Oh Save Yourself, Timothy Egan

The biggest problem with the Times' Op-Ed page is that it's almost never funny. Not that they don't try (and fail). Witness Timothy Egan:

The millennials, that echo boomer generation born after 1982, have not been heard from of late, ever since proving that they could pull away from their Facebook pages long enough to help elect a president.

HA HA! KIDS AND THEIR INTERNETS! That a man from a generation that couldn't fulfill their own revolutionary promises makes that kind of condescending joke is irritating enough. That he makes it while begging everyone under thirty to come to the rescue of the country is just galling.

Egan is right of course that the Republicans retaking Congress would be a disaster and that Barack Obama needs to get them engaged in the midterm elections. That would probably be easier though if he hadn't been a disappointment even as a pragmatist.

Exiting the voting booth, I didn't expect Barack Obama to completely reflect my politics, but almost every time some right wing nut starts crying, this administration has given in. Why did I vote for this guy if he won't tell Joe Lieberman to shut the fuck up when he floats the idea of stripping citizenship from Americans? How could Obama possibly justify expanding off-shore drilling after he spent months being the candidate opposite the moron chanting "Drill baby, drill!"

If, according to a Pew poll that Egan cites, American kids are optimistic about the future, there's a word for that: delusion. He wants us to go volunteer to clean up the Gulf? Maybe when I've got a job that's better than selling fish heads I'll take some time to go down there. Because otherwise, these heads are just going to be rotting in the sun.

Just in case you didn't get it before, Egan ends with this:

Besides, with news that George W. Bush is now on Facebook, what better time to leave the digital den?

You are horrible, Timothy Egan.