Gallup has some interesting numbers on how age affects perceptions of Obama.
The variation in Obama’s job approval ratings by age stands in contrast to the rather limited variation in approval ratings by age for his two immediate predecessors.
I’m an Obot and I think some of it is that young people especially like him. But I’ve got to believe that most of it is that younger people are frightened by the Republican party. Does stuff like this seem like it would work with young people:?
You’d have to be an idiot or a Sully slave to believe that Republicans aren’t better at controlling mass media. From everything I’ve heard, though, younger people don’t watch cable news or buy hard copies of anything, so they’re not the target audience for old-form mass media (tv, print mediaa, etc.).
I realize I’ve touched on this before, but increasingly I wonder if this is some of what’s at the heart of this strange disconnect, where mass media recites Republican talking points regardless of who is in office. Are younger people more Democratic because they’re not being propagandized by mass media? Does mass media take a right-wing line because its audience is older and more conservative? Or do Republicans just know how to manipulate old media the same way they know how to manipulate older people (and don’t know how to manipulate today’s young people)?
Maybe I’m wrong to see all of this in terms of Republicans. Maybe it has to do with Democratic messaging. But since Democrats have no coordinated message, I’m not sure how that could be.
Mike Kay
Beautify America – Punch a Hippie
Cheryl from Maryland
The people who form mass media are old.
Mark S.
Oh yeah. I read a year or so ago that the average age of a FOX News viewer was 67 or something, but it’s not just FOX. Watch the Nightly News and see how many advertisements are for medications.
JenJen
Purely anecdotal, but one trend among my younger friends and relatives (22 to say, 30) is that they hate TV, to the point that they either don’t own a TV at all, or use it as a monitor only to watch DVDs and play video games. None of my younger friends subscribe to cable, and if there’s a show on TV they’re interested in watching, they just go find it free online. When I try to talk to them about news events I saw on TV, I often get a “huh?” look. Back during the summer when the Tea Parties were raging, I was talking about it with a few young friends who had absolutely no idea what was going on. When I showed them a few online videos from town halls, they were flabbergasted.
This is in pretty stark contrast to my own Gen-X cohort. We were raised on TV, and remain pretty addicted to it. I’m not ashamed of that, and you can pry my cable box from my cold, dead hands. But I do think it’s a pretty interesting development.
DougJ
@Cheryl from Maryland:
What about Luke Russert and Jenna Bush?
Cain
I find the obama as joker as being very offensive to me. It is the very an-thesis of who Obama is. He’s not a wild crazy man killing people. Ridiculous.
I’m like the young crowd, I have no cable tv (well I do, I just don’t watch it) I watch all my tv shows on Hulu, Movies on netflix etc. I tend to get local issues from NPR/OBP especially awesome awesome shows like “Think Out Loud” where I learn more subtle points of a situation. Of course, Balloon-Juice/Talking Points Memo/Ygelsias and any links I see from BJ. I used to go to Huffington Post but found their headlines to be outrageous and cut them out.
I think I’m slightly propagandized being here on BJ and I find myself shunting out Republicans almost completely as inconsequential and find myself moving left very quickly even though I have plenty of positions that would be considered Republican.
cain
cleek
i don’t have the stats, but i’d guess that younger people are far more into mass media than adults – but it’s the entertainment side of MM, not the news side. and because conservatives aren’t entertaining, their messages go unheard.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If you’re going to speculate, you also have to include the influence of the Daily Show and Colbert Report on people. A large number of the people in the 18-29 year range get some of their information from those shows, which are definitely not doing the Republicans any favors.
Mike Kay
most people who watch cable news are old.
think about it. it’s 8 pm on a Tuesdays night, most young people are on facebook or texting or playing XBox or watching sports or watching American Idol or a reality show. They’re not watching boring ass cable news.
cleek
OT: can any Chrome users edit comments here ?
beltane
You can also look at young people’s religious affiliation (or lack thereof) and attitudes towards things like marriage equality to see what’s wrong with the Republican party. It’s not that the Republicans’ message doesn’t resonate, it’s that it resonates in ways that are the opposite from what was intended.
It’s nice that the Republicans own Meet the Press and Face the Nation, but it’s kind of like owning all the carriage horses just before the automobile was introduced.
Genine
I definitely think mass media plays a part in the age disconnect. Republicans are great at playing the Mass media and the Mass media allows this to happen. However, Republicans have been downright comical in trying to manipulate and use the internet to their advantage.
It may also be generational. I’ve learned that Millienials (people born from 1978- ) are more progressive than Boomers and Xers. (I am Gen X). Maybe they’ve seen what Boomers and Xers have done and decided they did not want to repeat those mistakes?
Initially I was surprised to learn how conservative Xers are, but it makes sense. Thanks to Facebook, I see a lot of people I knew in high school are now old church people, wingnuts or warhawks.
My last two years of high school, I went to an arts school. There were many openly gay students in our school and they got along great. There was very little harassment. When there was some, many other students would beat the bully down, so it rarely happened. Now, on Facebook, I see the same people who had gay friends in high school and college now against equal rights for those they once called friends.
It’s NUTS!
Cain
@cleek:
It’s because they are still fighting the culture wars from the 80s. I think they are more comfortable in their gender roles than we were. The times from when women started to go to work the whole gender roles have gone completely out of whack. I don’t think our younger generation gives two shits about it. Politics to me sounds almost completely about gender. Some people really just want the 50s back.
cain
DougJ
@cleek:
Yes, that is probably true. I don’t think I have exactly the right phrase to describe talk radio/cable news/newspapers/glossies. That’s what I mean.
beltane
@cleek: Come to think of it: no. I get a message saying I’m not authorized to edit my comments, so you’re all stuck with my unedited blather.
JenJen
@cleek: I’m using Chrome, and just edited my comment above.
@Genine: Gen-X here, too, and yeah, I’m consistently surprised by how many conservatives you find in our cohort. I think a lot of it has to do with coming of age during the latter part of the Reagan Years; some of that mythology really took hold.
Bnut
All you have to do is look at the lineup for X-Pac. The GOP really know how to reach out to the youth. How does one not get excited at Stephen Baldwin and Brit Hume?
Cain
@cleek:
Yeah, I can, although it looks kind of wierd.. like this:
Click to EditRequest Deletion (4 minutes and 15 seconds)
cain
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Young people have no memory of these “hippies” we are supposed to be punching. Might as well try to scare them with the horror of being overrun by the sans-culottes (that’s French for no emo-pants). That part of the past is finally reaching its Faulkner-esque “The past isn’t dead…” sell by date.
liberal
I had the impression that really old people are pretty conservative, relatively speaking.
Also, maybe they’re more freaked out about the Great Recession and like people of all ages don’t understand the idea of “lag” in terms of policies and the performance of the economy.
mr. whipple
Totally OT, but can I say that today’s series of posts by the contributers has been fantastic. Well done, everyone.
jayackroyd
This is hard to figure out, and the tradmed people are to some degree whistling past the grave. What makes it really hard to figure out is that there is a subterranean river of complete corruption driving decision making. The tradmed is complicit in this, taking the money (yes, Washington Week is sponsored by Boeing) and not telling the story.
So I think you need to notice that it is not Republican talking points, per se, that are being transmitted, but sponsor talking points. These happen to be largely the same, but it makes more sense if you look at the revenue stream rather than the ideology.
Elisabeth
If Obama was trying to kill you in your dotage you wouldn’t be so keen on him, either.
DougJ
@mr. whipple:
Thank you!
Redshirt
That’s the bigger issue methinks: We’re still playing out the battles of the 60’s and the Hippies and Vietnam. Maybe this Millenial Generation will be the first who simply have no reference for this battlefield.
Ailuridae
Does mass media take a right-wing line because its audience is older and more conservative?
I think mass media takes a Republican line because its in their immediate self-interest to do so. In “What Liberal Media?” Alterman has the following quote from Sumner Redstone that gets at it best
“I don’t want to denigrate Kerry,” Redstone said, “but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people. … But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company.”
The large corporations that dominate media benefit greatly from Republican administrations (again, in the short term.) They slant news coverage towards a world where its left pole is somewhat right of center and its right pole is where you accuse lawyers of being members of al-Qaeda because having a universe where those are the two bounds of reasonable political discourse benefits them.
People will tell me that MSNBC has a demonstrable liberal bias and I ask them whether they know anything about GE as a company.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not just the network audience, but the network execs and stars themselves. Who’s ‘young’ on the nets and cable news operations? George Stephanopolous is probably the youngest host of a Sunday show, he’s almost fifty (born ’61) John King (’63). Toss in their Broder-worship and Daddy issues, and it skews even older. Hell, I’m over forty and I can’t watch most of them.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
We should have a Dougj coming out party, or something. You just painted a bullseye on yer back, but you’re in the big time now. I am working on good gang sign Cole requested, but here is one that seems apropo.
As you can see, we Obots are not the Hells Angels.
JenJen
@DougJ: And Boobs McCain. :-)
Mike Kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
as a young person, I can’t stand the online hippies crying and whining with their emo shit. Especially the fat slob PUMAs and pot smoking Edwards dead-enders.
Ailuridae
@cleek:
If you want to really wrap your head around something difficult to comprehend look at the top selling video games versus the top grossing movies in a given year.
And I can edit comments on chrome (on XP Pro) fine.
ksmiami
The Republicans are angry, fearful old people. I fail to see the appeal and i am an Xer… but then I am an urbanite, ivy leaguer who enjoys brie (but I like Feta more) and I turned off the MSM after Bush II won because I realized that the MSM was a wholly owned sycophantic arm of the GOP. They also amped up the crazy to a level where everything they say and do viscerally offends me.
