snjoseph's Journal: Be Like Unto the Children

Dallas Morning News: At inaugural youth concert, positive message trumps cool quotient

Man, if the Dallas Morning News thinks you're square, you're like hypercube. The article describes the "America's Future Rocks Today" concert, the "youth" component of the Bush inauguration festivities. I was, for my part, surprised that the Bushies would even have a youth-oriented event, since young people didn't do much to secure the Bush victory. An "America's Stupid-Ass Crackers Rock Today" or "America's Bush-Lite Democrats Rock Today" would have been more appropriate.

There's apparently something of a mini-scandal afoot because the lead singer of Fuel used a dirty word to express the superlative greatness of the United States.

"Welcome to the greatest [expletive] country in the world," Fuel singer Brett Scallions, one of the earlier acts, told to the crowd.

To employ a phrase current among Young People: whatev. I'm not sure what the "welcome" was all about, though, since there were surely no immigrants in the crowd.

The headliners were pretty solidly B-list, and I think the concert descended well into the depths of the P- or Q-list. If you want the real truth, the Bush twins were probably the hottest items at the party, and they wisely stayed off-stage.

If the concert fell short on the hip scale, it wasn't for lack of trying. Stephen Baldwin took the stage on a skateboard. "Are you guys rockin' or what?" he enthused.

Well, we all know how important trying is to being cool.

The unfortunate thing about these sorts of events is that they inevitably make the young look stupid and shallow, even though the damn things are organized by grown-ups, and pretty out-of-it grown-ups at that.

"I guess it would be a cool concert if you're a 17-year-old girl," said Roy Trakin, senior editor of Hits magazine.

Not really, said Millicent Bolin, 17-year-old from New Orleans. Many in the audience were on school trips, and some weren't thrilled that the concert was on their itinerary.

"We had to come," Millicent said. "I don't like these people...they're too fake and mainstream."

Well, maybe there's hope for us yet.