winning the vote

For me, reading Cnn.com and Perez Hilton are one in the same. As much as I hate to admit it, the scandal and juicy gossip of politics is what hooks me, and then I look into the issues at point and how they affect me. I don’t know if others feel the same way about this, but what I do know is that the majority of my friends couldn’t care less and probably couldn’t even name the speaker of the house, which to me is more embarrassing then my confession above.  Yet, they don’t seem to care or have a problem with being uninformed and clueless to what is going on around them. In our world today how is this possible, and even more troubling, why does no one care?

            David Foster Wallace, poses this question in Up,Simba and it got me thinking about all of my friends and how they represent the American youth. I came to the conclusion that there are two reasons why they avoid politics like the plague. One reason is what we touched on today in class, that it requires almost no brain power to accept parents thoughts and ideas and therefore, taking the easy way out, American Youth just does whatever mom and dad decide. The other reason for my friend’s lack of involvement in politics is that they are intimidated. It has nothing to do with being busy, and everything to do with being lazy. Reading the paper or watching the news takes time and concentration away from video games and socializing which is something a teenager does not want to give up.   So, they stay uninformed and intimidated by politics.

            Knowing the difficulty of breaking into today’s youth DFW tries to the best of his abilities to become an insider. The Rolling Stone is the perfect vehicle for this mission. Under the guise of an informative article about McCain, his actual motive is persuasion. In his article he uses a casual no BS tone. By doing this he makes the reader feel as if he is not a pencil but just a knowledgeable buddy helping you out and giving you the truth behind messy politics. Similarly to what he says about McCain being both a master rhetorician while using the truth as well to win over the population DFW wants youth to vote he hides it behind the truth about McCain. This I found very interesting.