DougJ
@Ailuridae:
I think that is some of it to be sure. But I do think there’s an age angle too.
fasteddie9318
The real take-away from this poll is being ignored by everybody; 52% approval for Bush? Speaking as one of them, what the fucking fuck is wrong with 30-49 year olds in this country?
JenJen
@ksmiami:
You too? X-er here, and my political awakening began the night Bush II “won” the election in 2000.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@mr. whipple: yes, I agree. Dougj, be strong dude. When the Wapo/Broder delerium tremens start from withdrawal, we are here for ya. Those spiders on the wall aren’t really spiders, just good democrats.
jacy
@JenJen:
I will attest to this — my older kids (21, 20, 18) don’t watch TV. Whatever they need, they find online. They watch any TV shows online. They get their news online. They’re pretty politically aware for people of their age — but they steer clear of the MSM, unless someone sends them a clip or it’s a link off a blog, or it’s in some online aggregator. None of them even own a TV.
John Arbuthnot Fisher
If Democrats were adept at manufacturing controversy (not trying to make a statement on the political/policy value of such controversies), the mainstream media would be more engaged with Democrats, as I think we saw in the micro-controversies that went down with Alan Grayson. The media is chasing dollars=ratings, pure and simple. If there was one more penny to be made by punching Rick Santelli instead of Howard Dean, that’s who they would punch. However, age bias is definitely part of it, as well as what I like to call Tom Brokaw Syndrome – the belief that what a cranky old person thinks about America is way more relevant than what a young person thinks about America.
With regards to young people, the young person of 2010 vs. 1970, 1980, 1990, even 2000, is much more likely to be non-white, non-hetero, non-religious. With the exception of the Larry Craigs of the world, it is very hard to be both The Other and The Persecutor. When you also consider the fact that young white, hetero, religious, etc. people are less likely now than ever before to want the government to clamp down on The Other, the prospect of an American Taliban is not particularly appealing. At least this has been my observed experience as someone who fits on the younger end of that 18-29 range.
Janet Strange
@fasteddie9318:
Reagan.
drew42
The Revolution Has Not Been Televised!
…sorry. That just kind of floated through my head while reading this post.
Redshirt
@fasteddie9318:
I don’t really know what happened to Gen-X, other than they came of age during the height of the “Reagan Revolution” and perhaps the brainwashing was too much to overcome.
But, considering most of the craziness we are facing today started at about the same time (1980), there’s some kind of connection there.
Bnut
@redshirt: Yeah, we don’t worry to much over Vietnam, we now have 2 of our own wars to get riled up over.
Tonal Crow
Guess who we need to reach when it’s time to GOTV?
Genine
They’re Gen X, that’s what’s wrong with them. LOL
As I said, I was really shocked when I learned how conservative my generation is. But, upon observation, I can see how it’s true. From what I’ve learned Xers are very much influenced by Boomer politics and talking points.
Someone brought up the idea that maybe it is their youth that makes Millenials more progressive. But I read data that data was compared with those of Xers when we were the same age.
EDIT: It could be Reagan, too.
But, when I was growing up, all I heard is how apathetic we (Xers) were.
beltane
@fasteddie9318: As someone in that age cohort, I think it’s that my generation is hopelessly pathetic. I still think 80’s music, big hair and Ronald Reagan sucked and I always will. Most of my peers in high school were already worshiping Wall Street and greed was considered very grown-up.
Cain
@Redshirt:
Fuck Reagan, I disliked that guy most of high school. I don’t know if a lot of people in high school was really paying much attention, but what I do know is that they did a lot of stupid shit in college including sleeping around, getting drunk and then they get all conservative and family values and shit. Ridiculous. I know this one guy who is now a total right winger, but we used to put foam on all over him when he passed out.
cain
John Arbuthnot Fisher
@Redshirt: I think you’re on point here. I think appeals to teh soshulism, railing against DADT, general Liebermanesque hippie punching, or general concerns about Democrats being “too liberal,” “tax and spend,” etc. just don’t resonate with young people. I mean, the Republicans have literally been using the same messaging for 30-40 years, eventually it has to get stale and irrelevant.
Sue
Funny, twice in one day I get to comment on this:
Doesn’t matter how much the youngsters like Obama, if he and his party continue to ignore them, they (young people) will not remain politically engaged. They helped a lot to put Obama in office and now get to listen to all sorts of reasons why they will be shut out of health care, to name just one issue.
Max
@fasteddie9318: I think they were approving of “bush” not “Bush”.
The results of this poll make me laugh because all the PUMA sites say how Obama is losing young people.
Wankers.
Go Gen X!
mr. whipple
@Janet Strange:
You may be onto something. I’ll never forget going back to my dorm room election night ’79 and how happy everyone was that Sluggo won. I felt totally lost and disconnected.
Sentient Puddle
I’m pretty sure most young people who see Obama painted as the Joker and know a basic definition of socialism will look at that and think “Uh…what?”
On the other hand, most people I know are also geeky and actually know shit, so I’m not entirely sure my sample is totally unbiased.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Redshirt:
I suspect a lot of parallels the old saw about in the crash of ’29, reporters called their editors, in the crash of ’87 (heh), reporters called their brokers. A generation later, I suspect an even higher number of journalists are not only part of the upper middle class, but were born and brought up in it.
Mike Kay
@Sue: typical hippie/public option whinner.
Sentient Puddle
While I’m in moderation, I would like to say that I hate you all for goading me into saying the S word. One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to rejigger the spell check dictionaries to force me to misspell it.
JenJen
@Redshirt: So true. And, the Cold War.
Recently while watching the Olympics, my younger friends were all bitching “Are we ever going to stop hearing about that stupid f’ing 1980 hockey game? Who cares!?” And I do mean all of them, every last one.
Now, I was a kid watching that game with my dad, so I get what it meant, because I was in the moment. But, for the first time in my life since, my young friends were making me see that mythical game through their eyes, and it finally occurred to me that they had no idea what it meant, or what it was about, (more importantly, how it could be about anything other than hockey) and that maybe, all these years later, it really was time to stop talking about it and to just let go. And, you know, move on.
But I think that divide does speak to why Millenials and Gen-Xers (present company excluded) seem farther apart politically than I ever thought they would, and why they see the world so differently.
Genine
I would like to add that I also learned that X-ers engaged in more sex and drug experimentation than Millenials. Also, Millenials are getting married earlier.
The marriage part I can attest to. I am currently back in school to finish my degree and the amount of married girls age 19 to 21 in my classes is staggering. I’m not even throwing in those who are engaged to get married within the next several months.
ajr22
As a 22 year old, I can tell you growing up my entire adult life with Bush as president did not do the Republicans any favors. Also, there is a clear disconnect in their message of religious conservatism to a majority of young Americans. The hole “Republicans like war more than Democrats” angle does not play good with youth. Old white people in middle America might like to feel safe knowing we are killing brown people, but Iraq turned off a lot of young people. The fact that younger people don’t watch cable news must also help though. However a kid that I go to law school with is always checking drudge, and every time we discuss politics I hear fox talking points. He once said Dick Morris was the best pundit in politics, my head almost exploded.
gwangung
Gawd, wonder how many folks have heard the original (and the other tracks that came out with it….)
Mike Kay
@JenJen:
could be worse — atleast the announcers weren’t pinning away for the good ole days of 1968.
Gawd, every four years, at convention time, one talking head after another relives his glory days at the chicago convention riot.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@mr. whipple: Mr. Bill got creamed that night, though in 1980. Then I got drunk and forgot, until a few days later, when the Reagan mouth breathing government destructo wingnut brigades invaded the little but controversial federal agency I worked for, and all hell broke loose.
mr. whipple
@Mike Kay: Heh.
Now we got Brokaw doing a series on Boomers, after doing a series on “The Greatest Generation.”
I really don’t understand this generational worship BS, or the feeling among some that their’s was the greatest, bestest eveh!
MikeJ
Alex P. Keaton.
cat48
@Sue:
How are you shut out of health care?
JenJen
@Genine:
What’s really funny about all of that is that we came of age during Ron & Nancy’s “Just Say No” years. We all certainly loved to make fun of that phrase back in the day.
ETA: I’d say a lot of that came to a screeching halt when we, as young adults, first heard about this “new” disease called AIDS. Gay or straight, urban or suburban, it was terrifying.
Sentient Puddle
@Sue: Er…yeah, what? The most generous interpretation I can give you on this is the individual mandate, and myself a young person, I say to all the other young persons complaining about it: tough shit.
Mike Kay
@cat48: the public option is the hippie holy grail. It’s become a cult like religious article of faith.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@ajr22:
For this I hate you. Kidding. I was way too stoopid when I was that age to care about much more than whether I should go for the Jack Black on a Friday night, or just drink beer and smoke lots of reefer. And where the best parties were. The fact that you are here and commenting on politics in a rational way is a good sign for America. Yes it is:)
Corner Stone
@Mike Kay:
Like who?
Mike Kay
@mr. whipple:
really, I can’t wait for the boomers (especially the hippies) to die off.
Corner Stone
@JenJen:
You have a tiny pen1s!
…sorry, that was reflex.
cat48
@Mike Kay:
That’s odd since I read somewhere that about 15M of newly insured will be on Medicaid which is a public option thru the states.
Corner Stone
@Mike Kay: God damn son, where did the hippie touch you?
mr. whipple
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Agreed. I think kids today are just so damn serious. I was talking with my nephew at Xmas, who was home from his first college quarter. And I asked him what a typical day/week was like, and not once did he mention anything fun outside of class. He doesn’t seem to care, but it makes me sad.
JenJen
@Mike Kay: I think (hope?) we’re done hearing about Chicago ’68. I think (hope?) the Grant Park images of Election Night 2008 went a long way toward throwing dead flowers on those old images for good.
