On “The Word” segment of his September 19, 2007 “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert criticized the youth generation of today for doing nothing about the problems in society. It all started with the University of Florida student who was tasered during a John Kerry speech. The inaction of the student’s peers caused Colbert to make the following remarks:
“Look at these guys in the back,” Colbert said, pointing out one frame from the video of the event. “You don’t need a Fox body language expert to tell you that kid in orange is bored. He’s probably thinking something like, ‘I wish they’d stop tasering this guy so I could go home and watch this guy getting tasered on YouTube.’”
“One thing you can’t argue is that his cause was joined by hordes of no one. … Students used to be a rebellious bunch. … Today’s kids are so different.”
“The kids in that auditorium who sat idly by as their fellow student was seized, thrown to the ground, and tasered didn’t lack the courage to help,” Colbert added. “They’re just so used to watching videos like ‘Crazy guys thrown out of lecture hall’ that they didn’t know how to help other than to link to it. I’m sure that guy in the orange is going to spring into action as soon as he gets home and fires up his blog.”
“And that’s what’s so great about this new kind of activism,” Colbert remarked. “It’s convenient. Just like masturbation. It’s better than sex because it’s on your own time. So … make me proud, young people. Continue waging your protests from the polite distance of your home computers. Make ‘the Man’ wish he’d never visited your site. And if a fellow-student is denied the right to speak, remember, the best way to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him is by sitting alone in your seat.”
Here is the video in its entirety:
It’s sad to say but Colbert is absolutely 100% on point with these statements. Sure it’s an entirely different generation with an entirely different lifestyle, but the fact remains that the general public does not gather collectively to demand a particular action of the government. How many people complain online about the expanding of Bush’s spy program, or about the unending Iraq war? Thousands if not millions. But how many of them march on Washington to show their opposition? None. If millions of people were to converge on Washington demanding an end to the Iraq war and would not leave you can bet the troops would start coming home by Christmas.
While it is good that at least people are speaking out in some sort of fashion, writing about problems doesn’t go far enough. Your support and time needs to be given to those causes that you hold dear to your heart. So if you haven’t done anything to support something you believe in lately, I encourage you to go out and make a small gesture. Acting alone behind our computers won’t do anything except consume bandwidth, but acting together we have the ability to change the world.
Remember, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, that our government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”