BAD PARENT - TAKE MY KIDS
After working hard on me for some months now, the caring, compassionate people at General Motors have convinced me that I am indeed a bad parent. I hadn't realized until now just how negligent I have been and how much danger I am subjecting my sweet, innocent children to.

The TV ads show it all: cherubic children with frowns of disapproval looking to camera and asking, "But daddy, what would happen if we were in an accident?" or "But Daddy, what if we were pulled over by a gang of drug-fueled perverts with guns who laughed as they raped mommy over the hood and shot each of us for fun before turning their attentions - and sharp knives - on you?"

Yes, I admit it: I do not have OnStar. Let me say that again, loud and proud: "I do NOT have OnStar!!"

Bolstered by magazine ads where even more angelic offspring point the finger of blame at the heartless parent, I now realize that OnStar is no longer a luxury item to help Hummer drivers navigate the 101 around Los Angeles, but it is now an indispensible part of good parenting. Why, anyone who hasn't installed OnStar in their cars might as well strip their kids naked and put a bullet through their heads right now rather than have them endure the day-after-day trauma of knowing that their car cannot be tracked by satellite.

And imagine the taunting that goes on at school: "Ha ha ha, look at him! He doesn't have OnStar - let's report his parents to child services."

And imagine: "... and as if no further proof of negligence were necessary, your Honor, this man doesn't even have OnStar in his car. I move for having his children taken into care, his house being burned, and ritual flogging to death for the miscreant on live TV to ensure such blatant child abuse does not ever happen again."

It's no longer enough to have a cell phone: after all, the first thing the marauding gang of sex-crazed junkies-on-wheels will do - when they stop you in some Arkansas backwoods that you have accidentally driven down because you're too cheap to have GPS, let alone OnStar - is take you phone and insert it into one of your bodily orifaces. Then they'll move onto your wife and kids.

Yup. Folks in Iraq are living without water, power, security, or health care, and folks in Pakistan are having to live through earthquakes that wipe out over 30,000 people in a single hit - but the supportive folks at OnStar want to make sure that I can feel safe in my car for a mere $200 per year. What price true fatherhood? ("But daddy, what if the car breaks down 100 miles from anywhere, and your cell phone is dead, and there's no-one going to come along in 6 weeks, and there's a tornado heading straight for us, and the waters are rising on the road, and I'm out of heart medicine, and mommy's just gone into labor, and the alligators ...")

No sirree, I'll be signing up for the safety of OnStar just as soon as I can get through on their busy hotline. Lucky for me it isn't an emergency.