The big news going around the interweb the past few days has been this recent survey of high school kids and their attitudes towards the First Amendment. Naturally, as every survey that measures teen attitudes, the results are shocking, SHOCKING! Before we get to the seriousness, first comes the obligatory sarcasm. Teens are idiots, and we're all morons because we already knew this. We were all teenagers once, and if you can dimly reach back into your memories, you'll remember that it was a time filled with angst and drama and self-important crap, none of which was either very intelligent or important. Except the part where Mary liked Tommy but didn't want Ted to know, so I had to pass a secret note to Jane during third period Calc. That was very important. Any survey of teen attitudes towards anything should come with a normalizing secondary survey, to calibrate the results of the first. So, if you ask teens aboutt heir attitudes towards the First Amendment, you should also compare those results to their attitudes towards SpongeBob Squarepants (Are his pants too square?), their attitudes towards fast food (Would you die if you had to work at Taco Bell or TGIF?), their parents (unhip or dorks or IHateYouAndIHopeIDieSoYou'llBeSorry), and who really is the hottest girl in school (Tammy, but she's also a bitch). And once the obvious results come back (that teens are idiots and we should raise the drinking and driving ages to 25), it'll put this First Amendment survey into some perspective. That being said, it seems to me that very few people get the true signifigance of what these results are saying. Music should be uncensored, political acts restricted, and theoretical First Amendment stuff that only lawyers and arts deal with should be limited. Or, in plain english, Cool Stuff I Like should be free, stuff Adults Do That I Barely Care About should be limited, Theoretical Crap That Has No Bearing On My Life should be tightly regulated. This is not all that different from anybody at any age that I've ever spoken to. One can even boil it down to the simple Everything Should Be Free ... Except Stuff I Disagree With. And again, this is no suprise to anyone that has been to college in the last 10 years. Political Correctness is all about how all ideas and all cultures should be respected, except the ones found to be objectionable. So, save yourself the trouble of getting caught up in the media hype and remember: Teens are Idiots Teens are just like regular folk.
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