Young people will swing this election

There's a lot of talk now about how female voters, particularly single ones, are going to swing this election. And they are certainly one of the groups the Democrats should be reaching out more to bag this election. But young people are, too. I'm reading Danny Goldberg's book Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and while he's kind of a prig in a lot of ways, he deserves all sorts of respect for his dedication to the fight against censorship.

His points in the book about how the left needs to reach out to the young and use popular culture instead of disdain it are great. This book needs to be read by everyone in Democratic leadership. It's downright sad to see how many popular musicians are putting together groups to encourage the young to vote, and not just to vote but to vote progressively, and to do so knowing full well that they won't get any kind of overt thank you in the press from Democratic leadership and certainly no political favors. But that is not what really strikes me out of this book. What really strikes me is Goldberg's struggles with Al and Tipper Gore and how personal those struggles got.

Simply put, it's my firm belief that the Parent's Music Resource Center did more than Ralph Nader could to lose the election for Al Gore.

Now I haven't finished the book and I don't know if Goldberg's conclusion will be as stark as mine, though he's aiming in the same direction. But I will say this--there are few music fans between the ages of 25 and 45 now who don't flinch when they hear the letters PMRC and who never forgave Al and Tipper Gore for spearheading the censorship battles of the 80's and 90's and also for never apologizing for it. In fact, Gore not only didn't apologize for treating my generation like we were a bunch of simpering morons who didn't have his generation's ability to handle lyrics stuffed with sex and violence, he tacked Joe Lieberman onto his ticket in a move that seemed to be the definitive "fuck you" to people younger than the baby boomers.

For those who don't remember, when the baby boomers became parents and realized that their kids weren't going to just fall down on their knees, admit that the 60's were better than anything we could give up and forsake a culture of our own, they got mad. And censorious. And even more appalling, they made alliances with the cultural conservatives who had tried to have their own beloved 60's rock banned in its own day, demonstrating how much of their minds some boomers lost when they grew up and had kids. And Tipper Gore led the pack, which gave the whole censorious movement credibility with liberals and actually led to ridiculous Senate hearings where Al Gore complimented Frank Zappa before he started tearing into him for defending younger artists, most of whom couldn't have the same dirty sense of humor as Zappa if they tried.

The effects of this were felt around the country. Schools felt empowered to restoring stringent dress codes and even school uniforms. The parental advisory stickers became the standard and record stores quit stocking albums that were even remotely controversial and those that did demanded that teenage fans cough up ID's proving they were 18 or older to purchase records whose singles they could hear on MTV. I'd say the hysteria over this had a lot to do with creating our current enviroment where preaching abstinence to classrooms where less than half the kids are even virgins and most of those who are won't be for long is even acceptable.

Not that all boomers thought the crackdown on youth was such a great idea. My mother, for one, was completely appalled and always defended by constant clashes with the school administration over minor dress code violations. She would send our young aunt with us to the record store so she could purchase our albums for us with her precious ID showing that she was over 18. She was prone to rolling her eyes when she would see Tipper Gore and her ilk on TV and sighing, "What the hell happened to my generation?" My dad, on the other hand, fell for the whole censorship mania. When my sister came home from the record store with a Guns and Roses c.d., he told her she couldn't have it because it had a parental advisory sticker. Luckily, I swooped down and laid a huge pile of guilt and shame on my father, and he returned the disc to my sister.

So when Al Gore was running for President, you better believe those of us who had struggled growing up with our parents and the record stores and the schools were unenthusiastic. Some people held their nose and voted for him. Some opted for Nader. A huge number didn't even bother to vote. I remember making a face every time his wife, who is The Enemy to rock fans like myself, came on TV.

It's too late for the party itself to do a pre-election outreach to voters like me who still resent the Gores, many of whom are looking to face middle age soon enough anyway. In a way, it doesn't matter--most people I know who sneer at Al Gore think John Kerry is fine. Still, it wouldn't have hurt to casually let those voters know that Kerry was once in a rock band, just to make him more sympathetic. And they hate Bush enough to just go vote to get him out. But the Democrats should have a much bigger margin with the below 45 voters than they do, and don't think for a moment that their tolerance of this type of censorship isn't a big part of it.