Do remember your first day of school when your mother dropped you off with an anxious smile and gently pushed you into the classroom with a nervous hopeful chuckle?As she watched you weave your unsteady way into the classroom she said a silent prayer over her child.Her hopes transparent later in life, that her child would do well in school and as a result have the job of his dreams in the future.This beautiful dream our parents painted for us is still a driving force behind our many successes. As this generation of dreamers nears the end of the education rainbow however, dressed in our college cap and gown, with our eager fingers already outstretched for our pot of gold, we get a rude awakening.
Weighed down with debt from all the tolls on the high road of education we get to the finish line and at last a prize! A piece of paper that says, “congratulations YOU have learned something!” The paper assures you that you are one in a million conveniently forgetting to tell you that as the world’s population is now in the 7billions; there are a lot more of you special individuals than previously imagined.Fast forward through graduation, and key note speakers telling us how we are the future.Our starkly unrecognizable futures as Starbucks baristas, home depot cashiers and a myriad of other positions slap us in the face.As we peddle our aspirations scoop by scoop at the local ice cream parlor gone are our dreams of shimmying up the ivory tower. Instead we find ourselves in a nightmare.Our waking terror sees us chasing our collective dream only to realize only a scant few will ever catch it.
Pulse racing, adrenaline surging, I ready myself as a recent college graduate to join the hot pursuit.Fleeting dreams of a cushy office job, a nice car and the icing on my ephemeral cake a life like touched up well-coifed magazine cover to share it all with. As my already weary feet begin to again pound the pavement, I stop.Like waking up out of a lucid dream that felt so real I look around my reality in horror. As we chuckled at childhood dreams of rock stardom and fame little did we realize the promises of education were just as fleeting. My Bmer, Benz, or Bentley is no where in sight and as I look around the dusty well worn road I am reminded of my first day of school; I still walk uncertainly into the world now haunted by the loving prayer spoken over me by a hopeful mother.
When forming your opinion on something of importance, a person usually consults a trustworthy friend or mentor.You wouldn’t just let any unqualified stranger with unknown or questionable motives into your life to inform your views!But wait! everyone does exactly that. We wake up, turn on the morning news and prepare to be informed about the world around us.However does anyone ever question who it is informing us about our world and what their motives are?Who are the people behind the smiling anchormen, women and news cameras? What right or qualifications do they have to be informing us? More importantly does letting these strangers into our homes and giving them carte blanche have an untoward effects on our society?
To my mind the role of the news media is as an unofficial branch of government, one ran by the people; encouraging a transparency in politics, business and in matters of the law. Yet turning on the local news we see story after story of individual tragedy and I wonder, to what purpose? How do the countless “news” stories which leech on human emotion achieve these goals? Rather than take up the mantle as guardians of the people the media has adopted the garish role of vulture.We see recurring examples of this scavenging of humanity whenever disaster strikes; reporters and news choppers circle their hapless carrion taking their pound of flesh to provide us gruesome entertainment.With this distorted purpose, news outlets flood their viewers with heart wrenching morbidly entertaining reality television.
So what could the harm in that be you ask. I will simply be on my guard about what I am told! I am after all a sensible person. Well sensible you might be however, what if this alternate reality peddled by newsmongers begins to take on a life of it’s own?Is it fathomable that sensationalizing crime has the unwanted side effect of enticing a fame starved public towards infamy? In a culture where tweeters, bloggers, and facebookers everywhere yearn for recognition and an ever increasing list of friends, and followers, are sicker minds attracted to the infamy that clings to perpetrators of violent crimes? Maybe we as sensible people can claim that it is harmless banter and we do occasionally get a kernel of useful information; but what of the unstable minds with whom scenes of bloody and gore resonate with thoughts of fame and glory?
In the wake of the recent shooting of congresswoman Giffords scanning all the headlines and listening to all the sounds bites, a realization hit me. Not only did I now know the name of the suspected shooter but in my mind had even began to caricature his character in and effort to understand the crime.I was joined by the news media and Bloggers alike touting knowledge of the young man’s mental instability.Within hours of the crime Jared Lee Loughner was one of the most infamous men in the United States.
