saying “Just because I can dunk a basketball, doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”
So how in the hell are we 30+ years in the future and people still don’t understand this simple idea.
I’ll tell you how, people are stupid. Seriously stupid.
And, because you have been groomed by the internet to immediately get angry without actually paying attention to what is going on, you probably don’t like that I just called you stupid, but you might want to yell at the mirror instead of me.
Our American society values the almighty dollar so much that the people who are held up as “role models” are mainly there because they have a lot of money and not because they are actually good human beings. Charles Barkley only had 30 seconds to say what he needed to say, and it should have been enough, but like I said before, you are all idiots and didn’t realize that his statement wasn’t about himself, or basketball players, or any type of celebrity.
It was about you.
Okay, probably not you specifically because most of us were not parents back in 1993. It was about your shitty parents who didn’t get the message and then raised you to become stupid adults who make some of the same damn mistakes as your shitty parents.
One of the big mistakes that most of us have carried on is that athletes, or actors, or tech billionaires or any rich person are role models simply because they make a lot of money doing a thing that most of us cannot do.
Think about that for a moment.
Somehow we, as a society, have made these people role models because they do “WHAT WE CAN’T DO.” That’s just stupid. Why not tell kids that birds are role models because they can fly? Or that trees are role models because they live for hundreds of years? It makes the same amount of sense.
And before you get all bent out of shape and think that your kid is going to be an athlete, please refer to my last column where I explained how fucking stupid it is to think your kid might be one of the very, very, very, very small number of people who get to be professional athletes.
If your kid wants to be an actor, there is a similarly small chance of success unless they have breasts like Sydney Sweeney or muscles like Vin Diesel. Those two didn’t get where they are because they are good at acting. Even if your kid does look like that, they’d probably be better off swinging from a pole at a Vegas nightclub than trying to go to Hollywood.
Of all the things, at least music is something they can do their whole lives even if they aren’t stars, but if the idea is that they are going to be the next Taylor Swift or Beyonce, better check that last paragraph about breasts.
You don’t have to be attractive to be a male singer apparently, but even if you did make it, what does that even mean in this era where Lizzo pointed out that even already established famous groups are not making much of an impact.
Maybe your kid can get a gig playing music at one of those strip clubs where the actor kids are hoping they catch a break by showing off their bodies.
Why would you want your kid to be like these “role models” anyway?
If you look at them as humans and what their experiences actually entail, most athletes are dumb as fucking rocks. Many sports don’t even go through a college system, so those athletes are acting like role models with their 12th grade education and probably a 4th grade literacy ability.
Think about that. Your kid that can’t make a basket can probably already read better than the MVP of the league. It’s hard to learn and grow and improve as a human when you haven’t read anything longer than the instructions on how to cook ramen noodles over the last year.
Athletes who do go to college, don’t even really go to college. Let’s not kid ourselves here. The athletes that will actually make it from the college team to the professional team are probably spending a minimal amount of time in class and much more time sitting with lawyers learning how to get away with physical and sexual assaults they commit on the weekends. Is that the person you want as a role model for your kid?
To be fair, that doesn’t really apply to the female college athletes. They are probably actually going to class because they have never had leagues where they could actually make a living after college and even now it’s basically just basketball and soccer.
They, or their friends, are also the ones being physically and sexually assaulted, so even if they do make it to the pros, the type of role model they are, strong women who made it through horrible trauma, is probably not the role model you hope your child needs. I know I hope that my daughter never has to deal with that bullshit.
As for other famous people like actors, musicians, reality show people, tik tok influencers, etc, they are probably also not benefitting from a higher educational environment because that is just generally not how becoming famous entertainers works. Sometimes it does, but if you’ve got big boobs and/or muscles, why go to class to learn anything? Just go to Hollywood and take off your shirt. Faster, cheaper, and probably more effective.
Now, don’t get me completely wrong here, I don’t think you need a college education to be worthy of being a role model. A college education is a stand in here for expanding a person’s horizons to better understand the world. There are plenty of things people can do besides going to college to achieve this, so don’t think I’m shitting on non-college educated people.
What I’m shitting on is the privileged few with ridiculous physical genetics that make them successful even though they didn’t really ever expand their horizons through actual real world experiences.
Then we have the fucking billionaires. These people probably did go to college. They got a higher education and while their genetic makeup didn’t make them good at throwing a ball, their genes did determine that mommy and daddy have a shit ton of money so they never have to actually worry about the real world.