Genine
@JenJen:
Yeah, I know. I remember that, too.
It’s strange, for me, to hear the phrase “back in the day”. But I guess it really is. A person born the year Reagan left office is now old enough to drink legally. Weird! I’ll be 35, but I still think of myself as young.
I watched Jeanene Garafolo do stand up and she mentions how weirded out she is by “young people” and her age. She said “I already had a drinking problem and eating disorder by the time you decided to join us.”
pcbedamned
What everyone seems to be forgetting is that we Gen-Xer’s were the generation that came of age in quite a bit of excess. I mean in the 80’s, everything was BIG! Hair, heels, bank accounts, etc. For a majority of us, both parents worked and the monetary benefits showed. We were the first to have computers, walkman’s (still got one too), cable, VCR’s, etc. We were the beginning of immediate gratification. We also grew up with Alex P. Keaton as a role model. ( And that there, says it all). For many X-er’s, it was, and is, $ that is King. And we all know that the right-wing in your Country REALLY doesn’t like to share…
And not to forget, we were also the only Generation to never have to SEE war. None of our friends were going to some Godforsaken country to get killed for no reason at all. And now that the X-er’s are past the age to worry about, it is really easy to be a ‘hawk’ when it doesn’t directly affect you. Just wait until it is their kids being drafted and killed fighting useless wars – then they will change their tune.(?)
Corner Stone
@Ailuridae:
Or Disney and ABC, or CBS before Viacom when it was Westinghouse pulling the strings.
Or ClearChannel and FM radio.
and on and on.
mr. whipple
@Mike Kay: LOL.
I was born in 61, so think I’m on the cusp, but when I hear some of these folks I’m like, ‘get the hell over yourself.’
My wife has 8 years on me, and she thinks boomers are total, epic FAIL.
Cerberus
Not really. I’m sort of in the cusp between the generations and what’s been clear to me growing up and most of my compatriots, especially those younger is that we’ve not only grown up with advertising, but when advertising and propaganda have moved from sneaky to obnoxious and openly hostile. The Boomers grew up in the dawn of TV and so got Madison Avenue stretching its stuff and manipulating them. Gen X grew up with carefully designed toy-franchise advertising campaigns trying to create life-long emotional bonds with cheap ploys to sell toys. Millenials and Gen Y however grew up with openly hostile media drunk off the arrogance of their success. Our earliest memories were of advertising deliberately insulting our intelligence and openly trying to co-opt us at every turn. Endless parades of “you know what would be cool kid” and other soulless hack jobs epitomized most clearly by Pepsi’s attempt to name the generation for us “Generation Next” as part of their ad campaign.
In short, Gens Y and the Millenials seem to have both grown up with an amazing amount of advertising and propaganda savvy as a sort of learned defensive measure in the same way that Gen X developed quite a few resistances to adult-oriented TV advertising as they grew up. This was greatly aided by the rise of the internet during either formative college years or for most of development allowing kids early adopting to the medium to really have an open access point for truth.
This combination allowed a set wholly poised to call bullshit often on the tired propaganda campaign and end up openly hostile to the old-guard of television (in advertising and news propaganda).
The conservative control scheme doesn’t really care because they have enough Boomers and Xers with fond memories of Reagan to continue on more or less with enough to be competitive at least long enough to run out the clock another decade or two.
Plus, the conservative movement are kind of luddites. They lucked out with television by being there on the ground floor with Madison Avenue to learn how to dominate that medium, but they really don’t have a clue how to dominate the true anarchy that is the internet on any real level.
Oh sure, they are able to “dominate” it in the sense of being the main source of information on the “Webiverse” to the mainstream media crowd and everyone’s more senile grandparent, but the kids just see the same old bullshit of propaganda that turned them off TV and skip it.
In general, I think it’s just one more stage of how the kids are always all right. I said some things about brainwashing and susceptibility. But the Boomers were the ones to see through the lies about patriotism and really deconstruct them. Gen X deconstructed advertising. Gen Y and the Millenials are in the process of deconstructing the intense propaganda for the dominant in place of news that old school media has always been (though they are far more blatant and worse at their jobs these days than in the past, likely out of fear of their growing irrelevance). The next generation will fix more things that are fucked up that we didn’t even notice.
Genine
That is true. I remember how much kids would talk about condoms and brag about how safe their sex was. I grew up in an urban area and “safe sex” was not a phrase what was (often) mocked.
Mike Kay
@Corner Stone: Any site that thought Edwards was the 2nd coming during the primaries. Those hippies swallowed it all – hook, line, and zinker.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Awwe, the Boomer Love here is touching.
Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
Mike Kay
@Genine:
Don’t trust anyone born before 1970.
wasabi gasp
Being broke and sleeping on other people’s sofas is normal for young folks so they’re totally cool with the Democrat agenda.
People in the middle have boxes full of broken dreams cluttering closets and they want deep tax cuts to help cover the cost of moving that crap to a storage place.
Old folks are bitter coots who can’t get past that nobody wanted to pay even fifty cents for their old crappy dreams at the tag sale, so it feels better to believe some black kid wants to steal them.
JenJen
@pcbedamned: Agreed on all counts. Alex P. Keaton! Yeah, back then we were supposed to want to rebel against our hippie McGovern-voting parents and embrace suits and the GOP. Remember that “Poverty Sucks” poster that was so popular in the 80s? I recently watched “Wall Street” again, and was surprised at how well it depicted that mood, and how well it still holds up as a film.
And I’ve always said we were The Luckiest Generation, having never really seen war. Outside, that is, of the movie theater. “War Games,” “Red Dawn,” Top Gun.” Now that shit has not held up well, in fact, it just comes off as ridiculous now. Weird to think we took it all so seriously then… remember “The Day After”?
(I really did not intend for this to become a pop culture post; just wanted to agree with you while having nothing much to add. Sorry about that.)
Mike Kay
@Genine:
it must of been a bummer for the boomers. They could no longer have indiscriminate group sex with complete strangers.
Silver Owl
The young ones in my family just can not relate to the republicans. Republicans hate just about everything they like or find acceptable. Education, gays, blacks, latinos and women.
Organized religion to them is just a bunch cranky old men and women spouting bull chit that entails nothing but oppression or life long boredom and living lies.
Republicans have nothing to offer the younger people that they want.
DonkeyKong
The Republican Party and the MSN are in a demographic suicide pact. I just wish the bloody bastards could shoot straight and not make a mess of it.
master c
I’m going to defend x-ers sorta. The meme we grew up with hasnt changed:
Repubs know how to kick ass, Dems are wimps. Covert CIA
ops disappear things in the night, social security will never be there for us, we are the land of guns and drugs, yet still…. America is the greatest country in the world.
Reconciling our real decline as wage earners and standard of living
contest winners is tough when it smacks you in the face. Some people are mad that a middle class existence requires so much more money.
Kids now are much more savvy, that media manipulates, we didnt. Good for the kids.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mike Kay:
Yup, but we preferred to call it Free Love. It wasn’t getting rich in the stock market, but always put a smile on the day.
Alan
I just heard on Glen Beck that the young are being programed in school to admire Obama. Moreover, they are being brainwashed that their parents are wrong about most things political and therefore should not be believed. It’s a secret leftist/commie/fascist cabal that’s running things in public schools. Thank G-d Glen Beck is there on Fox News to alert us to all this. I’m scared and angry.
mr. whipple
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Shut up, hippy. :)
Kobie
@JenJen: Late Gen-X here as well, and I’ve noticed that more than a few people from high school I’ve reconnected with on Facebook have turned into raving nutter Glenn Beck disciples.
colleeniem
Speaking as an older/young person, I can give you an anecdotal response.
At 30, I’m pissed that all the old, corrupt republican/conservatives i know are telling us that America’s turning into a socialist state because they can’t fucking pay more than 30 percent income tax when they are days away from medicare/or federal military employees that will get it anyway. They can’t buck themselves up to treat terrorists like the pissy little murderers they are. My generation has been/will be the one that does the dying in conflicts that will have minimal effect on some batshit people in caves who can’t get it together enough to suicide attack without incinerating their own balls. I’m pissed that people in my office, leaders who should be example, whine that they literally can’t just drive any car they want to, without feeling bad about it. I haven’t known a time when ecological concerns weren’t big–in my public school, the 4th grade music event was entirely about recycling, saving the earth etc.
I don’t see grown ups when I talk to hard core conservatives–I see sniveling little balls of selfish bitterness.
I’m not ready to give up or grow up to be like that.
/rant
Mike in NC
Yes, the 1850s. Especially if you live in the south.
Nonsense! Who can’t relate to ‘Tax Cuts for the Rich’?
pcbedamned
@JenJen:
What I remember about that, is that my parents wouldn’t let me watch it!!! LOL. Said it would be ‘too scary’, yet a year later, I am renting “Nightmare on Elmstreet”. Go figure…
(and who actually went to watch “Top Gun” for the fighting? Tom Cruise was ‘da man’ in the ’80’s – before he went all nutso (cool ’70’s reference), “Red Dawn” for strictly for Swayze, and “War Games” was just too cool:)
(eventually, this will get through seeing as how I keep getting the FF warning that my connection has been reset. It’s Friday night after 6pm – everyone must be here!!! Grrrr)
Corner Stone
@Mike Kay:
So some amorphous “other” that’s really not very well defined but can expand or contract as you need it to anytime you want to get your hate on. Gotcha.
colleeniem
Crap, i used the $ocialist word and am in moderation. Help!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@mr. whipple:
Just punched myself and am all better now.
