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Jackie Coogan and the fall of Hollywood's child stars
- growingkittens 3y ago[flagged]
- masfoobar 3y agoWhat do you consider to be the correct meaning to "Spanking" ? edit: No being difficult or troll -- just curious.
- growingkittens 3y agoThere is no correct meaning of the word spanking, just a spectrum of meanings. Each instance has to be evaluated individually, because the spectrum of possible meanings is so wide.
- JohnClark1337 3y ago"Gentle Parenting" is another instance. It could mean that you set boundaries but are more cautious about how you give punishments, attempting to fit the punishment to the bad deed. Or it could mean that you let the child do whatever they want and give them everything, teaching them that there are no negative consequences to their actions and that others are there to serve them.
- lttlrck 3y agoYes. It is a very broad term for inflicting pain using your hand or an implement... Be careful what you advocate!
- Aurornis 3y ago> Others chase their children down with a belt while screaming obscenities. Both of these people are accepted in society if they describe their actions as 'spanking'. Hitting children with a belt is neither broadly accepted by society nor is it legally acceptable. Calling it “spanking” doesn’t give people a free pass from the law.
- growingkittens 3y agoI live in the American South, where it is absolutely accepted by society and the law.
- wizerdrobe 3y agoDepending on state, IANAL but in “the South” (Carolina)… I had a less than stellar household, was punched several times in the head by a parent so I put them in a headlock to get them to calm down. Spent several months in juvenile detention because of my “assault.” Later came to learn, after my useless public defender advised I plead guilty, that would have been legally considered self defense. About a year later the same parent started slapping me in the face. I called the police this time but to my disappointment was informed slaps are legally acceptable but closed-fist strikes are not. So a punch or hammer fist would be child abuse and criminally punishable. For further clarification, belts, breadboards, the famous “switch,” are all legal so long as it’s not physically, permanently damaging. As with most things human law, it’s up to interpretation and will vary by responding officer and such. This was circa 2008 so we’re not talking “1950s America” here.
- okwhateverdude 3y agoMan, I sincerely hope you had a jenny-throws-rocks-at-the-house moment later. Parents being shitty to their kids is the worst.
- PopAlongKid 3y ago>Hitting children with a belt is neither broadly accepted by society nor is it legally acceptable. Maybe true in the 21st century, but certainly not true earlier than that. And re: sibling comment, it wasn't only happening in the American South but other regions as well.
- tamaharbor 3y agoSpanking is still legal corporal punishment at schools in at least 18 US states.
- dang 3y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- growingkittens 3y agoJackie Coogan suffered due to a lack of child protection laws - which still don't exist due to the strength of parent's rights in the US.
- dang 3y agoThat would be the point of contact with the article, yes, but the thing about generic tangents is that they take off from a point and then head in a generic direction, one which is nearly always less interesting than the specifics of the article itself—and which if the topic is divisive at all, usually ends in a flamewar that is just a repetition of previous flamewars. On HN, we're trying to avoid this kind of thing and focus on curious conversation. Btw I'm quite sure you didn't intend any of what I'm describing here. The point is that it happens unintentionally, and all too easily, so we all need to learn to consciously avoid it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=generic%20discussion%20by%3Adang%20-flamewars%20-flamewar&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- h2odragon 3y agoWhen I was 17, my Dad told me he was "investing" the near million dollars that was my share of the sales of software I'd written. When I was 34, he passed, and I had to wrap up his estate. Discovered that I was on the paperwork for several corporations I had never heard of; that there was no money left, and some of the details of how he spent it all. We apparently contributed to Nashville getting their hockey team, among other fun diversions having nothing to do with the business we had been in. Still aint got over the bitterness.
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- geraldhh 3y agootoh most 17 year old's would probably not do any better. is the morale here that nobody should have "invested" it anywhere?
- kiba 3y agoStick it into an index fund.
- tinco 3y agoNot sure if they wouldn't. The sort of companies 17yr's hear about and are excited about in the past 20 years have all done extremely well. Perhaps that's a quirk of the past 20 years, but I wouldn't dismiss 17yr olds investment strategies out of hand. They would do a lot better than what sounds like shady angel investments and sports team sponsorships.
- kiba 3y agoHave we not forgot about the fraud and scams of the last twenty years? There's also the huge issue of hindsight bias.
- huytersd 3y agoNonsense. If my son did that it would go straight into a low risk index fund or bond.
- TehShrike 3y agoChildren should be allowed to own property.
- aetherson 3y agoThey should. However, we should understand that for all the failings of parents as managers of a child's money, a five year old child is also not going to make good financial decisions, and there does need to be someone who can make prudent, and indeed numerate, decisions on the child's behalf.
- firebat45 3y agoChildren may not be able to make good decisions with their money, but many adults aren't either, especially when it is someone else's money (ie, their kids). A child should retain full control of their own money up to a certain value. Above that, they should be assigned a fiduciary to take care of the rest.
- aetherson 3y ago"Assigned a fiduciary" does a lot of work there. Who assigns the fiduciary? How do we find a good one? Why does this fiduciary do this job? God knows that financial professionals are not exactly immune to misconduct. I think we should maybe admit that this is just kind of a difficult space, where there's in some rare cases a lot of money on the line and there's not necessarily anyone who's perfectly suited to handle it.
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoNo. Children are property.
- PopAlongKid 3y agoI mistook Jackie Coogan for another child star of the same era, Jackie Cooper.
- tamaharbor 3y agoMe too. Among many other things… Coogan played Uncle Fester in the Addams Family television series, Cooper played Jackie in the Our Gang / Little Rascals comedy series.
- croisillon 3y agooh wow wikipedia, "Cooper supported Republican presidential candidates and appeared at rallies for Herbert Hoover in 1932", the guy was born in 1922!
- Gorath 3y agoHe was nominated for an academy award at age nine, this hardly seems far fetched. Have you forgotten this is a thread about child stars? Or are you just being intentionally misleading
- croisillon 3y agoi believe you neither support republicans nor democrats at 10, i don't see what's misleading
- lupusreal 3y agoChildren are never good at acting anyway, I wish writers wouldn't write stories that require child actors.
- ceejayoz 3y agoWatch the audition for the kid in ET and tell me kids can't ever be good actors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA5giyG8E7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA5giyG8E7g No kids in TV/film would leave a very odd gap in the stories we can tell.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoI find that children rarely have much range, but they can be cast inline with their natural inclinations or personality. There's a number of tv shows where the kid actors get worse over time, as they're asked to do more kinds of storytelling (stranger things is a good example).
- at_a_remove 3y agoThis isn't true. It's rare, but there are some terrific child actors. Watch the original IT to note just how good Seth Green and Emily Perkins are. Dakota Fanning and her sister. Haley Joel Osment felt very natural in The Sixth Sense. Brooke Shields in Alice, Sweet Alice was more in control of her performance than most adults. Anyway, kids in movies and television shows aren't going away. We have to make sure they are well-treated.