BREEDER vs. BALLER: Bringing Your Brats to the MOMA?
Effed in Park Slope | Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 1:47PM 
Each week we will attempt to bring you the unbiased, unedited points-of-view of a bonafide, ginuwine Park Slope Breeder (mom/dad) and a real deal, smokin, sexin, drinkin Park Slope Baller (child free-n-lovin it) on a variety of topics. Identities will remain anonymous, of course, to protect the soon-to-be lynched.
This week's debate was inspired by this Gowanus Lounge post.
BREEDER:
Here's the deal: Some parents are jerkoffs. They're gonna let their fuckin kids run around and scream and cry and try to eat Van Goghs and shit.
This bugs me even more than it bugs you, because I have the added displeasure of watching these jerkoffs make a bad name for parents everywhere.
It's like the Bernie Madoff scandal: sucks for everyone, but it's even worse for my mom and I, because we have the added horror of watching our Jews (NFC-East finalists baby!!) get taken down a notch on a global scale.
Oh, and Brad; of course Madoff is Jewish...what a shock ;) - can you pass the hollaindaise?
To continue the racial analogy, it's a well-known fact that some black people talk loudly to movie screens. You gonna start a Park Slope Parents thread trying to ban Blacks from the Pavillion? You better reconsider - it could be misconstrued as racialist.
Same deal for 22 month olds- they need early exposure to art - or why else am I busting my balls to live in this g0dforsaken tri-state area??
Parents: If they're crying, take 'em out! Don't let 'em touch shit- it's a fuckin art gallery! Don't be a jerkoff!
But you're not gonna let MY kid in, just cause THAT kid is smearing boogers on Magritte? This is all back-to-basics - the core lesson of defeating discriminatory stereotyping: Ya can't ban us all just cause SOME of us act like jerkoffs.
BALLER:
First off, mad props go out to this particular Park Slope Parent, this Daddy Types dude and, shit, even BREEDER for even acknowledging this an actual ish worthy of their breedtacular consideration. I've very much enjoyed the spirited discussion going on about it on Gowanus Lounge, so color me impressed.
Second of all, I'm totally down with the idea of kids being exposed to art-n-such at early ages, cause what's the fucking alternative? Yo Gabba Gabba? Therefore, I am not proposing an all out museum ban.
But now that we've got all the ass kissing outta the way, let's dig a lil deeper here folks. While this is a great start:
"Parents: If they're crying, take 'em out! Don't let 'em touch shit"
It seems to me that we need to *greatly* expand the definition and spectrum of unacceptable rug rat behavior in museums.
For example, my man and I checked out the Murakami exhibit this past summer at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. If you wanna expose your kidz to art, bright colors and cartoons seems like a fucking no brainer, so needless to say, they were runnin all over the joint takin in the Japanese pop art scene with the rest of us losers. Most of the kids were pretty well behaved and inconspicuous, except for this one little dude...let's call him Max.
Max wasn't touching any of the artwork, running around like a maniac or crying his head off. Instead he was making his way through the exhibit, walking up to each piece of artwork, looking at it for a second and then declaring it "STUPID" or some sort of variation such as: "I HATE THIS; THIS IS UGLY; MUSEUMS ARE BORING."
Now, as you can imagine, this was actually quite funny the first couple times and I did let loose with a chuckle or two over this kid's ranting. But this shit got real old, real quick. I'd be standing in front of a painting, attempting to "experience" the art-n-shit only to have "SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO STUPID!" screamed in my ear as Max did his Murakami drive by.
One would think that Max would have easily become bored of this exercise, and would have given up after a few minutes. But one would be: Dead. Fucking. Wrong.
Ok, so yeah, this was an isolated incident and blah, blah, blah, but it does help illustrate a point.
Point is, there are the more *obvious* things that parents can look out for in terms of their kids museum behavior (like yelling, touching, etc), but just because your kid hasn't set anything on fire, it doesn't mean that they're "behaving." There's a lot of diff levels of bad/annoying behavior, and BALLERS everywhere would very much appreciate if you stayed on top of ALL of em.
If that's too much to ask, just head on over to the Tea Lounge. It's a fucking free for all there.
Breeder vs. Baller 
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Reader Comments (4)
I like going to MOMA with my kids. They keep the ballers in line. The guards will stop you from even listening to your cell phone, let alone yakking . Bur when my kids plopped down on the floor, yanked out their sketch pads and began to "color" the guards stood over them and made sure they did not get stepped on.
duper
I think a link to "Are you raising a douchebag?" needs to be thrown in to cross referrence. Cause if your kid is going from exhibit to exhibit calling everything stupid, not only have you raised a douche, but also a soon to be over paid art journalist. That kid needs to be banned, because the last thing the world needs is another art journalist/over editorializing art critic douche.
bring em, why not? maybe they can make sense of the bull-shit thats in there....KABOOM!
This isn't a debate. It's basically two people coming to the same conclusion from different sides. Neither one had any problem with well-behaved, inconspicuous children partaking in MoMA's delights. Each had a problem with out-of-control rugrats runnin' around like they own the place. Where's the debate/
Personally, I think that the attendance of well-behaved, inconspicuous children should be encouraged at all times (and I'm a baller).
Museums should make the occasional effort to give the unruly children, owners of ginormous SUV strollers, and grumpy tweens, a chance to enjoy the museums while bothering only their own kind. It would give all of us a break.