Oh, This Can't be Good

By Alicia Dorr in News on Feb 22, 2007 8:06PM

It's not that politicians and the media don't respect young people when it comes to voting. They know all about President Clinton and Andrew Dice Clay (whatever) putting their thumbs up for rocking the vote. They've even pretended to try to pretend to care that young people are "apathetic" about their vote, publishing studies about what a shame it is that none of the youngsters in this country participate in democracy how they want them to, or read the paper.

No, it's definitely not a lack of respect that has kept "they" from being at all interested in the younger demographic, it's the fact that they hadn't figured out a use for them yet! And damn if Chicago hasn't come up with a real humdinger! Offer college students $100 to go knocking on doors and driving around vans of elderly people on election day — they can get out the vote for Daley!

Challenger Bill Walls has criticized the move (read: pointed and laugh at), saying that the mayor can't even get people to volunteer anymore now that he doesn't have his, uh, "volunteer" patronage army, so he is just paying them. The Daley camp basically rolled their eyes — appropriately, we say, because anyone who claims Daley doesn't have supporters who love him for free is probably voting for Dorothy Brown ... you know, deluded. His campaign manager said that there's nothing wrong with helping out a college student and that many of them would have done it anyway.

We honestly can't say whether this amounts to college students being bought off because anyone who knows anything about young people knows they really aren't that predictable. We can say that he is probably wrong about "many" of them simply "wanting" to volunteer — though we think they got suckered with that $100 bit. "Many" college students would have done it for a slice of pizza.

Image via Instantmoneyclub.tripod.com.