So much hypocrisy, so little time. I’ve been mulling joining the ranks of the bloggerati for quite some time now, but my vocation as editor has tended to put that writerly impulse on the back burner. That, and how damn nasty blog commenters can be. But I’ve been inspired by two things this last week– well, scratch that; terrified by one and inspired by the other– to put ink to screen. The selection of Sarah Palin, holy roller of the Great White North, she of the unvetted scandal baggage, for Vice President being the terror, and the brilliant community of the Alaskan Mudflats blog (http://mudflats.wordpress.com), headed by AKMuckraker (all hail), the saving grace. It’s become an oasis of intelligent people freaked out by unchecked corruption and lies looking for ways to make sense of it all, find a little comic relief, and figure out how to combat the insanity to avert another GOP disaster come Nov 4. Hearing from independents, moderate Republicans, and Vets, from voices across the union of all ages, is no end of encouragement, giving the lie to the polarization that is being whipped up elsewhere by party hacks & nauseating pundits.
My pet peeve list of hypocrisy and stupidity is very long, but I think it’s safe to say until we’ve ridden out this rollercoaster of election insanity, presidential politics will be the firmly entrenched topic here. I make a point of highlighting my Generation X status not because that’s my defining characteristic or because that’s the only group I want to hear from, but because I’ve watched amazed all these years at how the invisibility of our generation, begun when we were the teens & twentysomethings the media didn’t know what to do with and dismissed us as a bunch of latchkey cynical slackers, went from seemingly passing phase to permanent phenomenon. I watched, amazed, as the obsesssion with all-boomer-all-the-time coverage leapfrogged over to the Gen Y darlings, from one narcissistic generation to the other (easy now, them’s not… entirely… fighting words; some of my best friends are boomers). You think maybe it’s got to change sometime, right? and some could argue it has, but overall, across vast areas of subject matter, the deafening silence of Gen X voices continues to ring in my ears. We’re the introvert generation in a room of extroverts; the smart, funny, quiet, observant, creative sorts overlooked in school and at parties. Of course this doesn’t describe all of Gen X, as no group is so reducible, but you get my drift– and so I particularly hope to create dialogue amongst fellow Xers here. Welcome one and all (trolls, bullies & raving lunatics excepted).
