Letters to the Editor
-
you gotta be kidding me
"New Vics" "yearning for tradition"? "Spinster sisters in their 30s fretting over their biological clocks"?
Jeez how many cliches and false assumptions about American womanhood could they weave into this tall tale. Did they remember the one about unmarried women with a college education more likely to be killed by a terrorist than getting married, too?
This sounds like James Dobson's wet dream. Sadly, it's about as far removed from reality as everything else these idiots peddle.
-
slutty feminist mothers
In this article we read, "On the same day, Townhall published this article claiming that today's young women are much more conservative than their slutty feminist mothers:"
I object to the use of the word slut to slur women. I especially object to it in salon.com. We no longer use similar words to denigrate minorities, Italians, etc. Why does salon.com allow this kind of writing?
-
Who is this lady talking about??
I'm 21, in college in DC, and I have YET to see this idea of "new Vic" taking hold as a "major trend" among my ladyfriends.
Do these girls even exist?? I'm not convinced.
Her lack of statistics, personal stories, hell a name of a so called "new vic" that's under the age of 30 would make this story evey remotely credible. Instead, she relies on an obscure anecdote from a Russian model who is also a mother of 2. She relies on books by "experts" purporting to speak for the females of this generation.
To her credit, she does try, citing stories about the girls in her Adams Morgan neighborhood "teaching a girl to ride a bicycle or throwing a ball to a boy with a new catcher's mitt."
She neglected to mention, however, that Adams Morgan is one of the most popular bar-hopping scenes in DC for the kids who find Georgetown too pretentious. Thursday through Saturday nights, the streets of Adams Morgan are packed with a drunken mob of twenty-somethings who almost uniquely have 1 goals: get laid. I'll forgive her for omitting this crucial piece of information though, because when you're an aging boomer like she is, you're probably in bed at 10.30 on a Friday night. Since most kids don't go out until 11 or so, she probably misses the evening rush and the hedonistic debauchery that goes on after the witching hour.
Perhaps what's most interesting here is how the current generation (myself included) has managed to get the best of both worlds. We've managed to pull the wool over the eyes of those like Fields, convincing them that we are virginal and chaste adherents to "traditional values" that they hold so dear while our private lives are full of lecherous debauchery. Anyone with a facebook account can plainly see that. There is no trend.
A woman named Lisa Stepp wrote a book this past year discussing the hookup culture of college campuses. Unlike Fields, Stepp actually interviewed college women and discovered that...surprise! "hooking up" has become the ""primary currency of social interaction" between sexes. Doesn't sound very virginal or chaste now, does it???
-
re: Constant Reader
That's a pretty odd desire to restrict vocabulary from someone whose screen name name-checks Dorothy Parker, for whom profanity was a horse-hair brush in the hand of an Old Master.
-
More reading on the topic
I just came across Michael Gerson's column in today's Washington Post. It starts off with a body blow to conservatives:
Recent books and studies seem to indicate disturbing sexual trends among evangelical Christians. And this time we're not talking about their pastors or political leaders. The new attention is on evangelical teenagers, who reportedly start sex earlier than their mainline Protestant peers.
The column then goes on to dissect the situation further and provides evidence that a teen's entire social network plays a key role in their moral behavior. Of note is the the observation quoted from sociologist Bradford Wilcox that American liberals "talk left and walk right, living disciplined lives and expecting their children to do the same, even when they hold liberal social views".
Of course, these observations don't predict voting preferences, but I would be very surprised by a young person who has grown up in a disciplined household with liberal views choosing to go along with the moral turpitude espoused by Republicans today.
-
The kids are alright -- but will they vote?
Democracy Corps' findings jell with what I've discovered among my own students in college, who interestingly enough lean more libertarian or conservative than liberal. Unfortunately, most of my students do not vote! Many of them say they don't pay attention to politics "unless it affects me personally" (without considering just how much all this really does affect them personally). Hopefully the Dems can figure out how to make more young people realize what's at stake for them -- enough to get them to the polls, at very least.
-
Sounds like the "New Vics" are "these three girls the columnist knows"
For me the giveaway was how "many" of these New Vics cheer when watching the African Queen. Give me a break. How many women under 30 have even seen that movie, let alone cheered at one of its lines?
Lifestyle columnists have a nasty habit about noticing something that a handful of their friends are doing and portraying it as a nationwide phenomenon. Looks like this is what happened here.
-
Give Peace a Chance, My Foot
I find this incredibly intriguing. Is it that the children of the great unwashed slutty druggy hippies don't wish them death before social security? Like rats on a sinking ship, have they somehow managed to survive?
The cultural issue had to come up eventually. Better now than later. Will this election be the watershed? Have we finally seen enough of the crusades?
I don't really think so, and yet these new stats sound solid--at least on paper. Are the "Neo-Libers" going to show up at the polls in the next presidential or will the next scandal-- the next loss of their innocence deter them? Maybe they just weren't old enough to vote in '00 or '04. I'm skeptical and don't blame me for it.
It's not the 60's. It will never be the 60's again whether that is what some people think or not. "Give peace a chance," my foot. I won't believe it until after the election when the Democrats begin a new era--and that ain't a cliche.