The first time I heard John Mayer’s song, "Waiting on the World to Change," I was ecstatic. I had a vision of joining together with an intoxicating fervor. Finally, this is the social commentary that would be the spark igniting my peers into action. Instead of waiting for the baby boomers to roll over and relinquish control, we’d rise up and take it!

Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Apparently my generation is perfectly content to continue waiting. In fact, I don’t believe many of my peers are even standing in line. I’m pretty sure they’re all out back hiding behind some trees trying to avoid the shift in power all together.

I can’t blame my generation’s shared apathy to the impending inheritance of the world, especially in its current state. Every minute of every waking hour, the media is saturated with images and sounds illustrating death, doom, and destruction occurring on the planet. And as we look around, we can’t help but hold our parents partly accountable for the condition of the world.  

But it’s not entirely the boomers’ fault. They were completely unprepared to handle the globalization that bloomed under their feet. Unfortunately, love isn’t a redeemable currency. So they made choices based on what they believed to be right at that time, and with little regard for the future. Now, they’re slowly coming to terms with those choices.

And it’s not that the boomers don’t want to fix some of the disastrous outcomes of the decisions they made. But, they’re old. And they’re tired. And they’re much more concerned with recapturing the 40-plus years they’ve wasted away at an unfulfilling job. Just as I can’t blame my generation for not wanting to take responsibility for the crumbling world, I can’t blame my parents’ generation for their inability to fix it.

As more and more boomers turn the corner onto the path toward retirement, they are experiencing a second coming of age. New retirees are becoming introspective as they are afforded more time for leisure and relaxation. Seeing the mountains of material things amassed over the years in search of happiness, the boomers are now finding solace in using the fruits of their labor to experience and to explore. And this realization is slowly starting to seep into the psyche of my generation.

As the boomers are running to the finish, my generation is floundering in its first steps. We’ve enjoyed a cushy life free of difficult decisions and burgeoning responsibility. College isn’t the liberating, mind-expanding rebellion our parents experienced. Technology has made it easy to continue living under a shroud of parental influence. And while we hear our parents when they tell us to get a job to make lots of money, we can’t help but squirm a little.

Whereas the boomers experienced a temporary freedom from parental control, we haven’t had the chance to escape. Although I dream for my generation to collectively rise up and demand control, everyone is still trying to figure it out. Defiance will come upon the realization that we are capable of making it on our own without the help of our parents. But until then, I’ll just continue to wait.

Julia Pflaum

"President Bush vowed Wednesday to veto bipartisan legislation that would sharply increase funding for a popular health insurance program for poor children."

Well, isn’t that sweet?

The reason: "S-Chip covers children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to pay for private insurance. The bills would make an estimated 3.2 million additional children eligible for S-Chip. Bush says this expansion is a first step toward government-funded universal health coverage."

Well, we certainly don’t want that, now do we? We certainly don’t want America to have a better health care system than Peru? We don’t want to save lives and improve the health of our citizens like every other modern nation on Earth does. The health of children — pfft, who cares? Once it’s out of the womb (when we dote on it and talk about the culture of life, when we vow to do anything to protect it), it’s on its own.

I know it’s only by a single seat, but the Democrats do control the Senate. So how did a bill expanding the government’s power to listen to our phone calls without warrants get passed? Can anyone explain this to me?

Finally: "Legislation to shield reporters from being forced by prosecutors to reveal their sources was approved Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee." I’m happy, but I don’t even want to hear from Judy Miller about this, or ever again, really.

There’s never a dull week in America.

Jennifer Leblanc

Winnie Cooper grew up, got hot, and more importantly, got even smarter. She has a new book out called Math Doesn’t Suck, aimed at young teenage girls who struggle with the subject and are constantly exposed to ditzy celebutantes.

       "When girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that 
       being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible," the 32-
       year-old McKellar told Newsweek for editions to hit newsstands Monday.  
       "But I want to show them that being smart is cool," she said. "Being good 
       at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out
       of life."
 
I’m not the age demographic the book is aimed at, and unfortunately, incurably, I do suck at math. But I never tire of watching a great woman leave her mark on the world. I watched Kate Winslet and Jennifer Lopez make curves okay. I hope McKellar will be the first of many women to make intelligence fashionable. Hopefully someday, that’s the world my daughter will live in.  

Jennifer Leblanc

There are a lot of things wrong with today’s society. Thanks to my youthful naivety, I look to the future with optimism and hope. However, my buoyancy is conflicted as I am troubled by the next generation. Do today’s current teenagers have the foresight to correct the destruction left behind by the baby boomers?

My uneasiness is caused by many reasons, most of which, though, are clearly illustrated by the MTV series, My Super Sweet 16. Now, I don’t believe Sweet 16 is the root of youth’s corrupted spirit. But, the show’s premise is to showcase parents’ shameless display of extravagance while exposing their shortcomings. This failure in parenting has not only spawned a degenerate generation but revels in exploiting it for entertainment.

Sure, it’s easy to place blame on the parents. They’re responsible for instilling goodness and morality in today’s children, thus providing a strong foundation for tomorrow’s adults, right? That’s certainly easier said than done. I know it’s not entirely their fault that the prevalent parenting method is based in believing love is best demonstrated through gaudy status symbols. 

I can only hope all this materialism in place of parenting will provide fertile grounds for an eventual realization and rebellion. Finding this source of emptiness is what keeps therapists in business, no? More disconcerting than bad parenting, though, is the lack of role models to unearth this discontent.

In fact, Sweet 16 is a show about the inadequacy of current cultural role models. Using the Paris Hilton method of success, anyone with enough money can buy their way onto TV into the hearts and minds of impressionable young ones. And it’s the girls that are suffering the most from these disposable influences.

It used to be that a girl’s sixteenth birthday was a celebration for surviving the unforgiving journey from awkward adolescent to developed adult. But it seems to me that every character featured on Sweet 16 revels in acting and behaving like a spoiled child. In fact, most delight in dramatic tantrums and sinister bitchery for the television cameras.

Regardless of the legitimacy of the dramatics, the show illustrates an unsettling new level of bratty-girl behavior. Whereas boys use physicality and violence to bully, girls have always resorted to verbal attacks to belittle each other. This belittling was once done behind backs and with a slight sense of wrong-doing; today’s young girls are meaner than ever without any sense of remorse.

And this new level of bratty-girl behavior is not limited to extreme insults. Aggressiveness and domineering have surpassed catty putdowns to become the favored form of intimidation. Where did this perverted sense of female entitlement come from? Because I’m pretty sure Paris Hilton wouldn’t instigate, let alone win, a bitch fight with even the most "exhausted" Hollywood starlet.

Julia Pflaum

From Yahoo! News: "Texas leads U.S. in teen birth rate." When questioned about the state’s abstinence-based teachings versus comprehensive education, State Board of Education President Don McLeroy had this piece of wisdom: "The idea that just giving them a lot of information is going to solve it, I think, is kind of naive." Granted, informing hormonally-driven teenagers about condoms and such will not stop teen sex or pregnancy. But isn’t it more naive to tell these teenagers to not have sex at all, refusing to tell them even the basics about safe sex, knowing that teenagers have engaged in pre-marital sex since the beginning of mankind, and always will? 

Jennifer Leblanc