The Sisyphus Comments

Remember – It’s All About Me!

During a recent town hall meeting with presidential candidate John Edwards, the folks who were in attendance were given the opportunity to ask questions.

A student at the University of New Hampshire named Jenny Ballantine, seized the opportunity to get her fifteen minutes of fame. I hesitate to call her diatribe a question but she did include a question somewhere in there. What follows was her “question”:

Hi. My name is Jenny Ballantine and I’m a senior here. I’ve kind of been all over the place. I’m going to throw you a little zinger, so it’s not so much a question. It’s more words of encouragement and inspiration on my behalf.

I’ve been on my own since 14. I am one of those people that you’re talking about that is poverty stricken. I made less than 8,000 this past year. Instead of going to school, I could have gone the dirty place, the bad place. I need help. I need severe help. I need to be able to look to my leader and see words of encouragement, words of hope. I need to be able to trust that person. I need to be able to know that I’m going to grow in a world that’s not going to be full of hate and prejudice and racism and to know that I matter, that I wasn’t just dumped in this world for no particular reason whatsoever. I’m — pardon my French. I’m busting my ass, still in school. I work 25 to 30 hours a week, and it’s just me and my dog.

So what can you do for the people that are in my situation that are trying their damnedest in school, wanting to go to grad school, is going to be hit with the loans — oh, God the loans! Oh, Jesus — and I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. I don’t know what I want to be when I’m an adult. But I’m 22 right now. So people are like, “Honey, you are an adult.” So sorry.

So I know this isn’t a question, but, you know, it’s about me. It’s about me voting for you or supporting somebody who’s going to be the next president. So it’s all about me right now. I’ve always wanted to say that. Just kidding.

For some reason, her “question/statement” really irritated me. Her comments just wreak of the entitlement attitude that has taken over this county. When I heard her comments, the first thing that popped into my mind was we sure have come a long way since John Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – but what you can do for your country.”

Somehow our society has deteriorated to the point where this young lady felt comfortable standing up before a candidate for the highest office in our country and essentially saying her vote was for sell to the highest bidder. I wonder if she ever stopped to think about the hundreds of thousands of people who have died to protect her right to cast that vote. I hope her attitude is her’s alone and not that of her generation or we all have problems.