When Dealing with Children

…be sure to speak in a firm tone of voice.

Watch as these overgrown infants not only tell an invited speaker to leave but attempt to drown out his prepared remarks with kindergarten songs. Their recollected repertoire is not just rude to the speaker and those who waited to hear him but is indicative of an attitude that, no doubt, permeates other facets of their lives. Instead of listening to the speaker, they tell him to leave, not ask. They didn’t even have the sense to not go and “waste their time” (why study when one can go out drinking or damage private property or interrupt a prepared speech some people might actually want to hear?). I imagine they forgot that this is Canada, not North Korea. If they made the conscious decision to stay and listen to the speaker, with what rhetorical devices were they planning on using to eviscerate the speaker’s logic? Was there a cogent retort other than “Old MacDonald”? Probably not. I’m sure that’s how the Treaty of Versailles was settled. Did they consider the audience? I mean- where is Simon Cowell when you need him?

What’s particularly irritating is that is how some who are presumably adults in a post-secondary environment think they should act. It’s bad enough that these students have just grazed the bar of mediocrity set for them and their parents don’t appear to be ashamed of their behaviour. This utterly immature stunt- which will repeat itself at any event- is, I’m sure, seen as cute, anarchical and revolutionary. They’ll strut around ruining this or that event and be so confident that screaming and singing stupid songs is just how responsible and politically aware adults behave. And they’ll want to be treated like adults, too. How far will that sense of entitlement get them when other adults avoid them like the plague? After all, useful idiots might find a niche in the streets for the truly lazy social radicals who would rather others, not them, get arrested but they’re no fun to talk to. At the end of the day, these students’ absurdist conduct isn’t ironic but just plain stupid.

Other Events the Students Can Ruin

Free Tibet Rallies: nothing underscores the unbearable wrongness of China’s brutal occupation of Tibet like “BINGO Was His Name-O”. Why stand in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square when you can prove your mettle by making “BINGO” a fun sing-along for bludgeoned students and bloggers as they are being dragged off to prison?

End Poverty Rallies: don’t let crying homeless children ruin “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain”.

African Economic Conferences: there is nothing racist or insensitive about interrupting Dombisa Moyo or any other African activist by singing “Jimmy Crack Corn”. Maybe they’ll find it as amusing as- oh- interrupting an invited speaker and telling him to leave.

Funerals: break the somber occasion with laughter. “Ding-dong, the Witch is Dead” is wont to set the room in a roar.

Believe me- they’ll do it.