“The Conservative Teen”
As long as this is the conservative response to the liberal advantage in culture/media/etc, culture will… remain an uphill climb for the right.
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I’m curious to see what the next issue will have in it. Based on the 20 or so pages I flipped through, they seem to have touched on every one of the culture war issues. Or will each issue be a different way of saying the same thing?Report
Okay, I’ll bite- it’s a bit too Teen People for my tastes, but wouldn’t this sort of magazine resonate with its target audience of conservative teens?Report
There are conservative teens out there, at least in a manner of speaking. Republicans won every fake election at my school. So there may be a market there, but the kinds of kids who really care are not the kinds interested in Teen People. Most vote that way cause their parents vote that way. If you want to reach them in bring them into the fold for real, you need something that’s a little less… transparent, and transparently political.
In any event, I don’t even think this is targeted at teens. I think it’s (going to be) targeted at parents who want their kids to be conservative teens.Report
Except that the target audience is not conservative teens. The target audience is conservative grandparents of teens.Report
Yes! I was having a hard time putting my finger on it, but this is it exactly. It reminds me of this Mother-JOnes-4-Kids kind of thing that was pushed in PDX several years ago, that were all bought as crappy, crappy birthday presents by left-leaning parents and grandparents.Report
Okay, I gotcha. So, it’s the start of a conversation that goes something like, “Next time you come visit Grandpa, Billy, we’ll talk more about the flat tax. How’d you like that?”Report
…and why you shouldn’t do Sally until you’re married.Report
In defense of the magazine, they really should keep it to grinding while they’re still in their teens.Report
Grinding your own also avoids the pink slime.Report
You’re doing it wrong.Report
Gee, Grampa, next time, can you show me the ray gun you fought in the revolution with?Report
It reminds me of Orwell’s report of Communist tracts aimed at kids:
Q,. ‘Can a Boy Communist be a Boy Scout, Comrade?’
A. ‘No, Comrade.’
Q,. ‘Why, Comrade?’
A. ‘Because, Comrade, a Boy Scout must salute the Union Jack, which is the symbol of tyranny and oppression.’Report
Oddly enough, I WAS a conservative teen in the mid 1970’s; I would read Business Week and National Review in the high school library, and watch Firing Line on Sundays.
But I was an audience of one, for the simple reason that I was an introverted nerdy kid who should have been encouraged to get out more and play.
Well adjusted teen age boys and girls don’t give a rip about deficit spending or banking deregulation; they might, if prodded, nod and accept broad moral precepts like “protecting the unborn” but it generally doesn’t occupy much of their waking thoughts.
And yeah, this thing does have that creepy Soviet Young Pioneers air about it.Report
Well, it’s certainly a whole lot more visually interesting than the Young Americans For Freedom subscription that I received as a gift–Christmas? Birthday? It’s all a blur–nigh on four decades ago. The names have changed: I don’t see any mention of Boone or Bryant or Schlafly. But otherwise the copy looks pretty much the same.
I’m curious as to their distribution/subscription data … but not curious enough to try and look it up.Report
Zombie Hitler is quite chuffed with the wholesome Aryan Master Race cover shot.Report
Gosh, a print version of the Half Hour News Hour.Report
I’ll tell you one thing it’s useful for. All those people that can’t tell the difference between a conservative and a libertarian? The stuff in that magazine (except for Stossel’s column*) is conservative.
*and the Hell is the IRS cartoon**
**but not the second Laugh Out Loud! (sic) cartoon about dead soldiers.
(oh, and I see they go to the IGN game reviewing philosophy on college reviews)
(and you all are not being fair to Teen People)Report
Just want to throw this out & this seems as good a place as any. In the shower a couple of days ago I was suddenly out of nowhere struck by an intuition that it’s absurd that the voting age is eighteen when we trust sixteen year-olds to pilot themselves and their friends in thousand-pound hunks of metal and flammable liquid down concrete highways at 65 miles per hour within feet of other such objects. Not only that, I was even given momentarily suspicion that it may be absurd that there is a voting age at all: if you can form a view on a public election and can locomote yourself into a poling place and operate the polling mechanism, i.e. if you can demonstrate self-guided intent to express a preference and can otherwise satisfy legal requirements such as residency, why shouldn’t your preference count? Obviously, I’m suspicious in turn of these intuitions, but I’m also not sure they are entirely absurd.
Thoughts are welcome.Report
The voting age should be lower than it is. Actually, the drinking age should be 16, so that when they come to college and all of them experiment with drinking, we don’t have to all pretend that we’re shocked to discover they’re experimenting with drinking.Report
I’d go further and say there should be no drinking age, and that we should punish negative public behavior only. It’s okay to have a beer on the train while reading the newspaper as long as you don’t smash the bottle over the head of the person next to you. Alcohol use among teenagers should be out in the open instead of hiding from the law so we can know when medical problems arise.Report
problem if you’ve got more below-20 year olds than older people. You get parties like Green Leaf, and other joke parties. Less of a problem with American duality, sure… but… I’ve got an intuition that kids who ain’t paying bills got different priorities than other folks. Granted, that may not be a BAD thing… But not every 6 year old is scared shitless of Ronald Reagan (wait… we gave HIM nuclear weapons??!??)Report
The push to raise the drinking age to 21 began back in the 1970s when all kinds of data showed that Driving fatalities as a result of alcohol consumption dramatically decreased as the age of the drivers increased past 18. The federal government pinned state highway funding to raising the MLDA (minimum legal drinking age) to 21 and states quickly began to fall in line. Several factors have led more recently to arguments for lowering the drinking age. Among them; safer cars and the prevelance of under aged drinkers to drink to excess. The argument for the latter being, if they started younger they would learn how to drink responsibly (also known as, the Univsity President’s argument).
As far as the voting age is concerned, one could imagine the voting fraud that would take place as ideologically minded youth groups organized field trips to the polls on voting day. Do we really need conservative or liberally minded adults indoctrinating large groups of impressionabely-minded children…any more than they already do?Report
I don’t see the magazine as particularly problematic. It’s a little bit over-the-top in a couple of spots but overall no worse than cable news. Speaking of which, am I the only one that is completely baffled by how blatantly partisan MSNBC’s new commercials are? This is the latest one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uisC1zHcxLk
If this is what a major TV network offers..this magazine seems right on target.Report
“If you look at MSNBC, this magazine seems right on target!”
“If you look at FOX News, MSNBC seems right on target!”
“If you look at Daily KOS, FOX News seems right on target!”
“If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, Daily KOS seems right on target!”
“If you look at Ms. Magazine, Rush Limbaugh seems right on target!”
“If you…” You get the idea.
Nevertheless, I also shrugged my shoulders when I saw the magazine.Report