Today, at the Senate's hearing on mobile privacy, caused by Apple's tracking program being revealed to the public last month, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, in the midst of questioning Facebook's representative, Bret Taylor, uttered the following.
"It's my general feeling that people who are 20, 21, 22 years old really don't have any social values." Upon hearing the laughter of the audience, he insisted, "No, it's true."
We have a major problem in this country with getting young people to get engaged and vote. The cynicism seems to grow every year with the disappointments that inevitably come from politics. Some of us (I'm still under 30 for a few more months, dammit!) keep plugging along and staying involved, but others who aren't used to the process often drop out. It has always been a struggle to get young people to stay involved in the process, and these sorts of comments are horribly counterproductive.
It does not serve us, the party that tends to attract more young people, to have one of our highest-ranking Senators making comments like this. It only reinforces the belief amongst young people that politicians don't give a damn about them, and between trying to hack up Medicare and Social Security, growing the debt so it's on them to pay it off as they get older, making college more unaffordable by cutting education funding, and then comments like this.
I urge all of you to contact Senator Rockefeller and demand an apology for his inexcusable comments. My letter below the fold.