July 12, 2006

Speaking of drugs....

This is brilliant... and harrowing.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 7:21 PM
Tags: , ,

3 comments:

Goatwhacker said...

I guess I'm in the minority here, I just don't get the popularity of Colbert and don't find him very funny. His monologues are slow and predictable, and his schtick of a guy who thinks he's being reasonable but is really outrageous grows old quickly. I want to like him but I just can't - saying that makes me feel a little like the 60's parents who just couldn't "get" rock music.

Are pediatric behavioral meds often overprescribed? Absolutely. Are they often appropriately prescribed? Absolutely.

Monologues like Colbert's don't make that distinction, preferring to aim at easy targets while neglecting the larger problem of kids with significant behavioral disease. But hey it's just a comedy show, maybe I'm taking it too seriously.

7/13/06, 6:48 AM
bill said...

Psychopharmacology, hey that's a song!

By the brilliant Paul Westerberg:
Psychopharmacology
Feel better than yesterday, and worse than tomorrow
It's depressing for me to say I been dressing like Greta Garbo

Oh psychopharmacology works wonders, wonder will it work on me?

They been searching for a cat who matches that prescription
Sign up for a chat, they said we'll cure your affliction

With psychopharmacology works wonders, wonder will it work on me?
Yeah psychopharmacology works wonders, wonder will it work on me?

I need something to calm me down
I need something to keep me focused
Narcoleptic, paranoid, and borderline hopeless
ADD, PCP, F-U-C-K-E-D that's me.

I feel better than yesterday, and I'm havin' none of that
They say all the world's a stage, it's more like a medicine cabinet.

Psychopharmacology works wonders, wonder will it work
Psychopharmacology works wonders, wonder will it work
Psychopharmacology works wonders, wonder will it work on me?

On me...
We'll see

7/13/06, 7:06 AM
KCFleming said...

"Psychopharmaparenting" is a good word. It'll be used again, I think.

* Some kids need meds for depression and aggression, no matter what Tom Cruise says.
* Some kids needed a stay-at-home parent, but, lacking that, developed behavior problems that can no longer be addressed in the disciplinary fashion available in the 1950s and 1960s (out of legal concerns, mostly). So they are medicated instead.
* Some kids seem to be given this stuff at the first sign of rebelliousness ("oppositional behavior"). Others would have benefited by its use, because they are, by any definiton clearly nuts, in the way only teenagers can get.

So Colbert invents a very funny word, one I'll drop in conversations ahead, I'm sure. It glosses over distinctions, to excess, likely causing the same rejection of trust in others evinced by the Daily Show. Is it a problem? Only if you want young adults to have more than a dismissive adolescent skepticism listed amongst their argumentation and logic skills. I find it corrosive.

7/13/06, 7:31 AM

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