Tipsheet

Gimme Some

My impression of the conservative movement isn’t unique: the leaders brush their toupees and call it progress, while the youngins gawk at each other and occasionally fetch some coffee. It’s not exactly what you’d call political growth -- definitely not a movement, and certainly no way to take back the majority, which should be the only main goal of conservatives between now and 2010. In that sense, the Young Conservatives Coalition really does fill a void. Their goals are noble: they want to edumucate voters, especially young ones; they want to get young people to lead the rest of the party up that shining hill; and they want to decrease wanton technological ineptitude among Republican fuddy duddies. YCC’s website is very shiny and cool, and I actually believe they may get things done......if only they’d follow through on their directives and even pretend like something is happening.

I’m not trying to be pugilistic, but I do want an email, like I was promised at the end of the YCC meeting at CPAC.  Besides the email-address-getting, attention-getting, and hype-building, I wasn’t sure what the meeting was about, except maybe to showcase their video, which had an eerie similarity to those late-night Interactive Male commercials that make me extremely creeped out. And then I never even got so much as a "Thanks for attending!" or, heaven forbid, an invitation to drive up and hang out in NY-20 last weekend, you know, when it actually mattered, or even a "Support our bake sale!"  I make a mean double chocolate brownie, but the YCC wouldn’t know very much about that.

It’s almost like I've been stood up. Really, President Christopher Malagisi, why haven’t you called? I read your post yesterday on Frum’s site, and I just gazed at my screen in wonderment:

No person passes through his or her youth without adults constantly reminding him or her that, along with the others in his or her age group, they are the future of society or the leaders of tomorrow. Initially inspiring, such cliches quickly become patronizing when it is evident that, for no matter how much elders enjoy repeating these sentiments to their younger colleagues, these platitudes are seldom translated into actual responsibilities.

Those were the first two sentences. This was the last sentence:

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, after all.

Oh, brother! Platitudes are bad, but being hypocritical about your platitudes? When the whole point is that you're trying to get away from platitudes? And then you put your platitudes in bold? Now I’m depressed. Your platform is great, but where is the levity in your message? The ingenuity in your approach? And most of all, where is the action?

I’m clearly not getting any.