by Lovia Larkin

Created on: May 29, 2009

What goes around comes around. My mother used to tell me that growing up and now as I have reached the point of motherhood, I believe that I know what she was saying at least in part. The fads and fashions that were so "rad" when I was growing up were nothing new to her, they were nothing more than slight alterations of the fashions that she grew up with. The clothes that my teenage son wears now? They are merely a refit of the clothes that I or my older brother wore. This is much like the political retrofit that the youth are experiencing now with the difference being that instead of 30 years for the cycle it is more like a 50 year cycle.

Do I believe that teenage Americans are being influenced by conservatives like Limbaugh, Beck and O'Reilly? Yes, I do. The teenagers of today are witness to broken families, drug use and uncontrollable spending that has affected not only their parent lives, but are affecting their lives as well. They are yearning for a stability that they haven't found. Some might say that their heads are too filled with the sound of their music and the graphics that flash before their eyes. Instant gratification is the norm, they want change and they want it now.

While it is true that the teenagers of today expect information, entertainment and objects instantaneously; they are also searching for something that will change their world. They aren't finding what they want for the future in the instant gratification at hand and are turning back, tuning in, and turning around to a world more fulfilling, stable and dare we say in this day and age moral? They are tiring of the splash and are wanting more stability. They are tired of having people tell them what want them to hear, tired of hearing adults gloss their bad behavior over, tired of being told to "give" back to their community, to volunteer from individuals who expect from others what they do not do themselves. Their world is spinning out of control and so they tune into the channels and features where the "spin stops."

That is where O'Reilly, Beck and yes even Limbaugh come in. They stand against those fallacies, falsehoods and tabloid flashes that encroach their daily lives. With O'Reilly and his tag line "we are looking out for you" and "the spin stops here" they find something apart from the twisted spin of the majority of the network news programs who are more interested in what type of sneakers that Michelle Obama is wearing, than the fact that she was wearing those

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