Corner Stone
@pcbedamned:
IDK about you, but myself and my cohorts were of age during Gulf War I and there was a visceral gut feeling that the draft was coming back. We had friends called up in Reserves and NG, and even a few HS teachers left.
Looking back it’s easy to dismiss as silly paranoia but at the time it was a nightly discussion round the old everclear pitcher.
JenJen
@pcbedamned: I see your “War Games” and raise you one “St. Elmo’s Fire.”
No, really, “War Games” was so-totally-awesome at the time, but if you watch it now, it seems a bit more ridiculous. Except for that part where NORAD really did believe the Evil Empire was attacking. That part was completely believable.
@Corner Stone: But the Gulf War was no WWII, no Vietnam, and no Iraq War. It just wasn’t. And I had friends who sat in that desert for weeks, too. Remember, just a few months later, Americans threw that President right out of office; I don’t think any of us thought of it as an actual war and I certainly wasn’t doing the kind of worrying about the draft. By then, our worries about the draft had largely disappeared because Reagan was gone, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War ended.
Midnight Marauder
@master c:
I’m going to be honest with you:
This is a pretty shitty defense.
It seems to just boil down to “What did you expect us to do? Those spoon-fed Reagan narratives were just too delicious!”
Corner Stone
@Janet Strange:
Careful now. You’re going to harsh some poor fellows warm fuzzy if you keep talking bad about avuncular old Ronnie.
colleeniem
Well, I’m still awaiting moderation, but I have something shorter and more pithy to say anyway.
Kids don’t appreciate grown ups that can lie about absolutely horrendous shit to their faces, get caught, and not lose a step.
Kids have a good bullshit meter.
pcbedamned
@JenJen:
And I will come at you with “Back to the Future”. Alex P. Keaton in a flying Delorean. Didn’t get any cooler than that!?!…
@ cornerstone – I was in my 20’s when the Gulf War came about, and it didn’t last long enough for anyone to really worry about. I remember watching it on TV at work and thinking, “that’s it?”. Nothing compared to what the boomer’s experienced during Vietnam, or their parents with WW2. (not belittle the efforts and sacrifices made by the Gulf Troops)
pcbedamned
JenJen,
We must have been editing at the same time…
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
As soon as you show me data points that connect any particular media activity with any particular electoral effect, I will take the conversation seriously.
I have never seen those data points, and despite the loud and arrogant assertions in here over the years that they are so obvious they require no discussion or explanation, nobody here has ever produced them. In my view, because they don’t and won’t exist.
Let’s say that the question is something like this: People who watch Fox News tend to be conservative. Is that trend an effect of Fox News, or is it that Fox News has engineered its content to attract that conservative audience? If the answer is both, then what is the mix?
Produce the data that supports your answer. Take all the time you need.
It’s my view that there is no empirical material here, and that talking as if there were is just dishonest. Just as dishonest, for example, as the crap that Fox pulls in its slanted view of things.
JenJen
@pcbedamned: GMTA.
master c
Dude…what I’m saying is they worked! The memes!
The memes!
pcbedamned
@JenJen:
:)
Cain
@mr. whipple:
yeah, but if you watch the MSM it seems like the country is falling apart, with abductions, murder, death, crazies. I don’t really get that from kids today. I think they are lot more conservative than we were. I remember blowing up a lot of shit with firecrackeres and what not when we were kid. We got so much protection laws it’s kind of insane. I couldn’t do half the stuff I was doing when I was kid now.
Oh yeah, get off my lawn.
cain
Svensker
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
General, Sir, you may say that again. And put a bell on it. Got a flashback smile just thinking about it all.
And you youngsters? Your music sucks. Don’t touch my grass. Lawn neither. Bah. Harrumph.
drew42
If you want to see some real 1980’s conservative brainwashing, go netflix Ghostbusters. It’s been a few years since I last watched it, but here’s what I remember:
1. The antagonist was an over-zealous EPA agent.
2. Biblical end of the world theme, presented in a Fun For The Whole Family PG environment.
3. Nuclear powered weapons save the day!
And I freaking loved that movie as a kid. Watched it about 50 times.
kay
@Tonal Crow:
They’re going to try.
I went to the OFA meeting last night.
The plan for my congressional district is as follows: OFA will work exclusively on reaching and persuading and GOTV on the people who were first time Democratic voters in ’08.
The goal is as follows: first-time voters in a Presidential election usually turn out at 42% in the following midterm. If OFA can turn out the first time Obama voters they identified after the ’08 election at 50% instead of 42%, they think they can turn House and Senate and state races.
The individual candidate campaigns and State Party will be tasked with turning out “the base” and older Democratic voters.
Particular mention was made of Massachusetts. They can’t and won’t work miracles, but they can provide a winning margin, as long as the candidate isn’t something like 15 points behind.
I don’t know if that’s the national plan, but it should work well here.
I think it would be a train wreck if OFA plus State Party plus candidate campaign all worked on the same (general) goal.
OFA feels that reaching younger voters was something they were very good at, and it’s time intensive and personal, and needs a special focus. OFA organizer said younger voters are issue-based, not Party based, not “partisans” and that’s their approach. Organizer had a shit-load of polling to that effect, and the meeting was well-run.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@cleek:
Let’s see…
Yep.
Midnight Marauder
@master c:
Well, if this is addressed to me, I don’t disagree with you on the point that the memes worked and worked in a disturbingly effective manner. Just that the said effectiveness of those memes does not excuse a large portion of a generation from uncritically swallowing a voluminous load of bullshit.
Fierce Pika
Seems to me a combination of differentiated media use (wherein, yes, not propagandized to) and the vast differences on cultural values. The extent to which the culture wars and the vestiges of straightforward racism infect GOP talking points is I think both off putting and puzzling to the younger folk. This is particularly highlighted by things like gay bashing and all the moral outrages du jour (video games, for instance): when the fogies are shocked—shocked!—by things/people we do/encounter every day, when the bar for being disgusted is set at 2g1c…well, we laugh at these people who are upset and fearful about what amounts to a recycled argument about societal “degradation”, don’t we?
Lots of young folks (particular us Gen Xers who grew up with Reagan) can be seduced by things like lower taxes and so on, but we also grew up with “Captain Planet” and the internet. So when the GOP is wholly in thrall to incredibly reactionary discourses, it completely loses the younger set.
Also, I think about this a lot: how many of you get 100% bullshit email forwards from your old, conservative relatives? Glurge, allegories, falsified claims about bills and so on. And I have to say that over 90% of these things articulate a conservative point of view (trawl through Snopes sometime and consider this dominance). I wonder whether being bombarded by this stuff which can instantly be shown to be bullshit with a bit of googling may have convinced people that basically the old folks are idiots and have lost their minds. Where such things may have been believed and passed on in previous generations, in the era of instant fact checking (in which it appears there’s a generational divide over who does and doesn’t utilize such tools), now it merely confirms how wrong they are.
This is probably not a fair representation of the smarts, abilities or politics of the “older set”, but it might help explain the generational differences vis-a-vis the way discourse on the right operates at the moment.
Kyle
My experience is with CA college students, so I’ll speak to that —
Part of the Dem advantage is that the stupudity of Repig messaging is more apparent to the globalized young.
Screaming that Obama is a communist/socialist doesn’t have the same resonance as it did back when we were scared of being nuked by the Soviet Union. Calling him a Nazi is just a ridiculous stab at ancient history.
With globalization (of the economy and communications), kids have more exposure to other countries and are less easily bullshitted by “Murka’s the best in the world” nationalist tripe. They’ve been to Europe and can see some aspects of society work better there.
The Cold War is distant history, they’re not fearful of their bodily fluids being tarnished by the slightest whiff of soshulism. They just want shit to work, period — and that’s a strength of the one major party that actually takes administration and management of the government seriously as something other than a chance to loot.
And with the nastiness of today’s corporate world, many of them growing up seeing their parents get screwed over and laid off repeatedly, there are a lot fewer starry-eyed Reaganbots spouting the wonders of corporatism and Randism.
master c
The fact that all that swill is uncritically swallowed has us all in disbelief….that’s why we are here right? I had to kick the Democracy Now habit cuz it made me too angry, this blog is just the right amount of disbelief for me.
kay
@Tonal Crow:
And it won’t be embarrassing if the OFA materials get left in a hotel room, because the whole presentation was incredibly respectful of younger voters.
They’re issue-based and well-informed and open-minded, the youngsters.
I think that’s due to my influence, quite frankly :)
eric
I am late to the party and no one is reading this thread anymore, but I think you can sum up the generational differences thusly:
the greater the expectation of the members of the generation (in the aggregate) as to how well they should be living now and in the future, the greater their disappointment in their current circumstances and the greater their disenchantment and the greater to need to find a reason outside of themselves, i.e., that great scary “Other.”
As wages have stagnated and college tuition has skyrocketed (among other things), the younger generation has no crushed expectations, even though they do have a great deal of angst as to what the heck they are supposed to do. They do not feel betrayed by a failed promise of the American Dream.
Plus, as effed up as the world is for them and given the perceived lack of a “grand” future, the harder it is to simply blame some nebulous Other that is 10 or 12 or even 25 percent of the population (particular if genereally disenfranchised as opposed to Banks, Wall Street, etc.). As such African-Americans or gay/lesbians or no prayer in school dont scare them because they instinctively know that the problems they face are too big to be caused by things so little in comparison.
eric
dcdl
@JenJen: I’m noticing a trend that some people are maybe keeping ‘regular’ tv and getting Netflix or no TV. If they are watching cable news they tend to be the ‘older’ generations (50 +) and the more conservative religious people.
I happen to have basic cable myself. Disney, Nickelodeon, ESPN, HGTV, Food, History, SYFY. That’s it. It would be great if they would let you do ‘a la carte’ cable.
