In which Smartmom proves herself to be worse than...

So it's a Tuesday night. We should be at the gym, but it's snowing. Obviously treadmills don't work in the snow. To Dan's defense, it's a thirteen block walk. To Allison's defense--well, Allison doesn't need a defense. She's just lazy.

So it's a Tuesday night, and instead of burning calories, we're consuming them.

We feel the need to follow up on our last post, the one about that (word that rhymes with BUNDT--that's the pan, not the sports term) Smartmom. There have been two more posts from dear Louise as well as an actual (if we can really call it that) article from the glorious Brooklyn Paper since that Saturday of yore.

You can find them here, here and here.

We don't even know what to SAY. This is,of course, a lie.

Because that's Smartmom's point. See, she finally read, or at least admitted to reading, the comments for her columns. We suspect that she may have created her own fake account and posted one or two of the few positive responses. And she has come up with a defense.

Smartmom's defense:

"How would people feel if there was a gag order on all kidtalk? What if there was a huge flashing sign on every corner: “No Kidtalk Allowed”?"

Our response:

A pile o' poo. Seriously, type "pile o' poo" without the quotation marks into a google image search, and that is exactly what you'll find. Poo.

See, we are annoyed because we are not CALLING for a ban on "kidtalk." But this is how Smartmom interprets it. She first starts to come to this conclusion here:

"Where is all this hate coming from, she thought? In Park Slope, EVERYBODY talks about his or her children. Incessantly. You can’t have face time with anyone without the conversation veering into stories about college applications, SAT scores, dirty bedrooms."

This is offensive to us on so many levels.

1) Not everyone in Park Slope are parents.
2) NOT EVERYONE IN PARK SLOPE ARE PARENTS.
3) NOT EVERYBODY IN PARK SLOPE THAT IS A PARENT IS A LAME PIECE OF SHIT LIKE YOU!!!
4) And Bill O'Reilly
5) Most Park Slope parents, for better or worse, and we have plenty of distaste towards most of them for fairly selfish reasons--don't even get us STARTED on the nanny brigades that take up the whole goddamn sidewalk, or that family that brought their eight year old into Mezcals at ten o'fucking clock on a Friday night, and Mezcals is basically a bar anyway--but we digress--the point is, collectively, they seem to be pretty intelligent, and some of them are even cool, so,
6) NOT ALL PARK SLOPE PARENTS ARE SO GODDAMN BORING THAT THEY CAN ONLY TALK ABOUT THEIR CHILDREN.

We the readers are not calling for an end to Kidtalk! Though we ourselves do not find Kidtalk to be that interesting, we realize that it is only natural for this topic to come up in conversation. But what we DO have a beef with is the UNWANTED PUBLICATION of kidtalk. There should be a waiver she has to get signed, or something. And obviously her kids should throw such waivers into a toaster oven of their choice. 'Cause surely the children of Smartmom have at least two, to complete all of their toasting needs. And baking. You can also bake with toaster ovens.See?

We've forgotten what we were talking about. Darn.

Right. Unwanted publication.

We're not asking everyone to stop yappin' about their kids, we just want YOU to do so, at least on the internet. (Does the Brooklyn Paper appear in print? I think it might be one of those free papers you can find at Chase. The bank. Next to the toilet. Next to the toilet for emergency toilet paper use. Sorry Brooklyn Paper. We don't really have anything against you, we're just immature. We're dicks! Actually, no. We do have something against you--you continue to publish this fucking woman, and that means you kind of sort of maybe condone what she does! Damn you!!)

I told you we use parenthetical phrases.

Anyway, Smartmom kind of gets this eventually:

"OK, OK. Writing a column, a book, or a magazine article about one’s kid is different from talking about them to friends, acquaintances, teachers, psychologists, learning specialists, doctors, lawyers or anyone else you come into contact with."

We do want to note that it is particularly different with psychologists, doctors, lawyers and the like, because of client-patient confidentiality laws, but Smartmom goes on to shoot herself in the foot again anyway:

"It’s not all that different from what goes on at Sweet Melissa, Bar Reis, the backyard at PS 321, on the screens of list-serves like Park Slope Parents, and blogs like Hip Slope Mama, A Child Grows in Brooklyn, and Brooklynometry."

Wait, what? Didn't you just say it was different?


There is a huge difference between a bar and a column that at least sixteen people read!

"In other words, the oral history of childhood would be lost to silence."
Well how could we ever argue with that? Well what the fuck?

What the fuck.