Today, at the Senate's hearing on mobile privacy, caused by Apple's tracking program being revealed to the public last month, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, in the midst of questioning Facebook's representative, Bret Taylor, uttered the following.
"It's my general feeling that people who are 20, 21, 22 years old really don't have any social values." Upon hearing the laughter of the audience, he insisted, "No, it's true."
We have a major problem in this country with getting young people to get engaged and vote. The cynicism seems to grow every year with the disappointments that inevitably come from politics. Some of us (I'm still under 30 for a few more months, dammit!) keep plugging along and staying involved, but others who aren't used to the process often drop out. It has always been a struggle to get young people to stay involved in the process, and these sorts of comments are horribly counterproductive.
It does not serve us, the party that tends to attract more young people, to have one of our highest-ranking Senators making comments like this. It only reinforces the belief amongst young people that politicians don't give a damn about them, and between trying to hack up Medicare and Social Security, growing the debt so it's on them to pay it off as they get older, making college more unaffordable by cutting education funding, and then comments like this.
I urge all of you to contact Senator Rockefeller and demand an apology for his inexcusable comments. My letter below the fold.
Senator,
I have generally been a supporter of you over the years, and feel that you have been a pretty good senator and a pretty good Democrat. However, I STRONGLY object to your words earlier today.
"It's my general feeling that people who are 20, 21, 22 years old really don't have any social values,"
You said that to Bret Taylor of Facebook today in a Senate hearing about privacy. While I feel that Facebook has, at times, done a poor job of maintaining privacy, your comment is a terrible generalization. Perhaps you should ask the President about the values of 20-22 year olds. Perhaps you should look at how many college kids volunteer for good causes all across the country. I'm sure many of them have worked on your campaign, too.
Constantly, we hear about how young people tune out, don't want to engage in politics, all sorts of stuff....and now we know why. It's because of comments like yours. You hurt the process with those comments. You hurt the chances of young people's engagement in politics when you demean them with a generalization.
I am severely disappointed with you, and I feel that you owe all young Americans an apology for your remarks. You should be ashamed.