Twee-ness explains the voter apathy of the 2014 youth vote and binds the low-information voter cultivated by RWNJs to what seems to be the quadrennial and oddly not biennial target of Rock-The-Vote campaigns, more often what Boomer liberals hope will be the often absent portion of a fusion coalition to resist the sadly pathological GOP electorate. We have always had this "parenthetical suspension of innocence belief" meme in our television programming: Bewitched, My Mother the Car, Gilligan's Island, Knight Rider, Malcolm in the Middle, The Big Bang Theory. These are but examples of the Ur-version of Twee-ism: New Girl Grifters Sarah (Hockey Mom) Palin and Christine (Not a Witch) O'Donnell were the 2008 Twee-O-P and even exorcist Bobby (Kenneth the Page) Jindal and Mark Sanford and the Appalachian Trail were Twee-O-P. Oddly, it's hard to tell whether the YAF or the YR are more Godwin Youth than Twee-O-P, since they do seem to embrace and salute whatever prevailing GOP meme is present rather than the much more geriatric Tea Party membership. Fortunately the US RWNJs will discover this salute which doubtless 'baggers will use with Twee-like vigor in the coming months:
The Nazi-esque salute has caught on with sports celebrities too, including French-born British soccer player Nicolas Anelka who made the gesture the other day, then, incredibly, tried to claim that President Obama did the same thing. The President most certainly did not. Obama’s photo is of the President brushing dirt off his shoulder, which was a ‘thing’ during the 2008 campaign, suggesting he was brushing off Hillary’s criticism. It was not a quasi-fascist salute.
But Twee-ness as innocent quirkiness's reaction to degeneracy might be how such gestures will be framed in the future, not unlike the absurdity of RWNJ analysis of the relative heights of PBO's bowing to other world leaders.
Is Twee the right word for it, for the strangely persistent modern sensibility that fructifies in the props departments of Wes Anderson movies, tapers into the waxed mustache-ends of young Brooklynites on bicycles, and detonates in a yeasty whiff every time someone pops open a microbrewed beer? Well, it is now. An across-the-board examination of this thing is long overdue, and the former Spin writer Marc Spitz is to be congratulated on having risen to the challenge. With Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion, and Film, he's given it a name, and he's given it a canon. (The canon is crucial, as we shall see.) And if his book is a little all over the place -well, so is Twee. Spitz hails it as "the most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop". He doesn't even put an arguably in there, bless him. You're Twee if you like artisanal hot sauce. You're Twee if you hate bullies. Indeed, it's Spitz's contention that we're all a bit Twee: the culture has turned. Twee's core values include "a healthy suspicion of adulthood"; "a steadfast focus on our essential goodness"; "the cultivation of a passion project" (T-shirt company, organic food truck); and 'the utter dispensing with of 'cool' as it's conventionally known, often in favor of a kind of fetishization of the nerd, the geek, the dork, the virgin." http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/the-twee-revolution/372273/
It could be a form of creeping Bieberism although perhaps not a Blelieber, Jonathan Krohn was the Honey Boo-Boo of the Twee-O-P and perhaps he will make an appearance in 2016 as some form of libertarian revisionist epiphany or some other such cipher will make his/her sideshow appearance.YouTube Video
Krohn wrote Defining Conservatism, which was self-published in 2008, when he was 13 years old, because he felt the term conservatism was often misused. The book was in part a response to criticism that John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, received regarding his conservative credentials. The book outlines four fundamental principles of conservative thought: support for the United States Constitution, opposition to abortion, less government, and more personal responsibility. Krohn went on to apply the principles to current events and define whether specifically cited actions violated those principles. The book was dedicated to Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Barry Goldwater, whom Krohn describes as his political heroes, along with South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint. Krohn paid to have the book published from his own savings. He described it as a "first effort" and immediately planned to write a second one, which he said would focus in part on Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe. In January 2009, Krohn contacted organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference and asked to speak at the event. Organizers were reportedly skeptical, but gave him a three-minute spot on a panel about grassroots activists. He delivered the speech, on February 27, 2009 and described the conservative principles outlined in his book. When the speech was over, the panel moderator said, "Watch out, David Keene," referring to the chairman of the American Conservative Union. The next day at the conference, William Bennett said, "I used to work for Ronald Reagan and now I'm a colleague of Jonathan Krohn's!" The speech attracted the attention of national media outlets, and became popular online. Sam Stein of The Huffington Post said of the speech, "It was filled with the type of rhetorical flow and emotional pitch one would expect from a seasoned hand. Except, is more than four years away from being able to vote.
in 2012 he grew up. I hope he was old enough to vote last week just as I hope that in TV stage productions Peter Pan gets to be played as Pinocchio might wish for, by "a real boy". There death or even perpetual adolescence cannot be averted by clapping for Tinkerbell or crapping on PBO or HRC.
Now, I'm just another white, comic-book collecting, sci-fi watching, film-obsessing, satirizing, sorta stereotypical Jewish nerd who's never been laid. And no, that's not the reason I switched, either. Nor did I switch so that I could fit in at NYU in the fall. If you think that's the case, you obviously don't know how this stuff works. See, when someone posts a video on YouTube it's out there in the global consciousness forever. How do you suppose I'll fit in anywhere, much less in a school environment, with a clip of my nasal rantings about conservatism's four"pillars" floating around the Web? Do you seriously think such an easily lambasted clip will disappear because I announced I changed my mind? Have you met the users of the Internet? I would love it if a bunch of angry right-wingers stopped saying stupid things about me. I also want a six-pack, a mansion in the Hamptons and a beautiful woman with cans the size of my head. None of these things will happen, and I'm pretty comfortable with that. More accurately, I'm comfortable with who I am, which is all I can ever hope for anyway. Jonathan Krohn is a former conservative pundit who is now the International Affairs and Politics Fellow for the Kurdish news organization Rudaw. He has written for various American websites and publications on domestic politics and foreign affairs including The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, and The New York Times' Local East Village blog. He has also produced reportage for the European public television channels Arte and RTS.
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