Tuesday, October 14, 2008

You Shouldn't Vote

John Stassel says young people shouldn't vote because they are too dumb:





Trick or Vote and The Bus Project respond with parody, by saying, hey, old people are too dumb to vote too:



So, the message of the day is: Regardless of whether you are young or old, serve your country by not voting. And, please, for the love of God, remain indoors at all times if you cannot even identify a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Mos Def.

6 comments:

Brian said...

Wow. Watching that 20/20 "News"cast made me feel insulted, belittled, and talked down to, even though I knew everyone they showed a picture of except Mos Def. I didn't know that they had hired the Jaywalker writers over at ABC as well. Thanks for posting this.

Anonymous said...

Ummm, no, that's not the message of the second video...that's why it's a parody.

They're saying that everyone--young and old alike-- should vote, regardless of whether or not some twit like John Stossel thinks they're qualified to.

Dan S said...

Umm, yes, I get that...

Anonymous said...

And some liberconterianists refuse to vote as a form of protest against a federal government out of control in every phase of its responsibility and the over-stepped bounds it has commandeered through bullying, intimidation, usurpation (is this a word?), fear-mongering, and pandering.

Tim said...

I understand Stossel's premise. I was sympathetic to it myself before I gave it much thought. I've toyed with the idea of giving people a test to make sure they're well informed, so that no one who thinks, for example, that Obama is a Muslim should be allowed to vote for that reason.

But after thinking about it for ten seconds I realize how unfair that is. It harkens back to poll taxes and literacy tests designed to keep people out of the voting process.

And Stossel's criteria seem ridiculous to me as well. I wouldn't recognize Bader-Ginsberg's picture because I don't ever watch footage of the supreme court. I read about it, or hear about it from NPR, but I couldn't pick a lot of these people out of a lineup. He's favoring one form of media over another.

Anonymous said...

In this case, being right and being legal are two different things.

I think the point Stossel is making (partly tongue in cheek) is that not all people are 'qualified' to make a wise choice. A point of fact, not a point of rights under the law and certainly not a PC point to be sure.

Certainly, having a "political IQ" poll tax (especially one run by a guy with a moustache as cheesy as his) is illegal and against the liberal ideals that the country now lives by (remember, there once actually WERE poll taxes, that we actually had to live with), but the fact that wiser people make wiser choices is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer.