First, Let's Round Up All the Teenagers
By PETER H. KING

COSTA MESAIt's like every time people try to have fun,
they ban it.
A 17yearold Northern Californian contemplates a ban on
skateboards in shopping center parking lots.

* * *

Kids. To revisit the old musical question, what's the matter with
kids today? From the President on down, politicians have labored
mightily to legislate maturity into this current crop of teenagers. Just
last week in Sacramento, it was proposed that new 16yearold
drivers be forbidden to give other teenagers ridesthis from a
statehouse that has counted among its members some fairly
infamous motorists, sports with nicknames like "Leadfoot Lou."
Zero tolerance is the battle cry. Zero tolerance for alcohol,
tobacco, pot and, in one prominent case, overthe counter pills for
menstrual cramps. Skateboarders, mall shoppers, cigarette puffers,
boombox players, body piercers, cruisersall have felt the boot of
a nation at war with teenagers. Giddy from the thrill of enforcing
nightly curfews, several California cities now have adopted daytime
curfews as well.
We've got Vchips to keep the little darlins from watching
television programs meant for adults, who, after all, would never
succumb to the pull of sex and violence. We've got various school
dress codes to keep them from flouncing about in backward
baseball caps, baggy jeans, Bermuda shorts, khaki pants, red shirts,
blue shirts, flannel shirts, Raiders jackets, sandals, sunglasses and,
of course, short skirts. We've got tough love and, should it fail,
tougher love.
* * *
"I'm not a crusader for beating up on children," said a legislator
from Orange County a few years back, "but I'm also not for
children beating up on adults or defacing property." His
muchdiscussed bill would have allowed courtenforced paddling of
miscreant teenagers. Amazingly, given the political climate, it failed
to pass, and said legislator was last seen fending off accusations of
sexual harassment. Bad boy, assume the position.
Deprived of the paddle, adults turn to other methods.
Namecalling, for example: "Adolescent superpredators" seems
destined to take the hyperbolic gold. There are boot camps and,
better still, adult prisons. Having conquered space and the Soviet
bloc, a mighty nation engages in intramural competition to determine
which state can salt away the youngest criminals with adults.
"We've come full circle," Stephen Herrell, a Juvenile Court judge
told a conference in San Francisco last week, "We invented the
juvenile justice system 100 years ago because we believed we
owed kids and society something better. Now we seem to have
declared this entire experiment a failure. I think this is a drastic
mistake."
He won't go far in politics, this judge, not like California's current
Assembly speaker. It would be with a "tear in my eye," Cruz
Bustamante, Democrat, lamented last spring, but, yes, he could
envision voting to execute a 13yearold. The day before, not
coincidentally, Republican Gov. Wilson had left open the
"possibility" of lowering the execution age to 14. Advantage:
Bustamante.
"What I wonder," said Mike A. Males, an Irvine sociologist, "is
what will happen when a 14yearold about to receive a lethal
injection requests a last cigarette. I mean, isn't it against the law for
someone that young to smoke?"
* * *
Males wrote "The Scapegoat Generation, America's War on
Adolescents," a welldocumented assault, myth by myth, on the
notion that teenagers have erupted mysteriously into a murderous,
oversexed, suicidal, drugcrazed menace. If anything, he said in an
interview, the problem is more economic than hormonal. In a land
of wealth, the poor get poorer, and they also get less civil, young
and old alike.
He argues that most teen behavior simply reflects that of adults.
Violence? Well, a lot more parents kill their children than the other
way around. The same with smoking, drinking and other counts in
the teen indictment. It's just that the teens make for better
copyand politics.
"Preaching the Adolescent Apocalypse," he observes in the
book, "has proven hard to stop. Increasingly, Clinton's health and
welfare policy has consisted of blaming teenagers for nearly all
major social ills: Poverty, welfare dependence, crime, gun violence,
suicide, sexual promiscuity, unwed motherhood, AIDS, school
failure, broken families, child abuse, drug abuse, drunken driving,
smoking, and the breakdown of 'family values'....
Oddly enough"beyond hypocritical," said the 46yearold
Malesthis war for the most part has been waged on the watch of
Sixties "children," the "talkin 'bout my ggggeneration" generation.
"Sixties counterculturists told us not to trust anyone over thirty," he
concludes. "They were right. They were talking about us."

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