@Kobie: I’m seeing that also. The more wild or whatever when they were younger the more conservative and religious they are now. Atonement or something. The really funny, kinda sad part is that a lot of them are working for the government in some capacity, fed, state, city, county, contractor, or a company that has some government contracts.
JenJen
@eric:
I think this is a crucial point to understanding that the generational divide is deeper than most of us expected or acknowledge.
theturtlemoves
My personal experience as an X-er is that many of my peers had boomer parents, and therefore to rebel they had to go conservative, since their parents were DFHs. My parents were pretty ancient, since my siblings were darn near tail-end boomers themselves (I was the product of a cold winter in North Dakota), so I didn’t get the same experience. So, what I’m really saying is that this, like everything wrong with the world today, is the Boomers’ fault…
DMD
@drew42: All that, and yet Ghostbusters still rocks.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@eric:
Still reading. Don’t hold back, sometimes the threads pick up steam again and get really interesting after the end of daytime lull which seems to occur around about this time (which I’m guessing is about the time most folks are knocking off of work and heading for home, making dinner, etc.)
Jay B.
I’d say they did the right thing in college and did the stupid shit after that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@eric:
So is this helping to tamp down the myth of American Exceptionalism? Can we start to put away our USA #1 foam fingers and settle down to be a little bit more like a normal country?
Jay B.
@theturtlemoves:
Maybe, but, as a “Gen-X’er” I bet almost anything that Clinton’s approval ratings among the youth (I was 21 when he was elected) was as high as Obama’s are now. Unless that’s not what you mean when talking about Gen X.
Raenelle
I think you’re very perceptive. New slogan for the teapartiers, who seem so to want to redo the rebelion of the 60s–“You can’t trust anyone under 30.”
Gwangung
@kay: Nuts and bolts. Nuts and bolts. Anyone focussing on that has their head on straight. And they’re folks we absolutely Cannot complain about. No hippie punching for you.
liberty60
@Mike in NC:
Oh, how I wish!
How I wish we lived in an era when 1/3 of all workers were unionized;
When the top marginal tax rates were 95%;
When nobody thought it was odd for the government to set the price of gasoline.
When California erected a comprehensive system of colleges and universities that were the envy of every civilized nation on earth.
When the government was big enough, bold enough to propose a sweeping program like free school lunches, and a nationwide network of high speed highways, and even the g-damn Republicans paused in their Red-baiting, nodded and said, “yeah, we can get with that”.
When the people, through their government gave generous benefits to military veterans, to the point where for $1.00 down a veteran could move into a house in the San Fernando Valley outside of LA.
When the phrase “Government works” was not a punch line, because it did.
And most of this, by the way, was done under a Republican President.
So yeah- I want those days back as well.
JenJen
@Jay B.: I imagine you’re right about that, and that’s an interesting query, really. Coming of age during Reagan doesn’t really explain it in this context. I’m your age, and I’d like to know very much where a lot of us made that right turn.
@kay: That’s a terrific and encouraging report, and reminds one of those Obama ’08 primary days, in the sense that this team seems to get it, and they seem to listen locally. Thanks for the update because I’ve really been wondering about that.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@liberty60:
They are back. The 1850’s.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@liberty60:
Can we leave out the horrifying race relations, blatant sexism, and small but non-trivial chance of all of us abruptly dying in a nuclear war because of a dispute over Berlin, some god-forsaken islands off the coast of Taiwan, or various other bits of random geopolitical flotsam part? Speaking of which, somebody please keep a closer eye on Gen. Curtis LeMay, for everybody’s sake.
The Raven
I think the Obama campaign’s message of hope resonated most strongly with younger voters, who are also on average less racist, and don’t remember the Cold War.
&, you know, electing a black president–even a black conservative Democrat–is something we can be proud of.
Croak!
Gwangung
Fucking kids. I’m a boomer and I came of age fighting Reagan, Prop 13 and the rise of yuppie Republicanism (which has curdles quite badly by now).
kay
@Gwangung:
I was just relieved there was a plan.
I was speculating, though, gazing idly at the Power Point.
Obama takes a lot of shit for being “issue based”, with his annoying insistence on hearing “Republican ideas” when everyone knows they don’t have any.
Is that his intended audience? Issue-based young people who don’t identify with a Party, but have voted Democratic (for him)? Who maybe don’t know Republicans haven’t offered an actual good idea since he was elected? Who are “open-minded” ?
Jenn
@JenJen:
I’m interested in the Generation-X discussion, because that isn’t what I’ve found. It’s not that I don’t have lots of highly conservative Gen-X friends, but that the divide is entirely urban/rural. I can’t think of a single urban, or even relatively urban, friend who isn’t highly liberal, many of whom so far left that they think of me as a conservative. About 90% of my friends who grew up in rural areas, however, are conservative, probably about a third of whom are likely in the wingnut category — certainly they think I’m a flaming liberal. (Yes, I sometimes feel a case of mental whiplash when I visit conservative and liberal friends in quick succession.) But then, too, maybe it’s that I’m a bit later into Gen-X?
AhabTRuler
Yeah, well, I was 6 in 1980, and I grew up despising Reagan and the GOP (although I was fascinated by his shooting).
I didn’t help that I got most of my cultural history from reading my mother’s Doonesbury books (including this one, whose title I still quote quite often). To be fair, I didn’t really understand the pot jokes until I turned eleven or twelve.
AhabTRuler
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Zombie Curtis LeMay? And with today’s ChAir Force budget?
Now that is scary.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@AhabTRuler:
Old soldiers never die, they jusk fa…
BRAINS! ! !
alhutch
@JenJen: As one of the aforementioned Gen-Xers, I’d take the whole “political awakening” a little further and say that “Decision 2000” & media BS not only pushed me out of the GOP for real (hadn’t voted for an R since ’88) but radicalized me and I started looking around on the web for information.
I first found Bob Somersby’s site via Google while looking for support in debunking “Gore Invented the Internet” nonsense on a Mac site I frequented. That led to Kos, then TPM, Unclaimed Territory and the descent began…leading here to BJ.
Jenn
@liberty60:
Well, I like the aspects of the 50s you listed, but I’d never want to go back — for all the downsides of today, I’d never want to go back to pre-civil rights legislation, for one.
tyrese
This is very true. I know many people in their 20s and 30s who never read news websites or watch junk like Hardball, but watch The Daily Show.
Which, in my opinion, is good for them. Stewart doesn’t have that fake objectivity which would make him to tell you lies in the same manner as the truth.
@Silver Owl:
“The young ones in my family just can not relate to the republicans. Republicans hate just about everything they like or find acceptable. Education, gays, blacks, latinos and women.
Organized religion to them is just a bunch cranky old men and women spouting bull chit that entails nothing but oppression or life long boredom and living lies.
Republicans have nothing to offer the younger people that they want.”
This is a good brief summary of the kids I have known from the nearby six universities when I lived in Raleigh, then Durham, then Chapel Hill.
When they hear republicans, which isn’t too often, say: (pick a few)
immigrants are bad
science is all a lie
gay people should be treated badly
cutting taxes increases tax revenue
we should spend less on important stuff
bomb other countries
more guns
don’t care about the environment we depend on
Obama is a communist Death-dealer illegal immigrant
the aggregate response they have to this I would sum up as “What a dumbass”
The few occasions I’ve seen them exposed to something like Pat Robertson’s claims that 9’11 was god punishing us for feminists and the ACLU, the response has been much less quotable in a family publication such as this.
The Southern Strategy was a brilliant move at the time. Nixon’s 60% of the vote 40 years ago hasn’t been equalled since. Problem is the GOP is still appealing to that demographic.
JenJen
@Jenn: I’d go even farther and suggest the divide is regional, not so much urban-suburban. You’ll find plenty of Gen-X neocons, teabaggers and simply faithful Republican voters in urban Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Nashville, just to cite a few examples.
It’s a big country, and Gen-X is one of the smallest generations but still comprises millions. There are so many ways to look at it, and that’s what makes this discussion so interesting. I certainly agree with you that it my experience, urban Gen-Xers tend to be liberals, but it also depends on what city we’re talking about. The graphic that prompted this conversation was purely about age, but once we start breaking it down is when it really starts to get interesting.
I’m kind of loving this topic.
@alhutch: I was already a Democrat in 2000, but my trajectory is more DU, Atrios, Digsby. If it weren’t for the internet during the Dubyas, I’d have gone completely nuts.
kay
@JenJen:
Good news and bad. The Ohio Democratic Party local meeting held the week prior was a mess.
I ended up apologizing to the organizer. I actually said “they’re cranky”. Apologetic. He was packing up and looked like he wanted to cry. He’s like 21 or something.
I could have said “old and cranky” (accurate) but I occasionally show some restraint.
AhabTRuler
@AhabTRuler: I’ll add that I don’t own a working TV (since the Digital switchover; too lazy and cheap to buy a converter just to absorb mind-poison) in years, and every time I see a commercial I want to blow my brains out. Visiting my friend who always has his TV on is painful.
OTOH, I am sitting in front of three computers right now, and I read a fuckton of books. All told, I think I am an outlier in any generational pool.
JenJen
@kay: Yikes. Where in Ohio?
Oh, and, I’ve passed the edit window but I meant “Digby” not “Digsby” in #145.
JenJen +2
Comrade Mary
@mr. whipple:
You were born in 1961. I was was born in 1961. Douglas Coupland was born in 1961.
Ergo, we are not cusp. We are Gen X, not Boomer. We’re just older, crankier GenX’ers, with carefully tended lawns.
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary: I was born in 1972. Trying to figure out just where in the hell I lie on the whole generational map makes my head flat.
