Adult Baby Syndrome
My syndicated column today looks at the infantilization of America. As I’ve noted over the years, defining dependency up is both a policy phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon. In 1996, entitlement reformer Pete Peterson asked, “Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?” The answer, sadly, is still a big fat toddler-screeching, “No!”
***
Adult Baby Syndrome
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
Welcome to the land of the freeloaders and the home of the depraved. No image captures America’s regressive ethos better than that of 30-year-old Stanley Thornton Jr., self-proclaimed “Adult Baby.” Profiled on a recent National Geographic reality television show, Thornton claims to suffer from a bizarre infantilism that leads him to wear diapers, lounge around in an oversized crib and seek constant coddling.
The nappies may be extreme, but let’s face it: Thornton Jr. — let’s just call him Junior — is a symptom of our Nanny State run amok, not an anomaly.
Junior came to Washington’s attention this week when Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn challenged the Social Security Administration to probe into how the baby bottle-guzzling 350-pound man qualified for federal disability benefits. A former security guard, Junior is handy enough to have crafted his own wooden high chair and playpen.
Junior can drive a car and has sense enough not to go out in public in his XXL footie pajamas. Yet, welfare administrators treat him as an incurable dependent. Also collecting taxpayer-subsidized paychecks: Thornton’s adult roommate, a former nurse, who has indulged Thornton’s baby role-playing for the past decade.
Junior, naturally, threw a tantrum when his government teat-sucking was called into question. He wiped his nose and un-balled his fists long enough to type out an e-mail to The Washington Times: “You wanna test how damn serious I am about leaving this world, screw with my check that pays for this apartment and food. Try it. See how serious I am. I don’t care,” Junior threatened. “I have no problem killing myself. Take away the last thing keeping me here, and see what happens. Next time you see me on the news, it will be me in a body bag.”
Not from nowhere has this stubborn, self-destructive sense of entitlement sprung. As I reported last month, a record-breaking 12 million Americans have been added to the federal food stamp rolls over the past two years, and the bloated $6 billion AmeriCorps social justice army has been converted into a publicist corps for the welfare machine.
Just this week, a Michigan man boasted that he’s still collecting food stamps after winning a $2 million government-sponsored lottery prize. “If you’re going to … try to make me feel bad, you aren’t going to do it,” he told a local TV reporter. Embedded in his rebuke is the eternal refrain of the self-esteem-puffed teenager: “You can’t judge me!”
Diana West, author of “The Death of the Grown-Up,” traced the modern abdication of adulthood to the Baby Boomer generation. “The common compass of the past — the urge to grow up and into long pants; to be old enough to dance at the ball (amazingly enough, to the music adults danced to); to assume one’s rights and responsibilities — completely disappeared” after World War II. A culture of behavioral restraint gave way to “anything goes” and morphed into the current generation’s “whatever” attitude.
Look around: Junior’s infantilism is of a piece with the refusal of celebrity mothers Dina Lohan and Tish Cyrus to act like parents — and instead serve as best friends and tattoo parlor pals for their wayward daughters Lindsay and Miley. They’re the kind of women who shop at Forever 21, buy beer for their daughters’ prom parties and give them Botox certificates for high school graduation.
Junior’s penchant for pajamas is of a piece with perpetually stunted Hugh Hefner’s fetish for velvet robes 24/7 and self-indulgent decadence. Junior’s giant playpen is a cringe-inducing symbol of the Farmville-tethered, “funemployed” class of self-gratifiers who continue to live for today and spend like there’s no tomorrow.
Adult Baby Syndrome isn’t an isolated pathology. It’s the new American Way. Or, I should say, the new American Wahhhhh.
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txvet2 said:
I wish I could telejest because I would have Netanyahu grab Sock Puppet by one of his jug ears, Plant a size 11 shoe up his can and throw him off the stage. The Sock puppet is a disgrace, this POS was elected by god knows who or what but I hope they are happy with their Hopey Changey.
txvet2, but then Fox moved along to a great piece featuring our very own host speaking extemporaneously with incredible fluency on the ObamaCare waiver scandal. I swear, our MM really is a stunning intellect combined with being drop-dead gorgeous. Fox seems to be making more use of her. They’d be insane not to…to keep letting the usual suspects natter on with MM on the bench! And Martha MacCallum is a classy host.
Apologies for the diversion.
And I agree. That Baby Dude is definitely employable.
He can be Obama’s new Welfare Czar.
I can picture the first Oval Office meeting.
Obama to Baby Welfare Man…
“Who’s your daddy?”
Ok! Now… it feels like a Friday! Now… it’s a party!
On ‘who’s’ authority is he making these ridiculous proposals? Even as general statements, this guy is dangerous. With “Blue City-States” as ( clearly they felt no urgency to comply with JTTF, established themselves as Sanctuary Cities and now want to BAN circumcision ) for his Domestic Agenda, why can WE not as Conservatives create our OWN alliances?
