It’s Robin of Berkeley! You might have heard of her if you have a really, really scary aunt who sends you weird e-mail forwards! Otherwise, you have no clue who she is, but Tintin found her at her finest, so let’s make fun of her for a minute:

I was strolling around downtown Berkeley this week, when one of those shiny young college students waved at me with a smile. I knew what was coming: a plea for a signature and, more importantly, money for some progressive cause.

She asked perkily, “Do you want to help immigrant rights?” To which I replied my usual, “No thank you,” and walked away. But I was tempted to instead retort, “You know what I would really like? I would like a full year’s moratorium on everyone asking for their rights. And during that time, I’d want everyone to work on themselves, and to do something for other people. A whole solid year of no one demanding and everyone helping! If you have a petition for that, I’ll gladly sign.”

Apparently Robin didn’t make the connection that a perky college student gathering petition signatures to secure the rights of immigrants is actually, you know, helping.  But you see, in the good old days, people didn’t actually try to help brown people and fags:

These days, it’s all about people standing up for their rights. And that means everyone: Latinos, blacks, women, gays, bis and bi-curious, illegals and legals, everyone, that is, with the exception of the privileged, straight, white male.

But what is actually owed to them or to anyone else? As an older person, I remember the good old days (which get better and better the older I get). You didn’t demand your rights with your parents or your teachers or anyone else. If you did, you’d get either a slap across the face or a stern lecture about not acting so uppity.

Oh, the good old days, when brown people and fags got slapped and lectured for being too uppity! Of course, most of what Latinos and blacks and women and gays are standing up for is the same exact rights as those already accorded to privileged, straight, white males, but we get the feeling that Robin sees that sector of the population as “oppressed.”

Anyway, the rest of the piece is about how we should be nice to old people and stuff, assuming, of course, that they’re not brown or gay old people. Then screw ’em.