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EDITORIAL: Shifting foundations and war time disillusionment prompt dim hopes of young people in politics. See Kansan.com for more opinions and Free for All comments
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007WWW.KANSAN.COM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
PAGE 7A
》 OUR VIEW
Youth find little hope in politics
Trouble is brewing in our nation's capital — so goes the storyline of our national press corps, anyway.
The current debate over the pending war spending bill, the symbolic battleground for PresidentBush and his Congressional opponents, is being billed in the
national media as a "showdown" of titanic proportions, a "fierce clash" between opposing ideologies that will determine who holds sway in post-midterm Washington. In short, it's a legislative skirmish that will alter our war policy for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately for those engaged in an actual, tangible clash overseas, this debate is a showdown in name only, a nominal and semantic fight over who can make the best case to the voters in 2008. The Democrats, their bill already laden with the kind of earmarked pork they promised to purge from Congress, see the installation of benchmarks and timetables as the best way to become the party that supports soldiers the most. President Bush, apparently psychologically incapable to accept any kind of compromise, test he be seen as conceding, promises to veto any bill that includes those benchmarks. This "debate" is nothing more than an electoral chicken run, with each side hoping the other bails first.
Young people are weary of the war, and not simply because we grew up in what has been termed a 'holiday from history.' We are depressed instead by the shifting foundations, absence of feasible ideas and prospects for the future.
little to nothing to the war effort, keeping us from emotional investment beyond the ideological. New tactics are rolled out every few months by war planners in an effort to stem the tide of violence, a sort of Noke Coke way of policymaking that is so far failing. Futile
Meanwhile, the actual war drags on and on, mostly out of sight and mind for American voters, a product of the almost total absence of shared sacrifice. Most of us are asked to give
strategies become little more than pop culture buzzwords for myopic planning, while touring politicians praise the "openness" of street markets as they are protected by scores of accompanying soldiers.
As we have disturbingly seen so many times before, what was supposed to be political debate has instead devolved into political theater, a scripted competition between two sets of performers. Each side jockeys for linguistic position, speaking in lofty platitudes about the "signs of progress" and "failure of leadership", while each clamors to be seen, in carefully refined voter research, as the party with the most support for troops.
Young people are weary of the war, and not simply because we grew up in what has been termed a "holiday from history." We are depressed instead by the shifting foundations, absence of feasible ideas and prospects for the future. While our elected leaders bloviate, the hopes of young citizens grow dimmer and dimmer.
— McKay Stangler for the editorial board
COMMENTARY
MTV doesn't follow its own original motto
Recently I saw a commercial for some multicolored phone as anorexic looking as its intended purchaser, and in this commercial I heard a song entitled "Love Today" by Mika. Hearing this song reminded me of when, a few months back, some friends of mine had heard this song on a commercial on MTV promoting either the Real World, Road Rules or one of the competition programs between the two. When I realized it was the same song I'd heard months before on MTV, I thought "Man, those people at MTV sure know their music." Then I realized that was the most ridiculous thought I have had in my entire life. Of course MTV should know their music. My surprise made me realize how long it had been since I completely wrote them off as a waste of time.
When MTV debuted in 1981 it was amazing. It rode on the new
technology of cable and only played music, kept a generation up with the pulse of the industry. It seemed to maintain the integrity of this pursuit for years afterwards.
just playing music, as its name seems to suggest. In the late 1980s it created new programs which, although not entirely music, did at least relate. Shows like "Yo MTV Raps!" deviated from the straight-up music video approach, but at least focused on music. Even into the early 1990s, shows like "Beavis and Butthead" showed the two talking about music videos.
BY ZACH WHITE
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
Then one event occurred that changed the purpose of the channel forever. "The Real World," about seven people who know little to
nothing about music "picked to live in a house to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real," first aired in 1992. For the past 16 years, MTV
has had little more than "unscripted" footage of drunk people yelling at each other in a house, or an RV, filled out with occasional asinine and unnecessarily provocative dating shows. Oh, and "jackass."
To be fair they have heard the cries of the disappointed masses over the sweet melody of cheap production costs and ever increasing ad revenue from everyone wanting to cash in on that hip teen demographic. Even as far back as 1985, they debuted VH1 to take some of the music playing burden, and then again in 1996 with MTV2. But just like their predecessor, these stations have left their intended paths and become a collection of cultural retrospectives, and MTV reruns and cast-offs respectively.
I understand that it's nothing new to criticize MTV for apparently forgetting what the first letter of their name stands for. It's not unlike something the comedian Todd Barry said of roasting Chevy Chase. That it's "not so much like shooting fish in a barrel, as looking at fish in a barrel, or being somewhere near a barrel." It's just that it's disheartening to see the tiniest glimmer of MTV's past glory and purpose, but only as a means of promoting the crap that corrupted it.
White is a River City, Iowa sophomore in journalism and Japanese.
》 LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Students should be provided with free forums of expression to prevent isolation
I think back to Columbine almost eight years ago. I remember the shock that gripped me immediately afterwards. I literally had no idea how such a thing could happen outside of the "Well the guy was just crazy" stock response. The vicious shooting occurred in the spring in Littleton, Colo., a quiet middle-class suburban town. Of all places, why did it happen there? Fast-forward to the spring of 2007, and here we are again asking the same question after the Virginia Tech shootings.
I have noticed one recurring theme with these school shootings. In an Associated Press article about the Virginia Tech shooter what most stood out to me was that he was described as a "loner." This is the same way the Columbine
shooters were described in 1999. Coincidence? I think not.
It's isolation that is the driving force behind school shootings. In this specific case, like Columbine, the specific culprit was again suburbia.
According to the AP article the shooter grew up in suburbia. This repressive environment is the one I was subjected to for almost fifteen years. This was the place where anything thoughtful or controversial often received a "you can't talk about that here" or "moving on" from both students and teachers.
What both the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres illustrate is the problem of silencing people's voices either through insistence that what they have to say doesn't matter, or by compliance without
an opportunity to get ideas out in the form of a public forum. My high school was considered one of the best in the country, and the school only sanctioned a literary magazine that came out once a year and a newspaper that was not receptive to controversial issues. Likewise, this alienated many people. The Virginia Tech shooter too, grew up in suburbia and became a creative writer, probably because he felt he had no voice at school.
The persistent message of "We really don't care who you are," was one that dominated my high school and angered others. Perhaps this is what the shooter was thinking when he opened fire on that crowded classroom. Whatever the case, he no longer viewed these people as people, which justified this behavior to him. No pattern to the killing emerged following the shooting, though according to a note he left he cited "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" as people he rallied against.
In conclusion, what I take from the Virginia Tech shootings is the story of a 23-year-old man fighting for an identity in an environment that repeatedly told him his identity doesn't matter. What we can learn from this is that if we do not provide students with a public forum to stretch their creative wills they will turn to violence expressing all of their pain in greater and greater tragedies.
Nick Mangiaracina Lenexa junior
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Natalie Johnson, Alison Kieler, Tada Riggins and McKay
Stangler