CSotD: Feeding (on) our bad habits

Mike Peterson Published: July 27, 2010 1 minute 2 comments

Nonseq

I've been following the story of the Ekert in Non Sequitur since it began at the tail end of June, but, since Wiley Miller tends to develop his continuing stories at a leisurely (some might say "thoughtful") pace, I didn't know quite when I was going to come across the right episode to post.

However, on the trip which caused those recent "classics" postings, I picked up a copy of Charlie Pierce's wonderfully insightful and entertaining book, "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" at the bookstore in Denver International Airport, and it is different from, yet of a piece, with Wiley's Ekert storyline.

Both, in turn, are philosophically connected to a conversation I had in Denver, where I was participating in workshops for young (fourth through eighth grade) journalists. Granted, in a market that size, seeing 80-some bright, enthusiastic youngsters with inquiring minds is not statistically significant, the conversation over dinner one night turned to the disconnect between the young people we know and the young people we see in the media.

Specifically, we all noted that we've run into boatloads of young people who are in, or headed for, the Peace Corps, teaching, social work and other means of trying to make the world a little better, piece by piece. But then we turn on TV and it is celebrating the idiots of the Jersey Shore who perhaps can hope for nothing more exalted than to grow into the Real Housewives upon whose depressing negativity the Ekert has fattened in today's strip.

Hey, comedy isn't always funny, okay? It's not supposed to always be funny.

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Brian Fies

Missed this commentary the first time around, but wanted to chime in on Today’s Youth (or “Yoots”). Many of the young adults in my personal orbit (ages 16-22) are pretty extraordinary people: bright, smart, creative, ambitious. I know for a fact they worked a lot harder to get through high school than my peers and I did, and learned more. Of course a few of them are slackers and screw-ups–they wouldn’t be teens if some percentage weren’t a misguided or slow out of the gate–but they have good hearts and impress me as the kind of people who’ll probably get traction in a few years and do fine.
I wonder about the disconnect between the young people I actually know and those I see in the media. Selection bias? Maybe I’m just lucky enough to know great kids? A lot of the up-and-coming generation are undeniably idiots, but maybe not as many as we fear. As usual, the worthwhile people are just getting the job done without a lot of fuss.

Mike

Did you say “Utes”?

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CSotD: Feeding (on) our bad habits

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Brian Fies

Mike

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