Fox is the unquestioned leader in CABLE news. Its numbers barely register, however, when stacked next to the eyeballs drawn to broadcast network news operations. Its demographics also skew well towards the elderly, if not ancient, side of the bell curve. This isn't the audience advertisers are all that eager to attract. But while these folks might not do a whole lot of spending, they do tend to do a whole lot of voting. Which gives Fox much of its clout. For the moment.Fox knows the "I Like Ike" pink poodle skirt generation is dying off. Fox also understands its Nielsen numbers are soon going to hinge on the Woodstock Generation's willingness to shift conservative as Social Security checks begin replacing paychecks. Fox will likely survive, but its influence will most certainly wane.Fox News is not America. MSNBC and CNN are not America. America isn't a cable TV channel. Despite its political divisions, it's a place that largely judges people for who they are rather than what they watch on the flat screen. If, that is, it bothers to judge them at all. If the purpose of your visit to the States is to talk (or worse, lecture) politics rather than to learn about and enjoy all that America has to offer, the south of France might be a better bet for your next vacation. We also have a quick cure if Fox News is a concern. It's called a remote control. Press a few buttons and the problem's solved.Despite the picture Fox might seek to paint, Americans don't wear their politics on their sleeve. Just like you, they get up in the morning, go to work or head off to school, come home and do it all again the next day. So relax. Enjoy your stay. And bring lots of Euros.
I believe it’s exactly how it should be. It’s left winged for a few years and then catapults back to the equilibrium, giving way for conservative policies. Two terms for Democratic party and then (possibly) two terms for the Republican party. Can’t get any better than that.Look at this pyramid below.You see how well balanced and beautiful this is. We have the 15–24 age group, representing 13% of the overall population. This group is the loudest of all, the only ones shouting against or for a particular party (or President). This group also tends to be primarily Liberal. Then on the other extreme, we have 65 and older group, which is 16% of the population, who generally tend to be Conservative, and usually quieter, always listening and watching carefully. Then we have the golden age group, the middle range of 30–60 years. The age group that pays most taxes, and is effected heavily by American policies. These are the people who actually care and have a better sense of American interests. This group represents roughly >60% of the population, and is the largest voting age group. This age group generally tends to be non-partisan and vote a candidate. This group is not right or left winged, this group is the smartest of all, the biggest decider of which party will win the next election or who will become the next President. These people in general do not care whether is left or right policy, they care if the policy will benefit them or not.This data explained above can very well be seen in the image below.Forget about those FAKE polls for a second, and look at the image above. See how Trump and Clinton had a tight fight when we see 30–64 group combined. These are the voters who switch parties easily so they can have a better life. If you give them sensible, common sense policies, this group will vote for you and make you win.So, no, America is not becoming right-winged. The only thing that is consistently (anti) right-winged is the American media when it comes to American politics.References:United States Age structureHow we voted — by age, education, race and sexual orientation
Born 1986, making me an early-model Millennial, according to the usual definitions. I never received any participation trophies, and I remember a time before Internet.The idea of generational labels doesn’t make sense except to broadly describe the traits of a wide cohort of people who experienced the same conditions and events at roughly the same developmental stages. But then this definition becomes too broad to be useful. Still, like religion, the primary determinant of membership is self-identification, and all other factors are secondary. So I’m a Millennial.I was 15 when the terror attacks of 9/11 happened; this has profoundly affected my views on global and domestic politics, and has made me very suspicious of government and organized religion. But then again, I never really could remember a time when the US wasn’t screwing things up abroad in its vain quest at maintaining its empire post-Soviet collapse.I was 22 when the Great Recession began. This, I think affected Millennials very profoundly, since while most of us weren’t mid-career Boomers and Xers raising families, we did graduate into the worst job market in living memory with the highest debt burden in history. This will have echoing effects throughout our entire lives.Although I managed to secure a career after about six years of trying, I’ve developed a healthy enough contempt of the status quo that the prospect of living a “normal” life has no appeal to me. I’d much rather not have a family and career. That shit traps people.So I have sympathy for my fellow “lazy” Millennials. Many are indeed shiftless layabouts and frivolous windmill-tilters, but they’re all looking for a reason to give a shit about a social model that’s actively conspiring to throw them under the bus, and many (like me) are dropping out from social expectations and figuring out in our own ways what works for us. This is how civilizations collapse, but we whipper-snappers are only a small part of the problem.I really wish the younger Millennials would listen to me. This is how cranky old men are made. Alas, I’ll have to wait about 30 more years before I have the privilege of shaking my cane at the young’uns.
To answer honestly … no. Unless the band had developed more, musically.To explain my feelings about Cobain, I should mention that I was right there for the emergence of “grunge”. I admire Cobain for one thing, and it’s not his music. It’s his “fashion”.The flannel shirt, the blue jeans. And maybe the boots. Kurt Cobain grew up in a logging town, not far from where I grew up. Honestly, the fashion sense is the only thing I really liked about “grunge”. The music … meh.My grandfather was a logger, right here in Washington state, and in the same area where Cobain grew up. He made his living chopping down trees, which probably sets him apart from the “liberal” environmentalist types who probably got into Nirvana. Kurt Cobain dressed the way I had dressed all of my life, and that’s how I identified with him. Suddenly, the way I had dressed all of my life was “cool”. As a musician myself, I liked the idea that Nirvana didn’t take the stage wearing “stage clothes”. They performed in their “street clothes”, i.e. their everyday clothes.I was actually just a few years “too old” to really relate to the grunge movement, as I was pushing 30, but I did enjoy a lot of it. But the primitivemess of Nirvana’s music … nah, just couldn’t get into it so much. Probably because, musically, I was influenced by Rush and other bands where musicianship was paramount. I didn’t enjoy “raw” noise.If Dave Grohl would have eventually taken over Nirvana, I would have enjoyed that. Grohl is amazing. In Nirvana, he would have been forever stuck behind the Cobain cult.