Time Dings Millennials, Awaits Sweet Death

Time magazine's cover story this month is entitled "Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation." As the title subtly suggests, millennials have turned out to be shallow, narcissistic, entitled little shits who are tragically destined to wrest control of the world from their wise, patient, sexy elders. Millennials have also achieved some good things, probably, but mostly they have those smartphones and communicate electronically, and that is just the worst. It's author is Joel Stein, an X-er who has been called "a god to people in their twenties and thirties" by boomer and Time editor Richard Stengel. Stein has statistics and studies to back up his claims, so you know he's on the level. And in case you were beginning to think that Time doesn't understand millennials deeper than is necessary to exploit the subscription money out of an aging generation's natural suspicion of everything that will replace it, they made it even more enticing for young people by pay-walling the article; we can't resist paying for content.

If you ask Time why print is dying, they'll stare at you blankly before asking if they can "have money now."

Stein's already been reamed pretty good. Elspeth Reeve pokes some holes in the statistics before digging up a century's worth of exposes on the ever-pending horror of "self-obsessed little monsters," a story originally scooped, I believe, by Socrates.

Marc Tracy takes Stein nearly point for point, concluding:

Right now, older generations are in the process of slowly bequeathing millennials a society more “in debt” than ever before: “in debt” in the sense of living on borrowed time, with only future, merely hypothetical promises as collateral—“in debt” ecologically, financially, politically, culturally. At this moment, Time has decided to focus on the millennials, and to tar them as “entitled” for not feeling totally okay about all of this.

Piling on with Tracy--though actually pre-dating the Time article--Annie Lowrey points out that, whatever millennials' faults, we haven't exactly been given much to work with, observing that "even though the recession is over, this generation is not looking to gorge; instead, they are the kind of hungry that cannot stop thinking about food."

And over at Salon, Daniel D'Addario addresses the media's love affair with our love affair with attention, two phenomenons that would appear to be servicing each other in some kind of accidental circle-jerk. Lowrey and D'Addario's pieces are like better-researched, better-written takes on my own post from last year about millennial self-obsession conflicting with grim socio-economic reality and boomers' tendencies toward self-congratulation. As I wrote (yes, a millennial is about to quote himself; try not to swoon):

Remember: we did not set up the lavish high school graduation ceremonies--ostensibly for our benefit--during which self-important prigs like McCulloch tell us that we actually kinda suck.  Even when not used for the purposes of insulting us, what kind of attitudes do you expect these farces to instill in us?  To say nothing of the middle school, elementary school, and kindergarten graduations that I took part in growing up.  If our achievements are so banal, why throw the parties? 

I don't know how much of this sort of infantilizing castigation is spurred by a feeling of "how dare attention be lavished on people who aren't us; we're still here" (someone recently pointed out to me that Forrest Gump ends in the mid-80s, just about the time that the X-ers started moving in on the sort of culture-shaping that the film celebrates as the birthright of the boomers). But I suspect we can look forward to a few more, increasingly irritating years of this sort of thing. And by then we'll be chastising our own kids for spending so much time on the HoloNet having sex with space aliens, when they should be watching us Google ourselves.

This I can say with some certainty: generations that are given access to social networks can at least provide their own self-love, rather than having to demand that reverence from others.

It Was an Elementary School

I didn't write about Newtown yesterday because there's something dirty to me about writing while details of such an event are still coming in. And I didn't do it earlier today because there are qualified people writing about it. But with a shooting of this scale, with these targets, and being that it was the second shooting this week (and a third in Alabama this morning, though luckily only the shooter seems to have been killed), letting it pass would be an unforgivable oversight for me. So, two quick things:

1. Guns are not the full problem. And gun control is not the full solution. But a sane society would acknowledge the relevance of both of those things.

2. If you haven't seen this video following any of the how-many shootings we've witnessed over the last few years, please do it now. Your watching it won't fix anything, of course, but it deserves to be absorbed. The news media's pathological exploitation is usually merely irritating. But it can also be dangerous (let alone offensive) when put into the hands of self-absorbed prats, oblivious to the impacts of their desperate pandering. Umpteen interviews with small children who had just been through an intensely traumatic event does nothing for anyone.

Those kids and those teachers deserve more than squabbling over who's to blame. But they also deserve to have their lives be given some meaning beyond unfathomable tragedy. As so many others have written, I'd like to not be writing another post like this in a few months.

David Petraeus (Ret.), Reality TV Star

I feel like I'm supposed to care about the Petraeus thing. I tried, too. Nothing's clicking for me on this one.

As far as I can tell, there's no deep national security significance, at least not given that Petraeus has resigned and the biography's been written (unethical, maybe, but that's more on Broadwell than Petraeus) and that he's still available for any questions we might have. Sure, it could mean the guy's ego was so huge that he thought no one could take him down. But it's just as likely that the guy was humble enough to know that he needed to step back. All character hypotheticals are moot now that he's gone, anyway. At worst, this thing makes him the last in a line of 2000s-era War on Terror guys to to have the bear eat them, rather than the other way 'round. Probably not great for national morale, but what from the Bush II years is? I say junk the whole lot of it. Forward, etc.

And this is the CIA, for Christ's sake. When did morality become a standard for judging anyone over there? You don't have to be an adultery apologist to see the disconnect of priorities here. Drone warfare? Shit, what's that? Powerful guy consensually boning two separate women who aren't his wife? Raging media hard-on. Sure, it's slimy, but come on.

It doesn't matter how long ago graduation was, we're all stuck in high school. And where do semi-powerful, emotionally-stunted-at-high-school, semi-powerful adults best fit in? That's right: reality TV. I've seen several people comment that the entire embarassment would make for some ripping good melodrama. That should be a sad observation, but I say let it be done. At least there, it'll be relegated to a realm I don't have to pay attention to. Put them out there and let them play in the sandbox of their making, wallowing in the precise amount of dignity they've earned for themselves. And we'll watch them, chortling and groaning in equal measure, because TV's bottomless chum bucket has claimed Vanessa Redgrave respected, high level government officials.

In Brief: Carville's Still Got It

"The only person who has seen Romney's taxes is John McCain and he took one look and picked Sarah Palin."
-- James Carville 

Cajun Style, indeed. 

Of course, the Palin pick was less about tax records and more about a moderate Republican needing one of the flock to bolster his right wing-cred (an issue Mittens himself is currently having to address), plus the element of one of the most cynical men ever to vie for the office trying to twist former Clinton supporters to his side.  So the Carville line sounds good, though it isn't wholly accurate.  But who am I to begrudge a man that? 

Also, we're all agreed?  If Romney follows his father's example and does release his tax returns, we're all gonna shout "flip-flopper," right?

How long until...

... Mittens starts campaigning against activist judges?  And how obscene an amount of money will he be able to raise to run ads about the evils of activist judges because those same judges decreed that he's allowed to do as much of that as he can?

... The Obamas are getting it on in the Lincoln bedroom?  Ain't no sex like just-changed-the-shape-of-nation's-moral-and-financial-priorities sex. 

... Republicans remember that the mandate was originally their idea?  And suffer a stroke trying to figure out how to campaign on that without riling up the colonial cos-players they've so eagerly grabbed their ankles for the past three years? 

... CNN acknowledges this?  You know, just to clear the air. 

... we find out how many uses of "fuck" will show up in Scalia's dissent?  Over/under is 6.5. 

"Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

A sub-heading on MSNBC's front page today read, in part, "With just five months until Election Day..."  A few qualifiers in there, but the headline isn't the point.  Nor is the First Read post to which it links (I'll note that the body of the FR post changes the line to "With less than five months until Election Day...").  It's the wording.  "Just" five months to go; "less than five" months to go.  Like it's right around the bloody corner.  And as though the conventions themselves--once the beginning of the campaign proper, in a more halcyon era--didn't begin for another ten and a half weeks.  You know what five months is?  It's the better share of a human pregnancy.  It's a little longer than a typical college semester.  It's about a third as long as the NBA playoffs. 

That FR post, by the way, uses its own basketball analogy--talking about Romney wanting to "run out the clock."  Using that analogy appropriately, however, we'd have to say that it would be like a team deciding to run out the clock in a close game early in the third quarter.  This is part of the Horse Race--if pundits talk about the campaign as though it's a real sporting event, people might start to think it's as exciting as a real sporting event.  "If we phrase this as though this thing is headed for its final stretch, people might get excited."  And that leads to ratings and page hits.  Hopefully. 

In addition to being a lousy and stifling way to interpret democracy in action, Horse Race coverage also leads to confused analogies, like the above.  It might be tempting for a team coming out of the locker room after the half to slow things down, give your guys some time to breathe.  No sense risking a close game.  But what happens when the other team starts running all-cylinders offense in an attempt to pull away?  Their speed may eventually drown out your patience.  You try defense, but eventually you have to put your own points on the board.  Soon enough you're trading shots in a game that remains close.  Of course, the analogy falls apart again, because in a game that remains close throughout, you can probably expect the crowd to remain interested and loud throughout, as well.  But they aren't. 

