Blogging on Meds

Who is the voice of a generation?

Some brosef named Ian Shapira (Princeton 00′) attempts a Chelsea Clinton takedown in the WaPost today, under a headline of “Too Solemn for Her Generation?”

Like me, Chelsea’s a twentysomething (28 to my 29), a member of the generation that, as it happens, I spend a lot of time learning and writing about. We’re ironic, sarcastic and self-deprecating, a reflection of the pop culture and politics that played out while we grew up in the 1980s, 1990s and onward. We were weaned on Chevy Chase movies (”Spies Like Us,” of course, being the best), grunge and MTV’s “The Real World” (seasons 1 and 2 only, please) and trained by the Onion, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to detect spin in the most banal comments. People my age shed privacy at the nearest high-speed Internet connection and, more often than not, display the very grown-up qualities of self-awareness and self-reflection.

Correction: You, Mr Princeton, were weaned on The Real World (Puck sucks), grunge (Soundgarden sucks), and Chevy Chase (Fletch and Caddieshack aside, he sucks too). Actually a lot of 90s youth from the Northeast pursued underground cultures like hardcore-punk or emo, skateboarding, indie rock, riot grrrl, rollerblading even (guilty) or whatever, nevermind. Moreover, many of us value privacy, despite Shapira’s beef with Chelsea:

She’s clinging to her privacy as she did a decade earlier, which, to her contemporaries, could make it all the more difficult to buy what she’s selling. Maybe it’s time to finally meet the press and — not to micromanage my new Facebook friend too much, but — act our age.

Shapira misses a defining fact about “our generation.” Our generation (I’m 29 too) was actually the last to grow up in relative privacy, free from the internet’s all seeing eye. It was only around 1997, when I turned 18 and graduated high school, that the net really began to instant message, email, and social network us towards fully transparent lives.

So to say Chelsea, by wanting to keep some privacy, is out of step with her generation is incorrect. In fact, she’s holding on to the sanctity of our generation. As the last pre-web gen, many of us don’t want our lives becoming “self branded” myspace ads. Weird, some of us believe in that age old American concept of private citizenship.

Too often I cringe whenever the WaPost strays from politics and national security. Really, who is this DC-based Princetonian speaking for? What does Shapira represent? A fast-tracked uber-reporter living in the Beltway bubble—that’s about all. Maybe his essay makes sense for the under 25-set, but Generation Chelsea (born 77-80) grew up during the web revolution. We were the youngest to see life before and after. Having seen both, not all of us embrace every new technology. Some of us might say life was better before cell phone cameras and Facebook, back when life was more private…