Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Young People and the News
Some parts of this article are a bit disheartening, maybe even scary...
At TownHall.com, Tony Blankley discusses the news awareness of today's young people:
"Projecting all these trends and habits out into the near future -- it is not a very pretty picture. The politicians of tomorrow will be made up of well-informed former Teenage Republicans and well informed whatever their liberal counterparts are called struggling to make the great arguments of democracy to a general public that will make today's general electorate look like a nation of Oliver Wendell Holmeses.
A broadly ignorant public degrades a citizenry into a mob, and induces politicians to descend to demagogy. A fool and his vote are soon parted.
It would seem that my generation (the boomers) is the first since the rise of mass literacy to fail to pass on to our children the zest for news reading as a requisite for good citizenship.
Perhaps it is not the boomers parenting habits that are to blame. Perhaps it is induced by the good times that we have enjoyed as a nation these several decades. Perhaps it will take brutal and sustained hard times to get the news attention of our Tivoing, iPoding young urban professionals. Harrumph!"