If there were a parenting award, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ James Harrison would win it. On the other hand, if the Self-Esteem Industrial Complex had a Most Wanted list, Harrison would be on that too.
The Super Bowl champion linebacker took to Instagram over the weekend, and unlike the sort of lewd depravity and self-congratulation that normally attends the Instagram messages of the NFL’s elite, Harrison had an actual message for his audience, and it should be sung from the mountaintops.
Here is what Harrison had to say when he returned home to find his kids with unearned riches:
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" ... these trophies will be given back until they EARN a trophy." So Harrison's kids aren't special little snowflakes in need of affirmation. They're boys who compete at sports. Sometimes they win, sometimes not. But there shouldn't be a prize for showing up.
This message flies in the face of everything this generation was taught to believe, and it’s glorious. Anti-entitlement and completely pro-achievement. Even greater still is the reference to men, and how in Harrison’s mind a man is not someone who had something handed to him. He is a person who earned everything he got.
Who says that anymore? Of all the 47 different people running for the GOP nomination, how many of them speak – at length – about manhood? What it is, what it isn’t, and how vital it is?
Harrison ends his poetic anti-entitlement rant with the hashtag #harrisonfamilyvalues. Those values used to be #americanfamilyvalues.
They need to be again.
