Don’t rush to condemn the 30-year-old slacker who lives in his parents’ basement

It breaks my heart to say this, but the entire country is dead wrong about poor Michael Rotondo, the 30-year-old slacker living in his parents’ basement.

You’ve all been horribly, stupidly and arrogantly cruel; those of you on the left who’ve mocked poor Rotondo for being a conservative in a bad ‘80s burgundy shirt, and those on the right who treated the Syracuse pajama boy as if he were the secret son of Bernie Sanders.

And someday, when Rotondo leads a political movement that sweeps the nation, and ends the partisan bickering, and unites his generation, you'll tear out your hair.

But by then it'll be too late. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

As everyone knows by now, Michael Rotondo was happy living at home. He had no plans to leave. His parents asked him to go and he refused. Finally, a court of law evicted him and threw poor Rotondo to the curb.

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin began the mocking. And then those farther to the left jumped on him, and Fox News and those on the right put the boots to him, too.

In his CNN interview, Rotondo said he didn’t want to be considered a millennial, since he said millennials are liberals. He identified as a conservative. This gave many in the liberal media license to peel his skin and squeeze metaphorical lemons on his back. They were merciless.

Meanwhile, conservative pundits viewed him as a loser and a threat to the brand, and they didn’t want him in their club.

They all got their pound of flesh from Rotondo.

And before you, too, sink your teeth in for another bite, why not first consider his alleged sins?

He was happy in the basement, watching TV, probably playing video games and doing nothing, except maybe binge-watching “Game of Thrones.” He bothered no one, except perhaps his parents, but they raised him to be what he was.

One of the few to stand up for poor Rotondo was the esteemed moral philosopher and ethicist John Feitelberg, aka “Feits” at Barstool Sports.

“This guy is my (expletive deleted) hero,” said Feits.

He added that living at home is “the absolute (expletive deleted) best. … They cook your meals, they do your laundry, they (expletive deleted) drive you home from when you get drunk at dinner.”

Feits ended by saying that all young people should fight for their civil rights, demanding free movies and drives home when they’re drunk.

The anti-Rotondotarians boil it all down to this:

Rotondo, hapless slacker, is the kind of creature who'll end up drinking his father’s 18-year-old Scotch, and contribute zilch to the household.

The easy thing to do is cast Rotondo as a confused Bernie Bro who thinks he can live for free. But that wouldn’t be accurate. Because it’s not Rotondo and his generation that have been living large off the parents. It’s the other way around.

Who has been electing politicians who, year after year, keep piling up the national debt, now in the untold trillions of dollars Republicans and Democrats have done it and millennials have had nothing to do with it.

It’s the parents who have been piling debt upon the young, electing politicians who’ve spent and spent, refusing to cut, spending their children’s birthright to get re-elected, until the debt becomes so monstrous that it will crush the young and grind them into dust.

Sooner or later they'll wise up, and realize what’s been done to them.

Who knows? Their leader could be Michael Rotondo, reviled as a slacker by older generations who taught him well.

This story was originally published May 30, 2018 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Don’t rush to condemn the 30-year-old slacker who lives in his parents’ basement."