I can’t help but think that the 16-year old Doc Hastings fan is going to end up writing a piece in her school newspaper about her online crash-course into a middle-level snarky liberal political blog.

I was wondering what her follow-up to this mild debacle would be. I guess this is it.

Bemusing as this may be:

OMG!! Y R U PPL LIKE MAKEING FUN OF TEH YOUNG CONSERVATIEVS MORE MUSLAMO_FASCISTISM FROM THE FAR LEFT I GUESS?!?! WHY DON”T U PPL GO AND FIGHT WITH UR BROTHERHOOD AL QA’AE’DA?!?!?!?! OMG!! FROWNY FACE!!!!!
extremebushsupportdude88

Or… I was picking on Doc. I think she is exceptional.… Except I’m struggling to figure out where the original post “picks on Doc”.

I already went through what makes up the political life of a typical student body. Come to think of it, I can think of a couple other ignoble examples. Middle School brought the Student’s battle to suck on pacificers. (It warranted no news coverage.) High school brought with it a strangely pointless fight over a slightly strengthened enforcement to get the kids’ pants somewhat higher up on their waists. This, apparently, warrented local tv news coverage. It was embarrassing viewing watching a selection of student’s sound off on their right to drop their trousers, replete with footage taken at a curious angle that spotlighted just how big these pants are of smirking teenagers — my thought being “Just Pull your goddamned pants up.” As these things go, there was no discernable change in students’ dressing fashion within a couple weeks and for the duration of my high school career, and the slightly strengthened enforcement against falling pants faded away. But something odd happened with the video footage. A few months later, a sad death of a fellow student occured (shot at a party) — and the station recycled the footage of the baggy trousers with the grinning teenagers. The effect was jarring.

I blinked a lot, and forced myself to trudge through the absurdity and smallness of this self-contained world that evaporates within four years.

Which, to be sure, was the mindset I had when I tossed up a website on geocities. But today I ponder this: The past few years have certainly seen a marked increase in youth adoption of internet communication tools; this has been the case since the onset of the web, and will probably be true for many years to come. We can assume that IM, blogs, Livejournal, MySpace, Friendster and the like are all helping support local relationships among kids, but to what extent are they allowing them to escape their hometown? When teenagers feel trapped, oppressed, and ultimately fatalistic, to what extent do they now turn to a kindred spirit somewhere far away? My guess is that today’s youth have even more solidarity than they have in the past, but it is certainly a topic that needs further exploration.. Good, for the most part… though in my case… my site was my site was designed to be random, a little anonymous, and a bit puzzling. I suppose in the earliest moments of that website, my biggest concession to something concrete about myself was a series of travel stories about a trip to Russia my parents and I had gone on. (And I gratuitously tossed out the place “Kargasok”, as a weird message in a bottle to the couple from Kargasok who veered us into relatively remote Siberia.) But had someone picked it up and trashed me, the only way I would be able to properly respond would be through some weird dadaist murmurings.

Livejournals are a different creature, and by design are… well… diary-like. Write one entry mumbling on a politician, and a section of the politically-active blogosphere will be able to pick up on it… and pounce on it. And I’m not sure a 16 year old shouldn’t be picked apart, at least with regards to any politics they may throw up. It’s… politics… (Actually, I believe one reason this 16 year old’s blog was “picked up” by a mid-level liberal blog was because of the scarcity of blog entries on Congressman Doc Hastings. This seems to be the end all and be all of blogging on Doc Hastings, and in guesting “Jesus’s General” — he wanted to “do” something — anything on DOC HASTINGS.

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*Today I hear calls for a more universal college enrollment — which strikes me as an excuse to bump some things to college that should be covered in high school, a disturbing-enough trend that has our society prolonging adolescence, and a depressing doubling requirements to join the job market in proper fashion… what, with the out-sourcing of jobs creeping faster and faster up the pay-chain. If you toss in the call for universal pre-school, I’m not sure we’re heading in the right direction.
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I once saw in the comments of politics1.com some comments from a high school student who was posting away on his lunch break… somewhat effusive Democratic Party cheerleading. Some other commenters came in, saying “You’ve gotta be the weirdest high school student I’ve ever met”, and “Shouldn’t you be more interested in high school dances?” The student defended himself somewhat — saying that he was with his friend at the time. I didn’t really understand the derisiveness toward the political geek. Civics mindedness… better sooner than later. Should they not heed some of Mr. Weatherbee’s commentary?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Doc Hastings and the 4th Congressional District of Wash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.