Though I cannot claim to be an authority on human psychology, I can however comment anecdotally on the very human need for attention that we all feel. I would put forward a hypothesis as to the media’s effect on certain violent offenders: the media attention on domestic terrorists succor the very beast it reviles on the airwaves; the consideration and sometimes adoration that these unstable individuals attract from national media coverage becomes a draw towards heinous crime.If so I would posit that the news media becomes complicit in the rise of these instances of brutal aggression.
Despite my stringent tone in my critique of the news media I do not mean that irresponsible reporting practices are at fault for all instances of violence.Nor even that they are solely responsible for any acts of violence.In fact there are many outlets of the news media that hold strictly to journalistic ethics as well as provide us with useful and entertaining information. What I mean to point out is the complicity of irresponsible unethical reporting in exacerbating a condition that already existed. In analogy the news media’s encouragement would be akin to ONE of the straws that contributed to breaking the camels back. To conclude, if we know or even suspect that giving violent offenders national media attention could be excitatory to the rate of such crimes isn’t it at the very least wrong in principle to continue such reporting practices?
As I sit at my computer screen with all the most essential tools of youth spread out before me, facebook, twitter etc., I think about what to say that will evoke a response from my adoring audience; what words of wisdom will earn me the coveted smiley face or even dare I hope, an lol! We can immediately dispense with any topics relating to current events, the state of our economy, or an upcoming election! If a post does not contain a video of someone falling from a table or a stool in slow motion, or maybe a little misogynist humor to get the juices flowing I’m not interested. We all have that one friend with an overactive political voice and an “opinion” on the way the country is and should be run and have seen his facebook page for the ghost town and cautionary tale it is.Not a “like it” to his/her name.However on the other end of the social network spectrum are the E-butterflies who post a minute by minute report of their daily lives and we sit raptly by as we “follow” them scratch every itch. These butterflies are the people we are proud to call our friends.
I pose the question: is my experience simply anecdotal? Is it simply my social circle and those in our proximity that tend to shy away from substantive discussion and intellectual exchange?Or am I just looking for political discussions on the wrong medium, facebook and twitter?I would put forward a hypothesis that this online trend toward hollow pursuits is not simply anecdotal but a telling narrative of an uninterested generation.
Before I get chased out of “youngstown”, USA for calling the youth of today air heads let me clarify.I don’t mean to say that young people in this day and age do not have the capacity to contribute to substantive issues; I am simply pointing out they don’t care to exert themselves on that score.Today I will explore two possible explanations that, in my humble opinion, might be at the root of this phenomenon.
The first is that, as opposed to the youth of yesteryear, the media has had an inordinate influence on the newer generations; these outlets are namely: television, music, radio and the Internet.From an early age we learned from colorful characters how to count and say our abc’s.Then in adolescent years learned how life is from Television shows, movies and catchy tunes that helped us through our awkward years. These media outlets seem to mirror humanity for us all to emulate painting a caricatured picture of youth.The messages passed along by these proliferators of cultural stereotypes show young people a picture of the modern young man and woman. Aspiring to make beaucoup bucks during the day working for a corporation then partying it up chasing women/men and having the time of their lives at night.These stars with whom youth resonate most, reality stars, rock stars and actors increasingly portray this one dimensional wealthy carefree socialite as the American dream.The dreams of our current generation can best be typified by current flavor of the month reality series Jersey Shore; keeping up with the dramatic lives of spoiled oversexed young adults whose biggest concern are who is getting is whose pants. With this fun house mirror image of youth is it any wonder that pictures of parties, fashion, fun times and funnier pictures dominate any substantive issues?
