96 The Young of Generation Obama

名称：96 The Young of Generation Obama
内容简介：
晨读英语美文 真题阅读
[00:06.58]A new study from the Center for
[00:09.48]Information and Research on Civic Learning
[00:12.36]and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University
[00:18.00]shows that today's youth vote
[00:20.73]in larger numbers than previous generations,
[00:23.50]and a 2008 study from the Center
[00:26.67]for American Progress adds that
[00:28.91]increasing numbers of young voters
[00:32.69]and activists support
[00:34.59]traditionally liberal causes.
[00:37.06]But there's no easy way to see
[00:39.22]what those figures mean in real life.
[00:40.82]During the presidential campaign,
[00:44.57]Barack Obama assembled a racially
[00:46.89]and ideologically diverse coalition
[00:50.05]with his message of hope and change;
[00:53.94]as the reality of life
[00:56.56]under a new administration settles in,
[00:59.24]some of those supporters
[01:01.23]might become disillusioned.
[01:03.19]As the nation moves further
[01:06.29]into the Obama presidency,
[01:08.22]will politically engaged young people
[01:11.76]continue to support the president
[01:13.62]and his agenda,
[01:14.80]or will they gradually drift away?
[01:17.33]The writers of Generation O
[01:19.12](short for Obama), a new Newsweek blog
[01:24.34]that seeks to chronicle
[01:25.76]the lives of a group of
[01:27.31]young Obama supporters,
[01:28.82]want to answer that question.
[01:30.97]For the next three months,
[01:33.32]Michelle Kremer and
[01:35.09]11 other Obama supporters,
[01:36.87]ages 19 to 34,
[01:40.30]will blog about life
[01:42.63]across mainstream America,
[01:44.51]with one twist:
[01:46.25]by tying all of their ideas
[01:48.54]and experiences to the new president
[01:50.68]and his administration,
[01:52.45]the bloggers will try to
[01:54.70]start a conversation about
[01:56.44]what it means to be young
[01:58.51]and politically active in America today.
[02:01.28]Malena Amusa, a 24-year-old writer
[02:04.82]and dancer from St. Louis
[02:07.14]sees the project as a way
[02:09.06]to preserve history as it happens.
[02:11.42]Amusa, who is traveling to India
[02:13.85]this spring to finish a book,
[02:15.87]then to Senegal to teach English,
[02:19.65]has ongoing conversations with her friends
[02:22.97]about how the Obama presidency
[02:25.44]has changed their daily lives
[02:27.73]and hopes to put some of those ideas,
[02:29.96]along with her global perspective,
[02:32.64]into her posts.
[02:34.53]She's excited because,
[02:36.51]as she puts it,
[02:38.53]“I don't have to wait until 15 years
[02:40.43]from now” to make sense of the world.
[02:42.03]Henry Flores, a political-science professor
[02:46.03]at St. Mary's University,
[02:49.01]credits this younger generation's
[02:52.14]political strength to their embrace of technology.
[02:54.94]“The Internet exposes them to more thinking,”
[02:58.35]he says, “and groups that are like-minded
[03:02.01]in different parts of the country
[03:03.89]start to come together.”
[03:05.76]That's exactly what the Generation O bloggers
[03:09.60]are hoping to do.
[03:11.61]The result could be a group of young people
[03:14.19]that, like their boomer parents,
[03:16.34]grows up with a strong sense of purpose
[03:19.23]and sheds the image of apathy
[03:22.15]they've inherited from Generation X.
[03:24.83]It's no small challenge for a blog
[03:27.42]run by a group of ordinary—
[03:29.58]if ambitious—young people,
[03:31.57]but the members of Generation O
[03:34.05]are up to the task.