Stuff it pal. Netanyahu can chill at my crib any time! As for Teh One ( I’m fitting a Joshua Tree for his bum )
Let’s remember that this is a 30-year old man. He is NOT a Baby Boomer! The Baby Boomers, of which I am one, have been steadily working and paying taxes for 40-plus years. Give me a break…this bozo is the gimme “X” Generation. The Baby Boomers were not only WORKING AND PAYING THEIR WAY, most fought a politically-unwinnable war in Vietnam that cost 55,000 American lives. Spare me all the “boomer” crap, this is one of the “I’m entitled” X-generation lazy people incapable of taking on ANY kind of personal responsibility. Guys (and a lot of girls) like him live off their parents until the parents (baby boomers) die. This is sickening on so many levels.
FirstSkirt,
This leech was raised by a baby boomer. They enabled his lifestyle.
Crazed Flyoverman: You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the *** else are you talking… you talking to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the **** do you think you’re talking to? Oh yeah? OK.
You looking in a mirror and waving a gun? If so, then no, it was that other guy I was talking to.
I know ‘that’ guy too! Lol
Then you have people like the 25 y.o in this Bloomberg article -fighting- to regain control of their lives! Wonder what someone that’s been to 170 post-auto accident physical therapy sessions thinks of the man-child?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-19/paraplegic-stands-for-first-time-in-years-with-medtronic-device.html
Ya know, I am really touched by the serene look on his pretty-boy face. AND, I love the penguin jammies.
babiesgrandma said:
Who you are looking at is Ilovemyflannel, now exposed for the world to see and reject.
John Deaux #101 said, “…they enabled his lifestyle.” Whoa…no boomer I know allows a 20-year old unemployable lazy shit like this guy to claim disability. I have known warriors who served in-country in Vietnam who would never claim a disability, even if wounded. This guy wears it like a badge of honor. I’ll be damned if MY GENERATION is going to be blamed for the X-Y?-generation’s failure to grow into decent American citizens. I see this same kind of crap from the 20-year olds in my own family.
John Deaux,
There’s a -lot- of confusion as to what constitutes a ‘boomer’? Born in ’59 I was never included until after I finished my first tour in the Navy. Came home, Instant Boomer!
I have a few acid tests no one seems to like:
1) Did your father serve in WWII? In my case, No ( Korea )
2) Were you ever subject to the Draft? Again, No ( Saigon fell when I was Jr. in HS )
3) Were you affected by changes in the Legal Drinking Age? Yes. IL had changed from 18 for everything ( how can you be sent to fight and die and ‘not’ be legal to drink!? ) to… 19 for beer & wine, 21 for the hard stuff.
This applies to more people than they themselves realize! Let alone those born in 1964..? I realize it sounds ‘petty’ but to Progs “seeking to be inclusive” and Conservatives in that category, it’s an important distinction!
To wit; why do we always ‘just’ miss the cutoff for Full Soc. Sec. Benefits etc.? They’ve always treated us like Junior Boomers.
Lifestyle? How can you call it a lifestyle choice when he was born this way? /sarc
We’re always hearing the claim that if you were born gay then it can’t be a choice. But Adult Baby Syndrome is an example of something that is clearly a lifestyle choice even though we were all born that way. Very few of us choose to live the Adult Baby lifestyle – at least for now. But when the word gets out that you can get disability payments and become a
couchcrib potato at the same time, that might change. Hmmm, I wonder if I could find a baby mobile strong enough to hold a big-screen TV?Yes.
No.
Drank at 19 in FL
I was using the recent definition of born before 1964.
Aaah, yes, I can see that now. I think he needs a hoist to bring him up so he can enter his ‘thoughts’ on the laptop (gives new meaning to “lap” doesn’t it).
Hellllooooo, ILoveMyBabyBottleInBedWithMeForThePicture.
Winner!
John Deaux said:
For shame! (jk) Point being a good many “moderates and independents” automatically buy into their being boomers when in fact those that are already collecting public pensions and SS don’t.
Yet they tend to mindlessly vote in support of Liberal issues, even when it’s clearly not in their best interests?
This is as important a role in the Prog agenda as any of their other numerous ploys. When they were at Woodstock ( we were watching Gilligan’s Island )
Wow! The next time any Democrat holds a rally, we should hold up signs with this moocher’s face on it. This is a picture of their America. It surely isn’t ours.
+ 1 and consider it Done!
John–that’s what I always used too. My parents (born in 1939 & 1940) were too busy working 3 jobs & raising 4 babies in the ’60s to go all flowery.
Nope, looking in a mirror waving a skillet; my Happyscrapper fantasy.