Now that I have firmly anchored my credibility by attacking one of our most beloved institutions, the media, let me press on to attack our much beloved rules of governance. The second issue that lends to youthful silence on matters of import, is the double talk built into our system of governance.On the one hand young people are the lifeblood of our nation, the ones who populate our armed services and drive out economy; and on the other they should defer to the wisdom of age. An 18 year old man or woman can sign up for the military to die for what they believe in however they can’t take a sip of alcohol or run for office. Current conventional wisdom even describes the youth vote as almost an afterthought. So much so that politicians can breathe a sigh of relief on the campaign trail when it comes to matters important to youth! No one will hound them on the increasing rates of college tuition, usurious student loan and credit card programs, or health care for students. Furthermore once elected they don’t have to answer for the decisions they make on our account. It’s little wonder that youth could care less about who is in office seeing as neither democrat’s nor republican’s care to represent their best interests.Campaign managers sometimes sit in their headquarters scratching their heads wondering why these kids don’t vote! This might be a novel idea, but seeing as how young people’s lives affected by the role of government mightn’t they receive some measure of representation in said system.Spoken plainly, if we have 18 and 20 year olds dying in war we should have 18 and 20 year old represented in some facet of the congress that made that decision to send them to fight for their country.
With all that being said however and the media’s role as the pied piper of Hamlin revealed, can young people awaken from their slumber?Can we as a youth culture emerge from the dark and dingy strobe lit nightclubs find our voices and take our rightful places in the light of day? More importantly do we want to? To end on a positive note, I have seen the positive impact young people can have on their communities and the truly insightful ideas that can be generated by a room full of idealistic college students. My hope is that the individual care and insightfulness I know young people possess in spades becomes more than an afterthought and instead flowers into one of the cornerstones of the youth culture of tomorrow.
As reports have flooded in about the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Gifford I, and many others no doubt, stand surprised. How and why could such a thing happen in this day and age? So close to home in a local Arizona Supermarket the story seems surreal. After this initial shock to our collective consciousness in a search for clarity, a sense of disquiet has settled on our troubled minds. The shocking and brutal nature of this crime seems to stymie any thought of answering the whys of this tragedy.However if the situation is reframed and rather than approaching it as the modern day tragedy it was, the shooting spree can be approached as another symptom of America’s stunted political dialogue.As hard and distasteful as it may be, taking a step back from the tears of the many mourning families and a situation raw with human emotion, will allow us to look in askance at the American socio-political geography in search of answers in hopes that we can prevent similar tragedies in the future.Looked at simply, the shooting of Rep. Gifford and her retinue was a visceral tragedy fueled by the sick mind of a troubled youth.However when pieced together as part of much larger pattern the simple crime becomes an alarming shout in the growing chorus of politically motivated violence.
As with all large heterogeneous societies the United States has always had within it a voiceless and seemingly disenfranchised population; these populations occasionally coalescing into powerful countercultures to show their disaffection with the status quo.Beginning with the civil war and the Yankees and Torries this culture of civil unrest was sealed into the amber of American politics.Both positive and negative instances have arisen in the interim of our country's history with notable movements such as the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, the women’s suffrage movements, labor unionization and more recently the debate on abortion and equal rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community.Throughout the history of these United States an undertone of political violence has played some part in the creation of America, the good and the bad.
In our recent past, beginning just before the turn of the century, a new political actor with a grizzly voice began taking to the scene; politically motivated, violent individual action has begun rising to a fever pitch. Where once the actions of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were aberrations in an otherwise safe, albeit contentious, political landscape the canvas is now overpopulated with many such copycats.Beginning with not so distant memories of the Columbine school shooting, history is violently punctuated by the actions the Fort Hood Shooter and now more recently the shooting of Representative Gifford, our recent memories are overpopulated with instances of politically motivated violence.
This disturbing trend toward a violent political counterculture begs the question; are these visceral reactions a result of a fundamental flaw in our political system and simply the chickens coming home to roost? Has the noise of the political maneuverings and posturing of politicians and political parties drowned out the voice of we the people? Let it be stated frankly that posing these questions and any hypothesizing does not excuse nor in anyway intend to condone the actions of these violent individuals.The purpose is instead, to understand if we as a nation have created a climate that fosters these home grown ideological terrorists; and how, if at all, we can start on a path of self-healing.Our thoughts go out to the families who have felt the heart wrenching reverberations of this political violence and more immediately to the health and well being of Representative Gifford.Out ofthe smoke and these still blazing ashes of tragedy drifts a hopeful light that we as a society can rise above tragedy and learn from our hard won lessons a more peaceful path for posterity.