That's because most people aren't paying attention yet.  The die-hards and the pre-committed and those (like myself) with the time and the masochistic interest, we're absorbing the ups and downs, much as they are.  We track all the gives and takes, until we forget.  Barring one candidate suddenly becoming Spider-Man or another candidate found feasting on the bones of Benjamin Franklin, we'll all stick with the general election choices we made back in 2011 or before (even given one of those scenarios, partisans will surely make excuses as to why their first choice is still best).  The undecideds, however, will sit out until sometime around Columbus Day, when we'll get to hear them hem and haw for weeks on end.  Because when they look at the two parties doing nothing more than throwing insults and forced, underwhelming October Surprises at each other (because the parties themselves ran out of shit to say back during the primaries), those undecideds will, to paraphrase Orwell, look from donkey to elephant and elephant to donkey and it'll be impossible to say which is which.  Despite the parties being as politically polarized as they have been in generations, many people view them as fundamentally the same.  It's part of the reason they don't get involved until crunch time, which itself is what creates the polarization to begin with--with only the politicos controlling the inter-election periods and only the Horse Race-media defining the terms, moderation becomes a handicap.  Or at least an inconvenience. 

But eventually the undecideds will be forced to choose.  Or stay home.  And only then will it all be done.

And then it'll be just four years until the next election.

CNN, Tone-Deaf

So as my time-off wound to a close, I happened to catch this story on CNN.  You can watch it yourself, but a quick summation: Harvard MBA grad Joe Mihalic racks up $90,000 in student debt and pays it off in about seven months.  Impressive by most any standard.

But.

The thing about getting into a Harvard master's program is that someone who does is likely to have relatively significant means in the first place.  And even someone who had to take advantage of every scholarship they could find under every rock they could hoist is likely to come out of it with advantages that students from non-Ivy's don't usually have.  Mihalic says on his site that he "started a job with a modest income (relative to my banking and consulting peers) in the tech industry of Austin."  You may have noticed the use of "relative" there.  Mihalic admits to spending $1,300/month on "entertainment" before he got his act together.  He bought a house, furniture for the house, two cars, and a motorcycle.  His worries were that he wouldn't be able to start a family, or a business, or acquire a business and turn it around.  This was two years out of school.  Mihalic may have had a lot of student debt (more than the average student), but anyone who thinks he had anything else in common with the average student is fooling themselves. 

In the nation of Horatio Alger there's always someone eager to intentionally miss the point of any argument and change the discussion by playing the "stop belittling the successful" card.  But this is not about Mihalic.  Sure, he had means and resources most students could only dream of, but he responsibly put them to good use (eventually) and dragged himself out of the debt he acquired.  I truly mean when I say: good for him.

No, this is about CNN and it's pre-commercial break teaser about "learning a lesson or two" from Mihalic (and following up with a pithy "good lesson for us all" at the end of the interview--who is "us all" and how do I join them?).  Just a day or so before launching their hours-long Jubilee flogging (hosted by outdated British caricature Richard Quest and possible accessory to illegal phone-hacking Piers Morgan), CNN's midday programming deigned to tell soon-to-be and recent graduates that all they need to do is buckle down and acquire the resources of a Joe Mihalic.  No wait, they couldn't even be that honest.  Instead, they set up an insulting chart with five recommendations for reducing debt, based on Mihalic's plan:

• Got a roommate (I may be out of touch, but isn't this standard for most college and post-college students?)
• Didn't go out to eat (one I admittedly don't follow as much as I should, but given how much Mihalic says he was doing this after grad school, I have to imagine that he racked up more significant food bills than most)
• Took a second job (sure, right after I nab that first job)
• Sold unnecessary items (can I keep one of my cars and my motorcycle?)
• Planned free dates (see the thing about going out to eat)

In fact, some of Mihalic's strategies sound decent: dump the 401K, forget about savings (by the way, he had apparently accumulated some $30K in savings--just like all other recent college grads).  These might be extreme methods, but remember that in your twenties, student debt is rather more daunting than retirement planning.  More importantly for CNN: these suggestions wouldn't look so nice and inoffensive on the graphic.  It is Saturday afternoon, after all, can't do anything too heavy.  And heaven forbid they examine why college is so expensive in the first place or why debt amnesty pushes never seem to go anywhere.  No, just show them a clean cut kid who did the implausible and gloss over the privileges he had to both earn and inherit first--that'll let us tell those brats that "it can be done so they should stop complaining."

Young people aren't watching anyway, right?  Yeah, fuck 'em.