JenJen
@Comrade Mary: Now would be a good time to define “Gen-X” for the purposes of this thread, no? I’ve always gone with the 1965-1976-ish parameter. I thought you 1961’s were “Generation Jones,” just like our Muslim sockalishtic so-called president who is Kenyan?
Randy P
@JenJen: Heh. I’m still fuming about the 1972 gold medal basketball game, where the US lost to the USSR after the final buzzer got rolled back.
But I don’t watch a lot of sports, so a 1972 game doesn’t have a lot of competition in my brain.
Speaking of the Olympics and getting back to the topic here, I dropped my cable subscription months ago. I didn’t miss it until the Winter Olympics rolled around, when I realized I couldn’t come up with any way to watch any of it online. There were a bunch of sites that promised it, but none of them actually delivered. Including NBC.
I’m going to have to solve this by the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Bill Section 147
@Alan: The school is programming my kids? That means I have more free time.
Wait, if they are telling my kids that Obama is god and that everything I say is a lie and I am telling them to worship Obama and everything on TV is a lie and Glenn is telling them that god is not Obama and everything the school tells them is a lie…but the school is telling them to worship Obama…
I can see why Glennnnn is becoming unhinged.
Mike Kay
@JenJen:
you don’t strike me as a knee-jerk, mindless, populist Obama basher, like the others (sans DU who is liberal, and not populist). It’s funny, looking back on history how Huey Long used to denounce FDR as a corporatist. The more things change, the more the stay the same.
scarshapedstar
Same reason hippies didn’t like Nixon.
BECAUSE HE WAS AN ASSHOLE!
JenJen
@Mike Kay: Like I said. It was a trajectory. DU is overtly-liberal, and in the early Dubya days was an oasis. Atrios doesn’t write about politics much, really. And Digby? The best, and to this day she still opens up my eyes about stuff.
All of that said, I’m still a DFH, you know. Don’t get it twisted.
Comrade Mary
@JenJen: Subjectively, I don’t feel like a Boomer. My older siblings were Boomers (I remember my older sister had her dresser covered in grafitti including references to Woodstock and CSN&Y lyrics), but I came of musical-fanaticism age in the gasp between the sixties and the rise of punk (1975), so I remember turning in less than a year from Dylan, to Patti Smith, to the Sex Pistols, and never, ever ever glomming onto Genesis and Pink Floyd and the like (although I have come to appreciate Pink over the past few years). And I didn’t grow up with computers, but discovered them as magical devices in my teens .
So I am biased as hell about being labeled a Boomer or even Jones (WTF?), but the shred of civil argument I cling to is the fact that the man who categorized our ill-defined generation was born the same year as me. And I know I’m not the only one who makes that distinction. William Strauss defined the year as beginning in 1961 in his book Generations, which, I believe, was published even before Coupland’s book.
Jenn
@JenJen:
Yeah, you’re right, region is key. My generational comparisons/perceptions are coming primarily from the Pacific Northwest, though from both sides of the Cascades.
Jenn
@kay:
Hey Kay, I wanted to thank you for your rant the other day on the Cheney smears on the DOJ — I was in the midst of writing my Republican Senator to encourage him to denounce this, and you helped clarify my language. Not that he’s going to do squat, but I feel better!
Jenn
@JenJen:
Yeah, I’ve seen that date range, too; my understanding from the Wonders of Wikipedia is that it’s not standardized, but the earliest date considered Gen-X is those born in 1961, and latest date is 1981 (!). My gut/preconceived notions, growing up as a Gen-Xer was along the lines of yours.
JenJen
@Comrade Mary: Yeah, I don’t know WTF is up with the “Jones” designation, but I do think there is a split there somewhere between Boomers and X. Isn’t there? You were toddlers when JFK was assassinated, but I’m thinking you guys might remember the Moon Landing, and Nixon while he was still President, and of course the election of Carter, where Gen-Xers are more Reagan/Bush/Clinton. It’s not like I’m proud of that or anything.
Nitpicking, maybe? But I don’t view Obama as a Gen-Xer so maybe it starts there.
kay
@JenJen:
Northwest corner. It’s rural, and conservative.
Teachers dislike Ted Strickland. Something about “calamity days”. Voices were raised. I generally sit with the Steelworkers, because they’re always calm and they’re very funny, so I didn’t really catch why the teachers were haranguing the ODP organizer.
They all love Sherrod Brown. If they want to win in Ohio, they should just put Sherrod Brown on a bus, and have him stop in every small town, from now ’till November.
Comrade Mary
I remember the moon landings and Nixon (and Expo 67), but as I wasn’t old enough to even think of protesting the Vietnam war or sneaking off to Woodstock, but was around to get scared shitless by Threads and felt that War Games spoke to me, I’m clinging like a limpet to the designation of Gen X, even if there’s an asterisk beside it.
kay
@Jenn:
I’m so glad you wrote him.
Every time I get really discouraged and think I’m hanging up this shit, conservatives do something so incredibly horrible I get drawn back in.
Cheryl from Maryland
Doug J — can’t do the linky thing for people yet —
My 86 year old mother is hipper than Jenna Bush. Despite Jenna’s addiction to mod cocktails, she is from the 50’s.
Now, if you said Rachel Maddow, you would have had me.
JenJen
@Comrade Mary: You’re not a boomer! You’re definitely not a boomer*.
@kay: Seems everyone in the state loves Sherrod Brown. I know I do, so why can’t we tweak that energy and translate it to more and better Dems statewide? You don’t have to answer that.
*not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Lynne
I feel so sorry for the Obama Lost Generation. By the time they wake-up, it will be too late for them.
JGabriel
Kyle:
This. I keep wondering how seriously the GOP expects to be taken by generations raised in the wake of Spielberg films, when they keep comparing their opponents to villains in Indiana Jones or Batman.
It’s not just ancient history; it’s cartoonish.
.
ellie
I, too have reconnected with old friends on Facebook, only to find they turned into stark raving religious freaks. It is extremely depressing. I was born in 1965 and I hated Nixon, hated Reagan and hated both of the Bushes. A disclaimer: my dad was a s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t, so I have been politically aware my entire life. Their propaganda doesn’t work on me! (insert evil laugh)
JGabriel
dcdl:
Peoples surprise at this is itself kind of surprising.
It doesn’t seem like it should be any great revelation that the most adamant and vociferous in their religious beliefs will be those who feel most in need of forgiveness.
.
Claudia
Kids are probably even more suggestible than the rest of us. It’s just that Limbaugh isn’t on MTV or etc and kids don’t listen to Talk Radio. But it’s not that hard to find some home-schooled sweetheart who believes (for now) all the GOP talking points.
And why should anyone think well of what Obama has done so far?? Just because some rail and sneer at many of his policies, that doesn’t mean they aren’t flat out copies of what Bush did before. All heil the Patriot Act, misc. surges, and a warmongering economy.
AhabTRuler
Yeah, me too!
Well, everything but the ’65 part.
Comrade Mary
I saw what you did there.
My rule of thumb: references to being politically correct or incorrect with no sense of irony, childish names for the opposing party (Republithug/Demoncrats) and facile Nazi references are generally a pretty good sign that someone has stopped thinking and has started spouting slogans.
AxelFoley
@Sue:
So…how’s he ignoring them? I see the President engaging young people all the time, telling them to get involved in their communities and government, trying to get health care passed, which would benefit everyone.
Some folks just love to spew bullshit despite evidence to the contrary.
JGabriel
JenJen:
Actually, perhaps because I’m older, I always thought just the opposite. I was born in ’65, and even by the time I was 17 I felt there was this weird blip of a mini-generation between the boomers and the post-boomers (at the time also known as the MTV generation), a generation too young to remember JFK’s assassination but just old enough to remember the moon landing and Nixon’s resignation — it’s startling how exactly your definition of it matches mine.
But, in my world, that weird blip is Generation X.
I tend to think of the later group as the MTV Generation, or Post-Boomers (Children of Boom?).
.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Comrade Mary: I am a damned boomer by four days. Can I be an honorary GenX member?
Because I sure as hell ain’t a boomer.
DougJ
@Claudia:
And why should anyone think well of what Obama has done so far?? Just because some rail and sneer at many of his policies, that doesn’t mean they aren’t flat out copies of what Bush did before. All heil the Patriot Act, misc. surges, and a warmongering economy.
I’m sorry, but that is total bullshit.
JenJen
@JGabriel: I don’t even think it’s fair to draw lines upon “do you remember” moments, like JFK, the Beatles land in the US, the moon landing, or Nixon’s resignation. But they are undoubtedly points of reference.
“Blip” doesn’t really do the generational split justice, though.
AhabTRuler
Its so bloody subjective. I remember many things from late Carter into early Reagan that the SO doesn’t, and she’s only a 1.5 years younger.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
This puzzles me.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Didn’t know there was a cutoff date to be a boomer. As for your request, in these matters I always go with. You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
All purpose permission slip
Comrade Mary
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Four days? Easily covered by switching back to the Julian calendar.
Now go read Microserfs once and Souvenir of Canada ten times, and sin no more.
Deschanel
I just dislike seeing people eagerly demeaning themselves and their own individuality and personality and lives by voluntarily describing themselves as clichés dreamt up by the media.
And those clichès and images only seem to grow in power as time goes on. I am Gen X, but you know what? No I didn’t wear flannel and listen to Nirvana and totes relate to Reality Bites.
As with most stereotypes, there’s always fragments of truth, but I could swear I read someone above seriously declare the gist of Family Ties as something demonstrably true. “Our parents were hippies, so we all loved Reagan!”
