Friedman's Revenge

Ace had an amusing post this morning about a "little culture war" in a liberal part of Chicago populated by the type of white yuppies with kids who don't want to move to the [horrors!] suburbs, called Andersonville. The original article on the subject can be found here.

Basically, the yuppie parents are upset with a local cafe owner who wants them to make their yuppie spawn behave while they're inside his establishment. Ace sums up his bemusement with the story like so:

Thus we see what happens when self-esteem triumphs over good manners. Don't you dare criticize behavior, you'll injure Little Johnny's self-image! Lord knows, we need more untethered self-esteem in children and less genuine reason to feel good about themselves, right?

Goods points, all. But reading over the original Detroit News article, I noticed something else. It's full of things like this:

But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at the implied criticism of how they handle their children. Soon, whispers of a boycott passed among the playgroups in this North Side hamlet...

And this:

Why suffer such scorn, the mothers said, when clerks at the Swedish Bakery, a neighborhood institution, offer children -- calm or crying -- free cookies? Why confront such criticism when the recently opened Sweet Occasions, a five-minute walk down Clark Street, designed the bathroom aisle to accommodate double strollers and offers a child-size ice cream cone for $1.50? (At A Taste of Heaven, the smallest costs $3.75.)

Or, how 'bout this:

He has certainly lost customers because of the sign, but some parents say the offense is outweighed by their addiction to the scones, and others embrace the effort at etiquette.

Notice a common thread here? Why, it's almost as if free market capitalism is at work, right in the midst of a liberal Chicago neighborhood! Instead of looking for a legal recourse against the cafe owner, these people figured out that they could just, you know, go elsewhere.

Sometimes the American Way muddles through...in spite of Americans.