The Advocate and The Westside Journal barked their headlines like Pit-bulls snarling a warning to an intruder. The Advocate led off with “Groups targeted for BRAVE”.

Port Allen’s Westside Journal leapt to the fray with: “Enough is enough”.

The self-righteous indignation has been duly noted. The acronyms were assembled (Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination Project). Isn’t that nice? They have a motto. Port Allen didn’t choose a motto. They just got indignant, that’s the reason for the bold heaviness of the type. The drama’s more evident that way.

Now that I’ve managed to tick everybody off I’m going to ask why everybody thinks the solution is to address the problem and “rectify that now, before it gets too far out of hand”. It appears it’s gone way beyond “out of hand” considering the recent body count.

People want to brainstorm “the problem in the community”. The problems aren’t in the community. They’re in your family.

This has been preached in this column since 1999. There’s an archive at the Journal. Check it out.

I ask the people in the “community” does your kid know where his waistline is? (Do his pants sag?) Do you have any “single-parents”, believing because they know how to have sex they know how to parent?  Do you have multiple grandchildren by different fathers in your household? Does the single parent foot the bill for the babies or does the nanny-state pay their way? Have any of these kids been challenged by the law and you’ve screamed the kid’s being picked on only because he/she’s Black/Chinese/Vietnamese or Korean (etc.)? Are you teaching responsible citizenship or do you expect the school teachers to handle that little problem?

Number 1. Sagging. This is silly. Young people (black & white) think they’re showing off their greatest qualities with their pants dropping below their butt cheeks. They think their “booty” and their “tootie” are their greatest attributes. This might be true. The breadth of a butt can indicate the horizon a kid seeks to challenge in the future. They’re telling all the other boys to look at what they think is their “best side”. Then we have the thrilling representation of these same sartorially challenged wannabe “thugs” holding their pants up in the region of their zipper. From this we find what they cherish the most; their short-comings.

It’s not “fashion”. It’s ignorance exhibited and ignorance accepted by the elders of the “Community”. When was the last time a kid got hit with a belt when he displayed his buns or BVDs? When was the last time you washed his mouth out with soap because every other word started with “M-F”?

Number 2. Who decided a female’s womanliness was determined by her seemingly never-ending ability to get pregnant? Are you a better person because you get welfare on more than one child not knowing for sure who the father is for any one of them? Hilary Clinton said “It takes a village” to raise a child. She didn’t say you had to populate the bloody thing with your own progeny.

In the sense of a village tending to the development of children there should be communication between parents, teachers and civic leaders. They should work together, not expect the other to handle the heavy work while a parent sits out the training session.

Newsflash! Your kid lies just as much as the other kid. He has a stake in the lie. The teacher, other parent and civic leader gets nothing from lying about your kid.

Got that?

If parents accept an eight year old coming home and extolling the joys of the “thug” life, the parent needs to educate the child as to just how stupid that thinking is. Funeral homes are being stacked with freshly killed street corpses. That’s the TRUE result of the “thug life”. Nobody really respects a thug; they just challenge them-with guns.

It isn’t glamorous. It isn’t pretty. But, it is terminal for our families, our culture and our society.

Quit with the acronyms and BS. Get involved. Make a difference. Teach your kids your values not some idiot looking to sell CDs.

Thanks, and I wish for a change you’d start listening.