Just, no. That was a fucking TV show. Alex Keaton was meant to be a peculiar comic sitcom character, and it’s striking to me how many people on the Internet seem to think he represented some sort of actual youth movement. He was written as a joke, and if people emulated a sitcom character later as some did, that’s one thing. Just don’t re-write history . All the rich kids- the Alex Keatons- in the famously posh place I live in were doing massive drugs in my early 80’s high school. They snorted coke off the marble tables in science lab. And laughed about it. They’re all big Republicans now in my town. One is a concerned parent! who has weirdly launched a campaign to kill the union at the school I went to. When in fact, there isn’t a union. This one notorious fuck just wants to make sure there isn’t ever one. Same dude I recall bragging about the coke and shrooms he did In high school. But back then they were just horrible spoiled brats, still are. Has nothing to do with that sitcom. Newsflash: it wasn’t real life.
JGabriel
@JenJen:
Probably not, but it is how we define our generational divides anyway. Sociologists may assign specific years to labels, but the rest of us tend to think more narratively:
Remembers WWII/Depression =
Grandparents, Depression Era, “The Greatest Generation”Remembers JFK’s assassination and when Elvis Presley and the Beatles were new = Boomers
Remembers Moon Landing and Nixon’s Resignation and when Star Wars was new= Gen X
Remembers Reagan = Gen Y, Post Boomers
Remembers Clinton, maybe the first Bush = Millennials
And so on.
At least that’s my breakdown. I’m sure others would differ, and that the last two would get more culturally significant touchstones, like remembers when The Goonies and Pavement were new for the Gen Y group. Or remembers Limp Bizkit for the Millennials. Or maybe the Gen Y and Millennial group should be joined together as one, I’m not sure.
The point is that there tend to be specific shared memories that each generation can point to as defining “their generation”, event if the labels they give those divides and the narratives they tell about them differ. Maybe it’s not fair, but it seems to be the where the broadest consensus lies.
.
Dr. Morpheus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I am SO fuckin’ stealing that!
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@DonkeyKong: You know what they say, “A slice off a cut loaf is never missed.”
Dr. Morpheus
@drew42:
Agree.
And to top it off, some of the best Saturday Night Live comedians wrote/acted in it.
WTF?!?!?!
Cain
All this talk of boomer reminds me of Left 4 Dead where when you’d hear cries of “Boomer!” the gut reaction is to take your M16 and shoot em and they’ll explode into a thousand bits. I wonder if the whole thing was a joke metaphor.
cain
Cain
@drew42:
1. The antagonist was an over-zealous EPA agent.
2. Biblical end of the world theme, presented in a Fun For The Whole Family PG environment.
3. Nuclear powered weapons save the day!
And I freaking loved that movie as a kid. Watched it about 50 times.
Dr. Morpheus
@Comrade Mary:
Sorry Mary, but the Baby Boom went from 1946 to 1964, so your a Boomer, just like I am (1963).
But I’m more cusp-y than you. ;-)
Comrade Mary
@Dr. Morpheus: Well, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. Coupland right here, so, so, yeah, just let me…
Douglas Coupland: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work!
(Yeah, life really is like this, :-)
Dr. Morpheus
I was about to go all demographic/sociologist on the subject and how Douglas Coupland doesn’t know shit, but I’m +3 on a Friday night and fuck it. It isn’t important.
Cheers!
Dr. Morpheus
@Comrade Mary:
I was about to go all demographic/sociologist on the subject and how Douglas Coupland doesn’t know shit, but I’m +3 on a Friday night and fuck it. It isn’t important.
Cheers!
Comrade Mary
@Dr. Morpheus: I’m +1 myself and trying to finish a project on a Friday night. I think I need to drink more.
Seriously, I respect the demographic argument. You can chart a nice little bulge on the birth numbers and say that you have a lump of human flesh who can be categorized as a proper cohort.
But subjectively, there’s something different about the last few years of that cohort, the same as there can be some real differences between kids in a large family who are born many years apart. Yes, you’re still family, but your memories, personal experiences, share of attention from the parents and cultural touchstones can be very different.
People born in the early 60s to mid 70s have a lot more in common, I think, than people born in the early 60s do with those born in the 40s and 50s. Part of it is because we’re just not time travellers. I didn’t experience the Red Scare of the 50s: I read about it. But I lived through and feared what seemed to be imminent nuclear war during the 80s when I was especially young and vulnerable, the same as my friends born 5-10 years after me.
And I keep bringing up Coupland because I think that writers and artists can hit on some truths that don’t always match up with sociological data. The feeling of missing out on the big cultural events of the 60s, of being cheated out of the sunny economy of earlier decades, that Coupland describes hit home for me.
That’s why I keep stubbornly arguing the point. I’m not trying to contradict the population data. I’m just saying that the ways in which many people within and across well-defined demographic cohorts do and don’t resemble each other can be complicated.
Also: the 1960s didn’t start in 1960, but in 1963. And I happen to have Philip Larkin right here …
gex
@liberty60: and all this makes pretty clear what happened – the civil rights movement. Big government helping people was just fine with middle-class Americans when it wasn’t thought of as helping black people or women. When some kinds of people knew their proper place, it was a-ok.
Black people, women, and gays do not want the 50’s back, no matter how “awesome” they were.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I have heard several date spans for various generation groupings and I fall under all of them. I want no part of the boomers.
@Comrade Mary:
That’s all there is to it? Wow, thanks! This is just like going to Confession.
I’m free!
slightly_peeved
deadrody
Holy cripes
I am in awe of that statement. Here, I will correct it for you – you would have to be BRAIN DEAD (which, admittedly, most of the readers and bloggers here are) to think the right controls the media. That every single media outlet with the exception of Fox News and AM talk radio leans to the left and panders to Obama and the Democrats is described as “Republicans controlling mass media” is just off the charts insane.
I’m not sure how anyone could read that without doing a spit take.
dww44
From one who is most definitely a boomer, or even a preboomer (if being born during WWII disqualifies my boomerism), I tend to agree with the poster that shared memories and events creates a generation more than the actual year of one’s birth. Reading these posts late evening/early morning has provided some genuine Robbie Burns moments, but in my defense I didn’t turn conservative in my dotage. Always a liberal, even more so now, cause now I am a fightin’ liberal. Takes a lot of time and effort and as a consequence I am labelled a “leftist socialist’ by the majority to the right of me, and the majority in these parts is very much to the right of me.
I have just one question; for the life of me, I can’t figure who/what “DU” is. I got all the other internet blogging references, but that one eludes me. Someone please enlighten me.
Chuck Butcher
Generational punching, cool stuff.
So this thread goes on and on and I think, “I remember being a kid and watching Civil Rights workers getting dug out of a fucking dike,” so we all had shit to deal with. People my parent’s age we getting their asses shot off in Europe and the Pacific. Some periods are more violent and weird than others but there is always plenty to deal with. Generational generalizations, gotta love it.
fraught
I’m a member of the Silent Generation (1925-1945) and I have nothing to add to this thread.
Chuck Butcher
Lead ad below the blog banner:
This is some pretty funny wishful thinking.
gwangung
Content analysis.
Now, you’ve made a statement. Ya’ll better support it. And don’t give me no shit about the politics of reporters; I’ll whack you back with the politics of media ownership and a ten thousand word commentary about measurement in the sciences.
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: I get one for Patty Murray too. Methinks they’re getting desperate. Hell let them waste cash on races that they have zero chance of winning. Can we encourage Steele to throw another exclusive catered party and go for a seven figure expense this time?
Claudia
@Mary
really they started in the 50s, if by ‘started’ you mean the seeds were all sprouting. Beats were sitting in coffeshops, a counter-culture was well under way if not yet much noticed by the button-downed set. Each generation of kids looks to the ones right before them to see what’s on offer, and perhaps regret being too young for a big event.
I liked JGabriel’s gen list but it was notable as much for what was left out as for what was included. Life is one of those “you had to be there” things.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@deadrooter:
Fix’t.
Now wipe yer spit up.
NCReggie
Well being 25, the 90’s were my childhood years and the general theme was Clinton=prosperity. Then my freshman year of highschool lead directly into Florida and hanging chads and of course Bush. The republicans did themselves no favors with Bush being president during the 2000’s. The run up to Iraq was sort of my political awakening; it just made no sense to pivot from Afghanistan to destroy Sadaam’s “WMD”s(bullshit that alot of my peers saw thru but some in my highschool were in hysterical 9/11 freakout mode so they swallowed the WMD line) The Iraq War did more to make alot of young people sympathetic to the Dems, after all they didn’t seem to enthusiastic about sending other young people to get their asses shot off for oil. But as for mainstream media? don’t fuck with that shit, we call google on bullshit in a hurry. mainly blogs and other online sources and of course comedy central. Gettin stoned as an undergrad watching Jon clown the ish outta republicans didn’t win em any cool points.
Texpunk
Maybe, my perspective comes from living in Houston for the past 20 years, but I think Obama’s approval rating difference from Gen X to Millennials has more to do with race issues than anything else. 20-somethings’ more general tolerance of homosexuality probably factors in a bit, too. I’m 44 but most of my friends are in their mid-twenties. The younger people that I know are a lot more likely to socialize or even date interracially, something that was still pretty rare/shocking when I was their age.
Even the Moderate Republican Bullsh*t: “Oh, I’m socially liberal…” ~ (I like to smoke weed) “I’m just fiscally conservative”~ (I’m worried my tax money might help black or brown folks poorer than me) is a message lost on them.
They don’t see themselves as part of just their own ethnicity as much.
Neil H
Fun fact: The 2010 mid-terms will be the first national election in which people who were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War will be eligible to vote.
Redshirt
Thanks everyone! Despite everything, this thread has picked me up on our chances in the future. Given that: Younger folks (under 30) seem to have their heads on correctly and are more immune to RNC agitprop, for good reasons, since they have grown up first hand with their lies.
