If you're not the type to keep track of who the Internet is hating this week -- Lena Dunham? Juan Pablo? HBOGo? -- then you may have missed the story behind Rachel Canning. Last week, the Interwebs unified in outrage over Canning, the New Jersey teen who sued her parents for high school and college tuition. Canning became a national punching bag straight out of the gate, with legions of commenters (ourselves included) falling over themselves to clutch their pearls over the audacity of her lawsuit, write off her accusations of parental abuse, and accuse her of being yet another spoiled Millennial driven to amoral madness sa pamamagitan ng the Twitter, or something.
When sites weren't covering the many, many fake or parodic Facebook accounts that purported to be Canning having a hissyfit, they were often busy comparing her to Ethan Couch, the "affluenza victim" who killed several people in a drunk driving accident.
So, just to catch you up: filing a lawsuit against your parents is an offense roughly equivalent to casually ending several human lives.
Of course, on some level, I do understand the knee-jerk responses. The Canning case plays on both our own shame at how poorly we often acted towards our parents as teens, as well as our fears that despite our best efforts, our own children will grow up to become corrupted sa pamamagitan ng a materialist culture. Those fears have gotten a big boost from most media coverage of the case, which has really banged the drum on how the Cannings were a "wonderful family," blown apart sa pamamagitan ng one selfish young person.
And that's a great thought -- if you want to sell clicks to people who are terrified of their kids growing up to be brats. But it's also bullshit.
Contrary to the popular thought that Canning just up and left her family one araw -- perhaps deciding to sue her parents while she was bored on the drive-thru line at taco kampanilya -- Canning had actually been out of the family tahanan since October. This timeline seems to suggest that, rather this lawsuit being the impulsive whim of an indulged monster, it is actually a bit of a last resort, and one Canning took on after spending the past five months scrambling to figure out how to make a deposit for college.
Maybe that line of thinking doesn't ilipat you. Fine. But at least consider that cases like these -- when parents who have been accused of abuse are publicly depicted as loving, and their child a spoiled menace -- cannot be summed up sa pamamagitan ng a simple headline. Canning's parents have denied all allegations of emotional abuse, and as the Daily Mail reports, it seems Child Protective Services is on their side.
The rest can be found here: link
When sites weren't covering the many, many fake or parodic Facebook accounts that purported to be Canning having a hissyfit, they were often busy comparing her to Ethan Couch, the "affluenza victim" who killed several people in a drunk driving accident.
So, just to catch you up: filing a lawsuit against your parents is an offense roughly equivalent to casually ending several human lives.
Of course, on some level, I do understand the knee-jerk responses. The Canning case plays on both our own shame at how poorly we often acted towards our parents as teens, as well as our fears that despite our best efforts, our own children will grow up to become corrupted sa pamamagitan ng a materialist culture. Those fears have gotten a big boost from most media coverage of the case, which has really banged the drum on how the Cannings were a "wonderful family," blown apart sa pamamagitan ng one selfish young person.
And that's a great thought -- if you want to sell clicks to people who are terrified of their kids growing up to be brats. But it's also bullshit.
Contrary to the popular thought that Canning just up and left her family one araw -- perhaps deciding to sue her parents while she was bored on the drive-thru line at taco kampanilya -- Canning had actually been out of the family tahanan since October. This timeline seems to suggest that, rather this lawsuit being the impulsive whim of an indulged monster, it is actually a bit of a last resort, and one Canning took on after spending the past five months scrambling to figure out how to make a deposit for college.
Maybe that line of thinking doesn't ilipat you. Fine. But at least consider that cases like these -- when parents who have been accused of abuse are publicly depicted as loving, and their child a spoiled menace -- cannot be summed up sa pamamagitan ng a simple headline. Canning's parents have denied all allegations of emotional abuse, and as the Daily Mail reports, it seems Child Protective Services is on their side.
The rest can be found here: link