You may be looking at the next Governor of California. Or possibly the offspring of the last one. It is hard to tell…
Turns my stomach. If I could say one thing to the fat leach it would be this:
I’ve been suffering from SERIOUS clinical depression all of my life. I’ve constantly held unglamorous jobs since I was 16. I dropped out of college because I couldn’t manage going to school and my low paying burger flipping job at the time– let alone find time to study and practice. There weren’t enough hours in a day. I had to support myself, so I made a choice to drop out of school and I regret it every day. I’ve been holding down a steady, but unfulfilling job tending bar at night for the last 10 years.
I had big dreams and they’re not going away. I’m now in my mid-30′s. This year I finally decided that I was going to save enough money to live on for 6 months and quit my job and devote myself to working on the things I needed to do to change careers. Just last month I was so proud of all the money I was able to save and I was looking forward to taking this working sabbatical to getting my life on the track that it would have been on if depression hadn’t stolen so much from me.
Unfortunately, I broke out into a cold sweat on April 15th when I did my taxes and realized my employer hadn’t withheld nearly enough of my earnings for taxes/ss/medicare last year– and I wound up having to cut a giant check for my taxes. It completely wiped out the money I’d saved. Looks like I’d better hang onto my day (night) job.
I’m back to square one now– still battling depression, hanging on to my dreams, trying to squirrel away enough money in these times of high gas and food prices to buy myself a little time to get my life in order. Time is not on my side anymore.
The last thing I need is to see some fat adult carrying on like this, thinking he’s entitled to my tax dollars. I’m sick of pulling the wagon for people like this when I have my own life to think about. I’ve seriously considered suicide many times because of the depression, but it was consideration for my family that kept me from ever going through with it. It makes me sick to see this bastard using the threat of suicide to get what he wants. It never crossed my mind to go ask my parents to give me money or I’d waste myself. I could care less if this guy makes good on his “threat.” I’ll happily buy him a rope. He makes a mockery of people with real disabilities everywhere (physical and mental) who actually struggle to make it in the world.
There are probably millions of people in the same shoes as mine– and they put those shoes on and they go to work. I know there are people who probably have it worlds worse than I do. I don’t need anyone’s help, I’ve got to do it on my own. At the same time, all I ask is to be able to keep more of what I’ve earned. It was my labor, earned from humiliating, difficult days and nights when I could barely get out bed and out of the house, but I had to put on a smile and face the world anyway, just so I could have a place to sleep at night, food on the table and not be a burden on my parents or other working people.
The money that you think you’re entitled to is not some nameless, faceless, endless Monopoly money fluttering down from a monolithic mountain of largesse somewhere. It’s not from some secret stash. It comes from sweat of the brows of those who understand that life is not a given. It’s not a luxury. We started out in caves and we could wind up there again one day if we ever forget what if means to live every day with survival as our first concern.
This psychologist who was supportive of this adult infant should be ASHAMED of herself. The inmates are definitely running the asylum.
Go f*ck yourself, you big baby.
Sorry for being so longwinded, you guys don’t have to read all that, but I had to get it off my chest. It’s my open letter to the 30 year old teat-sucker.
This “guy” is f*&^ing joke!! Another example of Liberalism as a mental disorder. The correct response to this behavior should be to tell this guy to “get lost and grow up”! But Liberals think that is to harsh and that we should let this person “find himself”. That is fine as long as it is not on the tax payers dime.
I don’t know who is sicker, the boob in the PJs or the woman who mothers that slob.
When I turned 12, I was on a shopping trip with my mother and sister. They stopped at the job site on the way, to speak with my father and brother. I begged to be allowed to stay. It was my natural desire to become a man, to begin my journey to manhood.
Years later, when my parents wanted to correct me or improve my behavior, the threat was simple: You don’t do it, you won’t get to go to work with Dad tomorrow. The maddest I would get at my parents was the times when my mother talked my father into not waking me for work because she felt I was still tired from the previous day.
I wanted paid. I didn’t have much use for the 25 cents an hour I was initially paid to hand him brick, and begin learning the craft, but a man gets paid for his work. My father agreed. I never got an allowance. The first thing I got with my first paycheck was a matched set of lamps for my mother. She still has them.
Along with my professional education, my father tried to teach me the meaning of manhood. Things that I take as axiomatic today, I see either dismissed by or totally alien to younger males.
This is something we’ve lost in our modern, “equal” society. The various “civil rights” movements have cost us dearly.
Take away the little troll’s welfare checks. If he dies, it is one less sucking parasite on the welfare rolls. Otherwise, tell him to go out and get a job.
On May 20th, 2011 at 11:05 am, Gator J said:
If he/she could, they most likely would. Absence of such cogent defense suggests they are unable to, hence the smears.
