There are very few things that I hate more than being talked down to, which may very well be why your much-discussed State of the Union response last week rubbed me in the exact opposite direction of my fur on Tuesday, Mr. Rubio. I caught every single word – and gulp –of your address, Mr. Senator, and to be frank, I demand an apology of sorts.
You see, my compatriots and I are the most connected generation in history. We are able to, in a moment’s notice, use the spooky magic of the Internet to fact check every single word you broadcast into the public sector in real time. And we enjoy doing it. We appreciate facts, and we expect you to use them, abuse them and make them up as you please, like a real politician. So when you turn in a speech full of enough sweeping generalizations to make a teen abstinence activist blush, inquisitive college kids like me get a tad ornery.
Thank you for kindly informing me that the government creates “complicated rules and laws.” If you could hang out in my living room and inform me when my fireplace is hot, that’d be a massive help as well. Your job as a Senator is to create “complicated rules and laws,” Mr. Rubio. You are the government. If you refuse to make the scary, scary rules that allow our country to operate and keep businesses from dumping asbestos into my local water supply, who will?
Another gem from your rebuttal speech: “Our government can’t control the weather.” Why not, Mr. Senator? The Chinese claim to have built weather cannons for the Beijing Olympics that destroyed the city’s typical life-smothering smog. What say you to that? Is this why your party fears the Chinese so much? Can I now blame Philadelphia’s inconveniently snowy February on menacing Chinese weather guns? I demand answers.
Jokes aside, I wanted to like you, Mr. Rubio. I wanted to believe that you really were the “Savior of the Republican Party,” as Time Magazine was so quick to anoint you this month. I wanted to believe that your party’s recent thrashing at the Presidential polls had forced your constituents to modernize and align yourselves with causes that young people could get behind. Like any semblance of science, for instance.
Instead, you denied global warming, blankly ignored the raging gun control debate, and served the American public more clichéd statements about Republican values than a seventh-grade Social Studies class. Thank you for informing me that you think government is a bad, bad thing. It’s great to know that you hate taxes more than Ke$ha hates disinfecting herself. It was nice to hear that you think that I should be able to afford college, Mr. Senator.
It would have been even nicer if you told me how.
Jerry Iannelli can be reached at gerald.iannelli@temple.edu or on Twitter @jerryiannelli.
