Earnestness Is for Young Persons
MTV -- who, by the way, broke T-ShirtGate -- has joined forces with the Democratic National Convention Committee and Republican National Convention Committee to pry old people's gnarled, yellow-stained fingers off of the voting booth. They're gonna make voting seem hip, radical, and fun; they are going to -- to coin a phrase -- " Rock the Vote ." How? They're putting on an essay contest! Two, actually. Because, really, nothing says "cool" like spending your summer vacation doing extra school work. Unless, of course, it's doing that extra work in order to go to a national political convention!
And, sho' nuff: Winners of the contests will speak at their ideological cohorts' convention. Hipublicans (we've heard so much about them!) 18-24 are invited to bumrush the RNC's "Stand Up and Holla!" show, answering the question, "Why is the president's call for community service important and how have you demonstrated it?" Liberal hep cats in the same demo can scribble on the DNC's topic, "Why politics is important to the younger generation" -- which, admittedly, sounds like the title of a 19th century chautauqua oration, but try to imagine it set to a Danger Mouse track. Edgy. The kids are going to have fun with this. It'll be like "Pimp My Ride," but with words instead of cars!
So dust off your laptops, open up your Strunk and White, and get down with your grammatically correct and rhetorically persuasive selves, boys and girls. Participizzle in the shizzle!
MTV Plans Political Essay Contest [AP/Yahoo]
Village Voice: Now, If We Could Just Work in a Reference to Televising the Revolution. . . [Wonkette]