I am happy to report that the offensive film Let's go to Prison has bombed at the box office and currently has a 7% rating on rotten tomatoes. Apparently you can go broke underestimating the taste of the American public, and it seems that making fun of sexual assault in prison just didn't have mass appeal. You'd think with 2 million Americans in prison and Human Rights Watch illustrating the barbaric conditions of our penal system the last thing anyone would want to do is make a two hour comedy about it. In any case, while American prisoners still languish without justice, some has actually been delivered to the Phillistine morons who thought making this movie was a good idea.
A new film is debuting this week: Bob Odenkirk's Let's Go to Prison. My outrage with the premise of this film has warranted this decidedly alarmist and uncreative post. This movie, debuting November 17, is a comedy based on the sub-human conditions faced by American prisoners, including sexual assault. I feel this is a good as time as any to draw more attention to an old blog of mine, entitled "The Truly "Other" America," and simultaneously call on all progressives to boycott the film.
Marx considered class stuggle to be the prime mechanism of social change, and opponents of the left accuse progressives of "class envy". But lately, in exploring the student debt crisis, I have encountered something new to human history, something that I have dubbed "Generation Envy".
If the generation that fought and won World War II is considered "The Greatest Generation," then I would argue that our parents, the Baby Boomers, deserve the title of "Worst Generation".
The Boomers were born into the greatest industrial power on Earth, but have systematically attacked any hope of prosperity for today's youth. Now granted, every generation has its struggles, and the spectre of Vietnam that haunted 1960s youth should not be minimized, but it is no excuse for the ageist policies they have enacted over the last 25 years.
Since our patents came of voting age (1970s and beyond), the American Dream has been slowly unraveling. First came industrial decline, then the national debt, then the 1980s-era cutbacks in social services. Inner-city poverty. Gulf War I. Gulf War II. Stagnant wages. Skyrocketing tuition. Deunionization. Environmental decline.
How did the generation of free love, anti-consumerism, and pacifism turn out this way? Why have the hippies of the 1960s sent their children to war? How did anti-materialism turn into fiscal insanity? Why did the generation who saw first-hand the social benefits of the GI Bill and Pell Grants watch as college was priced out of reach? Why didn't the anti-nuclear sentiment of the 1960s translate into addressing global warming? What happened?
I don't know the answer to that question and at this point I don't care. It is time for America's youth to band with our Gen-X siblings and take control of our own destiny. The future of this country should not be decided by those who have the least stake in it, but rather by its future workers, soldiers, and parents. The Boomers have mortgaged our future to secure their own. They have placed a millstone of national and student debt around our necks that will take years to address. The adult majority of this country has failed us; it's time to respond. Accuse me of Generation Envy if you want, but the Boomers have been waging Generational Warfare on us for the last two decades.
As our congressional election unfolds, it looks as though progressivism is on the march. And while I am certainly happy about this fact, the voter pre-occupation with the War on Iraq is of serious concern to me.
The disastrous course of American foreign policy cannot be ignored and should not be minimized, but progressivism is about more than diplomacy. Economic equality, a living wage, and affordable education are all essential to a functioning society and the basis of the progressive vision. Progressives cannot let the tragic bloodshed in the Middle East obsucre the wider war that's raging on the American Dream. As our soldier's die in Iraq, our prison population mushrooms, our jobs are outsourced, and affordable healthcare becomes a pipe dream.
And the true casualty of this war is Generation Y itself. It is our high schools that have been ignored, our college education that has been priced out of reach, and our financial futures that have been mortgaged. And so I hope that tonight's elections aren't seen as simply a referendum on war, but rather as a plebiscite on a 21st century re-commitment to the American Dream.
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