All adult Americans now fit into one of three different age groups. Into the first fall those who are age 60+; call them the AARP. The second group covers the 35-60 age bracket; we can call them the Bobos (short for Bourgeois Bohemians, to borrow David Brooks's helpful coinage). The third group, 15-35 year olds, I will call Generation XX, for reasons to be explained later.
In contemporary American democracy, there is a division of power among these groups which runs roughly as follows:
(1) AARP votes.
(2) Bobos man the system.
(3) Generation XX defines the media.
What (1) refers to should be fairly obvious; older Americans turn out to vote in consistently higher numbers than just about any other demographic of American society.
Claim (2) should also be self-evident: the majority of politicians, government officials, reporters and pundits come from this group.
(3) requires a bit of explaining, since it encompasses two ideas. First, the media is technology-driven, and implementing new communications technologies is certainly Generation XX's forte. Second, advertisers apparently find it a lot easier to target members of Generation XX - presumably because the personalities of people living through an extended adolescence are still incompletely formed. Thus the wants and tastes of its members provide media stylists with their basic templates. Youth may be wasted on the young, but marketing isn't.
The political character and the dynamics of AARP and Bobos are fairly well understood, if only because the two groups have been around for a while and because observers are often just commmenting on their peers. But the psyche of Generation XX remains a mystery.
To see evidence of this incomprehension, all one has to do is read the many posts to this blog in which people wonder (a) why the media is so conservative lately or (b) why Joe Liebermann is still in the race - and why he still polls higher than Dean among GenXX-ers.
There are two common explanations for why the media is so conservative lately. One sees a top-down effect: corporations run the media, corporations tend to be conservative Bushophiles, ergo, the media tends to be conservative and Bushophile. Now I wouldn't deny that there is something to this; but media corporations are passive as well as active, and make it their business to learn what it is their `customers' (tv viewers, etc.) want. So a top-down theory butters only so much bread.
The other explanation is bottom-up: under Bush, and especially since 9-11, Americans have become more conservative; the media is merely catering to this tendency. Again, there is something to this. But we all know that Bush is not really a conservative - that, seen in historical perspective, Bush has governed more like a radical.
The bottom-up theory works better, however, if we factor in the truism that the demographic advertisers target most is Generation XX. Networks want to make money, which they can only do through advertising, and so they shape their coverage so as to draw in more viewers of the kind that advertisers want. If Generation XX has become more conservative lately, then what's been happening to the media begins to make more sense. I would argue that the rise of FOX (and the FOXizing of the other news sources) is a reflection rather than a cause of Generation XX's conservatism.
Now, one might argue that things are the other way around: that Generation XX has been putty in the hands of evil FOX executives. But then one will need to explain why it is that FOX features things like the O'Reilly Show AS WELL AS the Simpsons and suchlike. Is it the case that propaganda minister Murdoch can't get his message straight? No; his network is simply a creature of his target audience's tastes.
So how did Generation XX develop its conservative colors? The story is a long and complex one so I will compress it into an episode from popular culture. About a decade ago there was a `national dialogue' between the generations in which Bobo media types examined the upcoming generation for signs of a distinctive culture. Badly disguised was the scorn with which they greeted what they found: slackers! losers! ironists! No worthy heirs these to the proud generation of 1968. To add insult to injury, the pejorative designation Generation X was attached to the whole lot. It would be like a parent introducing her son to a friend as `what's-his-face.'
The seed of progressivism miscarried, and Generation XX has been drifting rightward ever since, in reaction to this humiliation. Now, at their worst, its members live down to this label, are cynical, knowing, whiny, alienated individuals, passing their lives in a kind of West Bank of the mind. And not surprisingly a good many of them like to watch FOX stick it to the `liberal' media.
(That said, they are a hard-working bunch, marvellously tolerant, and not given to violence - witness the record low crime rates of the past decade. And these generalizations apply more to its men than its women, who promise to be its pride and salvation. No nation has ever produced a more confident, canny, dynamic, and ambitious group of female citizens. I will mention just two pieces of striking anecdotal evidence that have come my way: the student body at the University of Georgia is 65% female, a percentage which would be higher still were it not for some behind-the-scenes affirmative action. At selective private colleges across the country, the GPA of female students averages .25 points higher than that of male students. I've dubbed my peers Generation XX here in honor of the female XX chromosome.)
It should be clear now why Joe Liebermann maintains a stubborn presence in the polls, and why against all odds and expectations he does better than Dean among Generation XX. For what is Liebermann, if not a projection of that generation's self-image? A man who has turned into a right-wing moderate after starting out as a progressive; the most phlegmatic, unprepossessing, and unrhetorical of politicians; the whiner; the slacker; the ironist. And most recently, the man dissed - how history repeats itself - by that arch-Bobo, Al Gore.
Dean should poll well among the AARP, and may even stir his fellow Bobos to cast off that stain to their generational reputation which is George W. Bush. But if Dean wants to make greater headway among the young male demographic (who are, fortunately, more apt to like Bush than to vote for him), he would be well advised to pay closer attention to the success of that notorious failure, Joe Loserman.
The day I hear Dean or Clark say `No Generation Deserves to be Called Generation X!', I will know that the FOX bubble has been pricked at last.
P.S. A tip of the hat to gregonthe28th, nevsky, and many other bloggers who have helped me think this through. I'm sure I've unknowingly stolen some ideas here.