Right off the bat, I am not an American Conservative.
American Conservatives are too meddlesome and moralistic. They make me sick. They spout individualism and autonomy and republicanism but they are always in your face with their marching orders. They are hypocrites because while they proclaim a symbolic sort of laissez faire attitude that suits their cosmetic political needs, yet they are just as intrusive and meddlesome as your garden variety American liberal who is less subtle about their ambitious progrom of destruction of your Constitutional rights.
American Liberals are the flip-side of the American Conservatives because they have their own brand of personal morality which appears as immorality to many, but it is still a standard of behavior and set of societal expectations your’re expected to abide by lest you be shunned or criminalized.
What makes the typical liberal hypocritical is essentially what makes the conservative the same…the fact they rail against that which they in fact, ARE.
That said, I enjoy reading Gawker on many levels. I really enjoy its snarky vibe. Those biting observations. I enjoy its youthful abandon, and simultaneously, I enjoy the cathartic apoplexy I experience when I read its under-aged, under-experienced, naive commenter’s weak attempts at justifying their immature grasp on life. Young people simply do not seem to appreciate or comprehend the fact that “older” people were once young as well. The nature of the generational procession does not change. The details might, but the youthful vigor and skepticism and cliquishness and suspicion of the “older” never changes. I went through it. Those who are open-minded realize just how narrow-minded they were, or are.
One thing I’ve noted after reading recent Gawker and Reddit posts, especially in the period following Barack Obama’s November victory, is the youthful celebration of Obama’s “hip” attitude. While most Obamazens certainly realize he is not the penultimate hip guy, they are convinced he “speaks” their language and they exaggerate this minute adjacency to their generation as something to laud and boast of. Yet, anyone can see that Obama is about as hip as your great-grandmother’s broken one. The dude wears daddy-style, high-waist jeans, he wears a dorky bicycle helmet, he bowls like the bitch you want to bone later after you give her a joint. He’s a pile of “Urkelized” 4-BMI’d bones that you would laugh at on the subway.
A man’s hip factor is exponentially reduced when his perceived hipness falls flagrantly below expectations. That’s Obama. So the youthful liberals praise Obama’s hipness because they are apparently desperate to be represented in government, and because as a generation, they are weak and self-indulgent, and lack a cultural sense of stoicism. So they latch on to the first thing they see that comes close to their self-professed generational image.
Who needs a hip President? Presidents should be dignified, they should be stoic, they should be socially out of touch so as to govern more efficiently and fairly. We want our President to be unaffected and neutral and mature. Who cares if he dresses right or whether he knows each and every cultural icon and marker? In fact, I would argue that Presidents should be as socially out of touch as possible because the more they connect with culture’s intricacies, the less “democratic” they will be. Children surely do not want “hip” parents. That would be embarrassing and it’s an affront to our evolutionary nature. Our President is our national “father.” We want him to run the country, not be a goof.
This is the United States of America, it is not high school. Our President must be a robot because equality is the key concept. Equality, not preferences.
Save for the “I’m not a conservative or a liberal” rant, much of what you write in this post is spot on.
Say what you will, but one RWR-Ronald Wilson Reagan, was exactly what you suggest.
Stoic, not all that hip. But more like a pretty cool granddad. But one who did not over do it with the crying and all that psychobabble.
And again, say what you will about GWB-George W. Bush, but he came closer than the last two Democrat presidents.
Which leads to how they win the youts in the first place.
On sheer emotion and being “cool” or “hip”.
I am with you.
I want a president that lays out their agenda and follows through with it. No BS like we get from this Dear Leader dude.
I mean, I guess the youts will think it is cool when he shreds the constitution and the 2nd amendment. But wait til he does something that they do not like.
What today’s youts need is simple.
They need adult supervision. Not one of their own holding down the levers of power.
You’re more generous than I could ever be. Can’t stand those sites. Swore off hip a long time ago. I wait until things go out of style.
Obama is only ‘hip’ in progressives’ eyes because he’s black, of course.
America will never get beyond the race thing, because even now, it still matters…
To people on all sides of the political divides…
They oughta choose a black cardinal in order to attract young people back into the vatican fold. I mourn for my generation.
It’d be better if he performed “The Vatican Rap” or some such nonsense with a bunch of 10-year-old male Zimbabwean bony starvation cases.
Karl Rove knew exactly what it was doing when he ran a bunch of lousy campaigns and allowed Obama to win two terms. Obama stands for everything and nothing at the same time. He is coporate/MIC/Z-lobby slave and has yet to make a decision of his own, yet people are convinced he is a radical black nationalist/marxist and the right will be able to attribute all the problems that have or will occur over his eight year to term to marxism and pick up the pieces.
Haha, when all is said and done, when the sum of his beliefs, strengths, ideological hesitations, weakness, hypocrisies, surrenders, defeats, victories, triumphs, proclamations and capitulations is tossed into a computer and blended and interpreted, the final answer to Barack Obama will always be a big fat ZERO.