Gen Y may garner more column inches than Sarah Palin, the GFC, and Madonna’s immobile forehead combined but they are the generation we love to hate the most, (myself included and I was unfortunately born smack bang in the middle of Y-dom), so I’m starting to wonder why our media landscape is bereft of any aggressive, arrogant scribes south of 30?
It’s not that I think we have anything particularly interesting or even fleetingly insightful or intelligent to offer on politics, popular culture or Paul Keating, but each generation before us has thrown up someone to wildly wave the banner of youth while trying not to choke on their own vomit.
Our papers are missing a trying-very-hard-to-be-controversial-and-on-the-edge ‘Youth’ columnist, chock full of the insouciance, arrogance and ignorance that comes from being part of a generation that can barely remember a time when casting a vote didn’t involve SMS. What they need is a Hip Young Thing, someone who can knock out a few wry paragraphs about blow jobs and recreational drug use, making a name for themselves with their frequent use of the word ‘f**k’ and poor grammar and syntax.
I’m thinking of a mouthy piece with a soupcon of nous and with the attitude of an MDMA-imbibing drummer about to play their first Homebake sideshow and who wields a vocabulary to Year 10 standard.
Our commentariat currently has a median age of about Mike Willesee’s hair.
OK, so Lisa Pryor is young enough to own a pair of skinny leg jeans and know who Agyness Deyne but where is the shock, the awe, the poor punning and the vitriolic scribbling to rival Germaine in her pre-Big Brother glory days?
Emma Tom may have gotten hitched outside a pub in Woolloomooloo and know how to spell cunnilingus but since she started penning missives about the perils of lactating, I think it’s no longer her time to wear the Mantle of Youth and its time for her to don the Shroud of Writing About Mortgages.
Samantha Brett blogs for the Herald about sex and relationships and her writing and with about as cutting edge as a spork.
Take a look at the rest of those who congregate on our opinion pages and you will find a bevy of journos and writers with more Senior Citizens cards between them than the Double Bay Bridge Centre.
We have Gerard Henderson who no doubt remembers when you could buy a pony for a farthing and the gaggle of scribes who fondly look back on flares and remember when Richard Neville seemed way out there man.
There’s the crusty left winger replete with a beard that hasn’t been tended to since the glory days of Manning and who still has his first year economics notes - Ross Gittins I’m talking to you.
The position of the preposterously right-wing female scribe of questionable intellect and a tendency towards the racially inflammatory verbiage (all penned under the guise of countering the supposed dangerous leftist proclivities of the media cabal) has been filled twice over. (Hello Janet, hello Miranda!)
There must be hundreds of thousands of Arts graduates itching to get their name in print- or have they en masse deserted print journalism for the lure and lucre of jobs in marketing and web development?
Currently, the only time a so-called ‘Young Person’ gets a guernsey on the nation’s opinion pages is when they’ve penned a few choice words on VSU, STDs, GHB or some other acronym spelling imminent doom for this easily led astray generation (or are the makings of a great Saturday night depending on your perspective).
To the editors of the nation’s esteemed and not so esteemed publications, I say this - make me your Generation Y scribe, your correspondent from the beer-stained trenches, reporting from the front line of black skinny-leg jeans and contrived apathy with the bravura of a young Jana Wendt minus the shoulder pads.
I have never been part of the NUS, held any position of authority or previously made any attempt to engage in the broader cultural/social/political dialogue beyond sprouting ill-conceived, rambling and drunken diatribes at the pub.
However, I do have what I would consider to be the retinue of life experiences that would put me in good stead to fill this post armed with the necessary aplomb and Absolut.
I’ve had my fair share of fumblings with B-grade indy rockers, I have stumbled into a mediocre media career, and I’ve never had a relationship last longer than a season of Big Brother. I’ve had the requisite moments of sexual and chemical deviancy, and possess the mandatory quota of gay friends (the last two most definitely not being mutually exclusive).
I have a HECS debt, a credit card debt and a sleep debt.
I can be as cynical, judgemental and self-opinionated as the next Arts graduate with but a passing memory of some French guy named Foucault.
So, call me, call me now - or I’ll just have to go out and follow my other great life ambition of snagging myself a still employed Macquarie banker, a renovated terrace in Paddo and a couple of kids named Bruno and Allegra.
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
Ukraine song pinches chord progression from The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. Fo real #sbseurovision
RT @GerardDaffy: @antsharwood all the talk over there is the grannies will win.they entered to get a church built,feelgood story
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
Abbott’s crass logic: trash the Parliament in order save it
An email was sent to almost every politician in Australia this week saying that someone should cut off…
Our special forces don’t always need special treatment
We admire them, but we’re not entirely sure why. We allow them to operate in the shadows; we rarely…
A good holiday is about unrest, not rest
Like a fat full-stop, it lay in my hand. A small orange – not exactly fresh, but purchased anyway…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not… Read more
Most commented