Voting or "Earl"?

By Scott D'Amico, Staff Writer

On Oct. 19, KFOR pre-empted its regularly scheduled programming of “My Name Is Earl” and “The Office” to air the congressional debate between Lt. Governor Mary Fallin and Paul Hunter, who are running for Oklahoma’s 5th district House seat.

 KFOR’s interruption most likely elicited two responses from the 18- to 29-year-old demographic.

The first was to change the channel.

Secondly, it meant YouTube was going to have an influx of young Oklahomans looking for ways to find out if Jim had gotten any closer to his cute co-worker at the Stamford branch.

 Maybe that’s one of the reasons we’ve had bad karma as of late with our country’s elected leaders.

Young America cares more about the politics of Dunder-Mifflin more than their own country.

The future of America has made a profound statement with their voting record­ — they just don’t care.

 According to statistics compiled by CNN.com, only 17 percent of the votes in the last presidential election came from 18- to 29-year-olds.

Their only competition came from people who were age 60 and over, who had a 24 percent turnout.

 Only 17 percent of the popular vote coming from 18- to 29-year-olds is a staggering statistic when it’s put in perspective.

This is the group of people who will be caring for the aging baby boomers and dealing with countries that have nuclear proliferation on their agenda.

Speaking of which, North Korea just tested out a nuclear weapon. If they test another, will we be fighting a war in Afghanistan, Iraq and on the Korean Peninsula?

Elected leaders will make that decision whether you vote for them or not, and that’s a decision that could have a major impact on your life.

But, if there’s ever been a time to cease the ‘It’s cool to be apathetic towards everything’ routine that’s popular with Generation Y, it’s now.

The military is heavily composed of 18- to 29- year-olds who could be ordered to sacrifice their lives for your way of life.

Although it might have been the politicians who sent them to war, the responsibility still falls upon the shoulders of the people who elected them.

The ones who didn’t vote don’t care what happens to our soldiers.

On Nov. 7, the nation will head to the polls again, with the direction of an uncertain America being decided as well as the direction of our state with the gubernatorial elections.

Maybe Generation Y can sign onto MySpace less and exercise their responsibility to vote.