The Rock the Vote movement, which began in 1990 in an effort to
get young people to register to vote for any candidate they wished
as long as it was a Democrat, is in dire straits.
According to the Los Angeles Times,
Rock the Vote is the proud owner of $700,000 in debt, and the group
has cut its staff from 20 people in 2004 to just two today.
The people, and if the trend continues, person, who now run Rock
the Vote have said that the public has the impression that because
of the high profile nature of the celebrities who publicly endorse
Rock the Vote, the group already has plenty of money and there’s no
reason to donate.
Aside from the admission that the zillionaires who show up to
offer Rock the Vote face time but conveniently “left the checkbook
at home,” the reason Rock the Vote is falling into a financial hole
and their offices are now emptier than Paris Hilton’s CAT scan is
simple:
A) Businesses run by liberals who are dumb enough to believe in,
and practice, anti-capitalism are doomed from the start (if you’re
going to have a fake liberal store front, it needs to be supported
by capitalist joists, the way the phonies who run Ben & Jerry’s
ice cream do it).
B) Thankfully, there simply aren’t enough idiotic liberal kids
anymore. Out of those millions of young people that Rock the Vote
registered, how many were “the enemy”? Republican kids go to Pearl
Jam concerts, too, but don’t tell anybody.
C) Rock the Vote is pushed big on MTV, which has gone from a
musical lark to a horrible and mind-numbingly vacuous pop-culture
train wreck. MTV’s core audience are people who will never be
coaxed out of their chairs on election day because odds are they’re
engaged in pre-show activities for that night’s “Real World.” Just
because they registered to vote because they were drunk at a Dave
Matthews concert doesn’t mean they’ll actually go vote, no matter
how much Woody Harrelson and “Flea” from the Red Hot Chili Peppers
beg them.
D) Getting people registered to vote, and assuming they will
vote, is as far apart as showing people how to fill out an
astronaut application form and expecting them to be on the next
Space Shuttle.
E) Leftist celebrities wildly overestimate the power of their
own opinion. To think that — if Moby, Jennifer Aniston and the
bald Tinkertoy from REM tell us to vote, and for whom to vote — we
lemmings will gladly leap off whatever political cliff they do,
should be, and is, an insult of biblical proportions.
Celebrities can really get full of themselves. Years ago, my
wife and I saw Don Henley in concert. Some great music, but in
order to hear it, those in attendance were forced to put up with a
sanctimonious monologue about saving Walden Woods that would have
made Thoreau himself take his own life. We came to hear “Boys of
Summer” and “Hotel California,” and ended up nearly violating
federal law by wringing the neck of an Eagle.
Rock the Vote spent years exposing “Generation Ritalin” to such
heavy issues as what a candidate’s hash pipe of choice, if their
skivvies are boxers or briefs, or which historical figure they
would most like to funnel beer with, and then those very people
expect the same kids to react with a passion and knowledge for
actual issues at the voting booth? This is like waiting for a kid
who has only been exposed to Pauly Shore movies to start reciting
Shakespeare.
But the biggest problem for Rock the Vote is that its own worst
enemy. Inherent in liberal thinking is the belief that “somebody
else” should pay for everything.
In a liberal organization that survives on raised funds combined
with supporters who also embrace the gimme-gimme-gimme ideology, it
doesn’t take long before you run out of “somebody elses” while the
supporters stand around staring at each other, wondering what
happened, clinging tightly to their wallets, and blaming it all on
bad accounting or public misconception.
Rock the Vote could soon be on to the final chapter in its life
— Chapter 7.