Then, we have the demographic reality of ever larger percentages of minority population in America, such that in short order, evil honkies will be a minority compared to the whole.
Then we have old people and their stupid Hippy War ideas dying off, year by year.
So, maybe we can dig ourselves out of this hole. Maybe!
AxelFoley
@slightly_peeved:
That many on the left, especially at the GOS, don’t understand this still amazes me. I’m hardly a politcal expert (then again, most pundits don’t seem to be either), but Obama’s strategy is plain as day to me.
master c
Oh Texpunk, Houston is such a great place, it’s bad PR is part of it’s success. Think it’s freakier than Austin. We are all gentrified-like now that we live in Dallas suburbs. I like whomever brought in the geography to the discussion. That is as much a part of the puzzle as the generational shift. All the generations in Dallas suburbs are very non-Democrat, not quite Republicans either, mind you.
slightly_peeved
Many on the left, and at GOS, don’t understand that:
a) it’s not about them, it’s about the centre.
b) it’s not about now, it’s about November.
Some understand it and don’t like it which is differen.t
Also, it seems that the reaction against ‘Obama as Jedi Master’ has led to some people adopting the position of ‘Obama as Faulknerian Manchild’; that he never has any hidden agenda or practises the slightest amount of guile. I don’t think that position’s any more accurate.
latts
@gwangung:
Reporters are probably liberal on a personal level; they’re usually educated, well-traveled, accustomed to diversity, and most have encountered real violence instead of just the adrenaline-thrill movie version. But they also work for big, controlling corporations and respond to positive stimuli like higher ratings (conservatives are pretty pliable consumers of media & advertising) and negative ones like targeted criticism (conservatives are also historically more able to organize accusatory screamfests), making them bend over backwards to accommodate the right regardless of their own not-very-powerful leanings. CNN is utterly unwatchable nowadays while MSNBC is all over the map, and of course Faux has always been the wife-beater-shirt-and-Barcalounger channel.
I guess the bitter irony is that while modern reporters tend to be more personally liberal and almost completely subservient to power structures, the old-school, poorly-paid breed may have been more personally conservative but much more skeptical. I don’t want to idealize the older model too much, but the potential for good reporting was much higher with the latter version IMO.
Bender
Conservative media bias? You 15%-ers (who believe media is too conservative) can whine out of your bongholes as much as you want, but surely you realize that you’ll never get any traction with this Bizarro-world meme, when 85% think you’re nutty (dirty, smelly) Marxocrat hippies…
I mean, the Deep Thinkers here would say that because this week Matt Lauer led with Romney one day and Tim Kaine the next, that’s an even representation, right?
Lauer to Romney: Aren’t you “having a good time, taking shots at Obama” to sell a book and launch your candidacy? Hasn’t Obama done a lot of good things? Name the good things he’s done. If Obama wouldn’t have passed the stimulus, wouldn’t things be much worse? The Dow’s going up, after all. Haven’t you had your chance already?
Lauer to Kaine: Haven’t the Democrats been forced to go it alone on health care? Aren’t the GOP hypocrites because they used reconciliation in the Bush years on the budget? Is everything OK with Rahm Emanuel and Obama?
Which Republican talking points are these, Ball-Juicers? Cause I don’t see those anywhere in the manual!
Steeplejack
@gwangung:
You had to ask: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” A little late, I know, but I was occupied last night.
And my personal favorite, “Winter in America.” Also appropriate today. “The Constitution, a noble piece of paper . . .”
Steeplejack
Jeez, I just dropped into moderation on my previous comment, and I have no idea why. Maybe it’s the two Gil Scott-Heron songs. The Man is downin’ me!
Corner Stone
@Bender:
Your rebuttal is two interviews by one individual?
And are you saying 85% of respondents to a poll answered they think the media is too liberal?
b-psycho
This is late, but since the trope of “liberal media bias” has been brought up yet again, I will just say this & see if anyone interprets it correctly:
“liberal” is to the average American adult what “stranger” is to the average American 6-year-old, for completely opposite reasons.
licensed to kill time
Well, I missed this whole thread but I just have to say that this whole naming of generations thing has always struck me as just stupid. There are great differences in any generational cohort so to try to label an entire group is akin to accepting an astrological sign as somehow valid for your 1/12 of the population.
Now I will read the thread.
Shabbazz
I am a late Gen-Xer — born in 77 — and I remember the Reagan years well. I remember my home town in Appalachia going further and further into economic oblivion. I remember my dad, a 30 year employee at the steel mill, being out on strike and doing odd jobs to make ends meet. I remember him working the picket line to keep the pension that he was promised. Most of all, I remember the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
You can tell how well-off people were in the 80s by their love\hate for Reagan. Some folks made a SHIT LOAD of money — and paid no attention the Savings and Loan scandal, Iran Contras, secret South American wars, ignoring AIDS and the rise of the Christian Right nuttery. Those of us who were scraping to get by — not so much.
With the exception of Ahhhnuld, I have never voted Republican on a major ticket (local tickets are a different story). And, at this rate, it will be a looooooong time before I ever consider it.
Claudia
Re my previous mention of our “warmongering economy”:
From Joe Bageant’s recent column:
And there definitely seems to be a “generational thing” about grasping this worldview.
Todd Dugdale
The Republican Party studiously avoids any appeal to those under 30. Look at the focus of the McCain campaign. It was all about references to the late Sixties and early Seventies that are complete ciphers to those who didn’t live through those times. Examples: the Weathermen, Huey Newton, Che Guevara, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, etc.
I asked a 22-year-old if she thought Huey Newton was relevant to today’s political discussion. She thought I was talking about Huey Lewis (and the News), and had no idea who Huey Newton was.
Likewise, the image of Che Guevara is a generic icon to the young that has about as much political significance as the guy on the cover of Zig-Zag papers.
To many people in their late seventies and on, however, these people and names retain their significance, though I suspect many would prefer to forget those days and dismiss those battles as irrelevant to today. The GOP is really selling a return to the Fifties. It is a vision in which minorities “knew their place”, as did women, and one in which individuality was an unforgivable vice. Everyone agreed on a common set of values, because if you didn’t you were marked as a “weirdo” and ‘justifiably’ punished.
Trying to sell a return to such a paradigm to the young is a losing proposition.
The Republican Party today has nearly all of the elements that make up a cult, and they insulate themselves from the world at large. Like a cult, those “outside” are dismissed as evil, stupid, dangerous, and complete enigmas that can never be understood or negotiated with. This is the situation that losing parties in a cultural war naturally devolve into. And it is the Left’s strong advantage; the Right always overplays its hand because they have no idea how they are viewed by those “outside”.
We have about ten more months for the Right to reveal its true nature on a daily basis, which they will get more and more bolder about doing since they assume consensus. It will not be pretty and it will alienate and ‘immunise’ the young permanently from the Right’s dogma.
Redshirt
I like that idea: The RNC as a cult. Because you’re right – they have all the hallmarks. And it is, by far, the most dangerous cult in the world – right now it holds the world hostage to growing climate instabilities, energy instabilities, and political instabilities. They really are trying to bring about the End of the World, as writ in the Good Book.
Maxcat07
Shit, I’m 59 and totally for Obama…those polls are garbage.
Tim P.
I know this is late, but I think this post really gets at something. I’m 24. The only reason I even own a TV is for live sports. If I want to watch a show, I’ll download it and watch it all at once or in big blocks. I read about 20 blogs daily; I follow links back to primary sources but don’t have the time to read every NYT or McClatchy or BBC story. I do watch the Daily Show and Colbert when I remember. I’m just one dude, but a lot of my friends seem to have similar habits. I definitely read more about TV news (meta stuff) than I spend time watching it.
ego
I know I’m a day or more late, which basically sums up part of being a genXr. Born in 1960, I became aware of my surroundings in the ’70s when everything with promise kind of seemed to turn to shit. (Take the band Journey, for example, who traded artistic integrity and kick ass rock and roll for ‘commercial success’.) Did a lot of drugs. Voted in 1980 when nuclear annihilation was right around the corner and Reagan, whose message was basically “Hey, greed is good, fuck everyone else, if you can get yours, you deserve it. It doesn’t matter how you got it” all wrapped up in “America’s back, standing tall” phony patriotism bullshit, got in. Everyone loved it. Opted not to do military service because I didn’t want to bayonet any Nicaraguan peasants. Did a lot of drugs until my friends started dying or going to prison. Wasn’t surprised by any of it. (Kind of like in the film ‘Rules of Attraction’ when the drunk girl was raped and then puked on at a frat party and her response was, “I always knew my first time would be like this.”). Watched my wages stagnate in the 90’s as the corporate boa constrictor strengthened it’s stranglehold on the country and my non dead or incarcerated friends went to N.A. or A.A. or became born again Christians or all three, and the President got his cock sucked in the Oval Office by a dumpy little fat chick who became a tabloid hero and everyone loved it. “What a crock of shit” I said and wasn’t surprised by any of it.Then came 2000 when the world didn’t end like it was supposed to and the corporate plunder of just about every thing was organized directly from the White House, and the Arab world made it very clear they fucking hate us, and our response was to attack and occupy some uninvolved country and blow the shit out of everything they had and turn it into a ruined smoking heap. Which brings us to now, when we have the first black President in our history and all a substantial portion of my fellow genXrs can do is to lamely try to disguise their racism by calling him a socialist, as if that would be such a bad thing. Once again, nuclear annihilation is right around the corner and I’m not surprised by any of it. What does surprise me though, is that my 20somthing children are remarkably upbeat. Who would have thought?
Mwangangi
@ego: love it (your comment)