You’re going to make it, Ted. You rely on yourself even when it is hard to do so. You are also still young enough to do it. Don’t give up on your dreams. BTW, great job writing that comment! You have talent.
Ted—#116. Well said—so many people have fallen on bad times and worked their way through it. Just start over on your savings program and take that time to get yourself on a more steady course. As for that sickening pix–makes me want to puke. I can’t believe that guy can be smiling about the situation–says a lot about him. Sad and sickening both.
Yep, hours later and no response from the trolls. Typical. Liberal fascist pigs are incapable of logical debate. Where are you ILMC, RSS, and other wacked out libs?
I agree w/ chapbix, hang in there Ted. You sound like a driven & intelligent dude capable of greater success. Luckily, we still have the opportunity in this country to succeed. And we need to continue to fight to maintain it against these oppressive fascists like Dear Reader and his puppeteers.
This here is one big fat bloated tick on the bewtocks of society! Are you sure he’s not a Kennedy?
Anyway, nothing that a good thrashing in the public square with a hickory switch can’t cure.
This pile requires some Gunnery Sgt. Hartman.
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Are you quitting on me? Well, are you? Then quit, you slimy @#$%ing walrus-looking piece of sh!t! Get the @#$% off of my obstacle! Get the @#$% down off of my obstacle! NOW! MOVE IT! Or I’m going to rip your b*lls off, so you cannot contaminate the rest of the world! I will motivate you, Private Pyle, IF IT SHORT-D!@#S EVERY CANNIBAL ON THE CONGO!
I’m sorry, I can not muster up an ounce of sympathy for this guy. And his threat to commit suicide will not change that. Hey bub, do the world and taxpayers like me a favor and do it now.
Where is R. Lee Ermey when ya need him?
He’d have a good time with this person.
SEMPER FI!
My first thought seeing his picture: pedophile. And worthless loser was a close second.
Hang in there Ted. You will make it just fine. That slobbering baby though? I doubt it, but these days who knows? I can relate to most of your post–except for the suicide thing, ya never want to do that. Life is too short as it is. Even if it sucks you just never know what is around that next corner. I am 56 and I still live paycheck to paycheck. Good thing money can’t buy happiness! And happiness is not easy to come by unless you have a naturally happy mentality. Sometimes all it takes to have that is a good night sleep, some prayers, and a good long talk with yourself. It works! I know.
Ted, please believe me when I tell you that the most important thing in life is good health, followed by having loved ones in your life.
I have been sick for the last 13 years and I have also had intermitent periods of decent wealth. Even when I had money though, I was still battling illness, so I was never able to enjoy the money I had to spend. My poor health affected my marriage, affected my ability to interact with my loves ones etc. and has made my life frustrating beyond explanation.
If you are struggling financially only, please count your blessings.
All this guy has done is take the Ren and Stimpy episode “Big Baby Scam” to heart.
Youtube should have it.
Just off hand I don’t think the Muslims would pay him to spend his life the way he does if and when they take over the US.
I don’t think we should be paying, either. It is time for people like him to become real adults and accept adult responsibilities.
{^_^}
Your story is very inspirational and moving; all the more so because, as you acknowledge, it’s not unique.
I’m confident you’ll one day achieve your dreams, because you won’t give up. Depression is maybe one of the most insidious and debilitating of illnesses. Hard to detect, hard to deal with. But, you seem to have a constructive attitude toward fighting it.
I’ve a sheet of quotes about failure on the wall above my monitor, to keep me from giving up. All of them deal with getting up after a failure and trying again.
Among my favorite inspirational quotes are “The sister of misfortune is hope.” and “Ninety-nine out of a hundred dreams came crashing down around you. But if life always fell short of your expectations, that was no argument for lowering them. There was always the hundredth dream.” (yup, from Fallen Angels)
Hang in there, ted. You’ll succeed. You’re a role-model now
Buh-bye. DLTDHYITAOTWO
I read elsewhere that this guy is “morbidly obese”. Weird, didn’t fat people used to be jolly? It was the starving people that got all morbid. Modern times, friends.
Thinking about his life makes ME morbid. Imagine waking up in a crib with a diaper on – yuck.
It’s probably cheaper for us to pay his rent and food than to keep him in a rubber room with docs and nurses. But we should make a condition: the checks keep coming only if you knock off the website and don’t give any more interviews or release any more photos – we just don’t want to hear about it!
Ted - it is telling that you had the wherewithall to tell your story – that took courage. I encourage you to read the Bible (no pressure, just a suggestion). My faith in Jesus has been my mainstay and life’s focus and has helped me tremendously during the difficult times in my life. Whether you agree or not, I’ll be praying for you.
Bet Mochelle hires him to join the MOVE IT crew of healthy food giants sweeping our school systems….imagine him dancing with the MightyMo shaking the entire flo’