And now Page Two
I never understand the Oregonian’s website. Granted, it is in the newspaper’s perogative to not include all material found in its print edition, and further my problem may be that the editorial I’m trying to find may be syndicated and thus not owned by the Oregonian. It still seems a littls scatter-shot. I remember the first paragraph referring to Phil Knight and Nike, state references to various Oregon based corporations, so I do not know.
The editorial in question, from yesterday’s Oregonian, wanted to end the Congressional Page Program. The argument had me in stictches was something to the effect of — why expose these 16 year olds to the harsh reality of how Congress really works, far from the Civics textbook look at “How a Bill Becomes a Law”, and destroy their innocence?
It would be more effective if I could quote it there, but I’ll just have to suffice on this paraphrase from memory. This is a joke. For one thing, these 16 year olds are two years from being of voting age, and giving the fact that they chose to be on Congressional staff are actually going to vote. Better not to have a polly-anna view of the electoral process.(*)
I was more jaded and cynical at electoral politics at the age of sixteen than I am now. I don’t know about others, though I suppose they take their cues from late night monolouges and morning dj inanities. I vary in my mind as to who I was as an adolescent — maybe incredibly normal; maybe just a bit weird. Nonetheless, I always wanted to have the question asked in a high school assignment “How Does A Bill Become a Law” because I wanted to provide an obnoxiously cynical and jaded answer. (One which, incidentally, would if answered honestly today would be far worse today than a decade ago.)
So I don’t know what that editorial writer was talking about. Maybe there’s a reason the Youth don’t take seriously politics — and maybe this “Sheltering” is a pointless exercise. Or maybe this writer was just a buffoon.