PJM Lifestyle
Dissecting Baby Boomer Liberalism Like a Frog in Science Class
It’s one of my biggest disappointments that I’ve only begun to accept in the past few years: the average level of maturity that we experience in high school is as good as it gets. That’s where most people stop their emotional and intellectual development. Once one realizes and accepts that overgrown teenagers dominate the planet, then literally everything starts to make much more sense.
First in my post-college years in the workplace and second as I began a career of full-time new media editing the same questions continually emerged. What happened to America’s grown-ups? How come so many “adults” still act like adolescents spreading gossip, stabbing each other in the back, lying, nursing petty rivalries, and obsessing over how much fun sex is? Isn’t college supposed to be the last hurrah where you get all the stupid things you need to do out of your system before your idiocy can hurt others too much?
As the Obama campaign dragged the national dialogue down to the locker room level thanks to Lena Dunham and Sandra Fluke, baby boomer conservatives uniformly predicted victory for their white knight Mitt Romney. This Ward Cleaver epitome of adult respectability would inspire the legions of “Silent Majority” American grown-ups (who somehow the pollsters kept missing) to awaken to the truth of Obama’s fantasy of raising taxes on “the rich” for fairness’s sake regardless of the disastrous economic consequences and the pitiful extra 8 days’ worth of revenue to gain.
But those voters didn’t show up. They don’t exist anymore. Decades of cultural Marxist infiltration have finally started to bear fruit. Two rising cohorts that played key roles in Obama’s victory include the never-married and the irreligious (two interrelated subjects, as readers of David P. Goldman’s How Civilizations Die know).
Where did these voters come from to assist the president in his fundamental transformation of America?
Best Yearbook Quote Ever!
Everybody remembers their high school yearbook, especially during their senior year. There’s nothing like the rows of completely uniform senior pictures, with the guys in tuxes and the girls in those odd gowns. And who can forget the pressure to come up with the perfect senior quote?
The ideal senior quote doesn’t come easy to anyone. How do you sum up your entire adolescent existence in such a limited space? Do you go with something profound, or do you reach for humor? Do you give a shout out to your best buds and risk leaving someone out? Do you go sentimental, or do you remind everyone that it’s time to party?
Rising seniors, the search for cleverness has now come to an end. You can forget about topping the best yearbook quote ever, which comes to us from San Jose, California.
Eight girls at Presentation High School, an all-girls Catholic school, decided to have a little fun and band together to create the ultimate yearbook quote. Alexandra, Angela, Angelica, Elizabeth, Emily, Isabella, Madeline and Vi Nguyen, bound together by those two great equalizers: alphabetical order and whatever that gown thing is called, went with one or two words each to send a message to the world: “We know what you’re thinking, and no, we’re not related.”
The girls, who have had classes together all four years of high school, initially thought of using a famous quote before they hit on the idea of toying with people’s assumptions. Isabella Nguyen, the ringleader behind the stunt, told the local paper, “People always ask if we’re cousins or something.” They never dreamed that social media would blow the quote up to an international sensation known as “Nguyen-sanity.”
“As soon as it hit Facebook, it just blew up from there,” said Isabella Nguyen. “I’m still in a daze.”
A photo of the page registered more than 1.1 million views on image-sharing site Imgur. A blog item on the Huffington Post wondered if it might be the best yearbook quote ever. The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail posted an item about the stunt. And a camera crew from “Inside Edition” came to the school Friday to interview them.
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Barbara Purdy, who’s been the school’s yearbook adviser for 11 years, said she’s never seen anything like the brouhaha that’s taken place over the quote. “It was kind of humorous, and there wasn’t anything offensive about it,” she said. “The way that’s it’s taken off has been a real surprise.”
These girls came up with something remarkable and clever, and they’re enjoying a little bit of positive notoriety for it. Sometimes those 15 minutes of fame come about in the best way. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking my senior quote paled by comparison.