They aren’t working a part time job or taking out loans that will fuck their lives for the next 20+ years. They might not even be working all that hard at studying because they are already set for life.
While there have been some tech bro types who drew won the lottery without being born into the oligarchy, it is way more likely that their asshole parents made a fuck ton of money and these kids started with hundreds of millions of dollars before becoming billionaires.
What I do know is that they didn’t get their billions by being good people. That’s not how you accumulate that amount of wealth. They did it by fucking people over, exploiting loopholes in tax laws, exploiting immigrant labor, cutting as many benefits for their workers as possible, and just generally not using their money for anything helpful to society.
But hey, they have a lot of money, so they must be worth idolizing right? We should all be trying to be like them even though we have a thing holding us back that none of them seem to have: Empathy.
It’s amazing how rich you can get if you just don’t give a fuck about other people.
It’s not just rich people out there making shitty role models. I would throw the military in this group too. The only reason we do this performative Veteran recognition bullshit is because the Government wants poor kids to continue signing up for the military to ensure the war machine meat grinder is well fed.
I know because I was one of those poor kids that signed up to join the military. I was slightly different in that I didn’t join until I was 20 because I was busy fucking up my life for two years, but I joined because it is basically the only safety net offered by the government.
I will tell you that they did not give a shit about me or anyone in the military back in the 20th Century.
They didn’t stop the game to put soldiers on the jumbotron back in the 90s. They didn’t start doing that until Bush decided he wanted to illegally invade two countries for two decades because two buildings got knocked down in New York.
And before you think I’m just mad because they didn’t put my face on the jumbotron, you need to know that I hate when people find out I’m a Veteran and say thank you for your service. Fuck them.
I spent four years snowboarding and drinking heavily and doing my best to hook up with as many women as possible. I doubt they are thanking me for that service.
It’s kind of the exact same situation as college athletes, just without the opportunity to make millions. The military is an insulated group of people who do not have a grasp of what the real world is like because of the bubble they grow up inside.
From 18-22, these young men and women are told when to wake up, when to eat, when to exercise, when to work, when not to work, etc, and if they don’t show up, they don’t get fired. They get in trouble, but unless they are literally breaking laws, they probably aren’t getting kicked out. They just have to go sit in the corner until their Uncle Sam decides they’ve been punished enough.
Trust me on this, they don’t have a fucking clue what it means to be in the world trying to make it on their own.
The main reason they are successful if they get out is because they have access to all the programs that the government denies its non-military citizens. They are also older when they start to try and figure this shit out. They aren’t special because they are Veterans, they are just 4-5 years older and have a support network when they start.
Those people they ask you to cheer for at ballgames are the worst ones. Those dipshits never even attempted to make it out in the real world. They are living in their military bubble still being told when and what to do all the time, so again, maybe not the best role models.
I know I don’t tell my children to look up to soldiers who don’t think for themselves, and may possibly shoot them, because a fucking cheeto in chief tells the troops their city is a lawless wasteland.
The worst part of all of this is that now all of these people and groups have access to your child’s brain in ways that were never a thing back in the day. Social Media. Now your kids have athletes and famous people and fascist influencers right on their phones telling them stupid shit constantly, and they think these are good, successful people because they make money.
You want to do your kids a favor? Explain that teachers, nurses, plumbers, electricians, garbage collectors, etc. do more to make their everyday life better to live than any of these mentally stunted, improperly celebrated, evil mustache twirling, fuckwits do for them.
How about this? Talk to your kids about how you got to where you are in life. Don’t sugar coat it, but don’t traumatize them either. We all made it here somehow and you are putting food on the table, a roof over their heads, and making it possible for them to live their lives. That’s a fucking role model if you ask me.
Even if you aren’t happy with what you are doing, you can explain that too. Tell them why you put up with your shit job every day. Maybe they will be surprised that you value their lives so damn much that you are willing to forgo a bit of what you want in life to ensure they have what they need and that it is okay to do that.
I’m not saying limit their possibilities, but it’s probably a good idea to make them aware that being a normal human with a normal job is pretty good too. Maybe show them that you can be happy without being a famous, entitled, fucking moron.
Of course, that may be the thing that pisses people off the most in this column; me telling them to be actual parents to their kids just like Charles Barkley was trying to do.
Chuck told us three decades ago not to idolize these people and it’s about fucking time we actually listened to him.
About this one thing.
Seriously, don’t take advice from Charles Barkley. He’s a fucking idiot.
