The Obama generation is beginning to understand that it’s being cheated out of the American dream

We have Sirius satellite radio in our cars.  I often have mine tuned to current hits channels, both because I ferry kids and because I too like a lot of the music.  This morning, my daughter was running late, so I gave her a quick ride to the bus stop, so I wouldn’t have to give her a long ride to school.

On the way back, I flipped on the radio — and heard the three early morning talk show hosts on the “Hits 1” channel saying that they and their listeners were the first American generation since the Depression that had it harder than their parents.  The three lightweight talking heads said that their parents got out of college, got jobs, and could have a life where dad worked and mom stayed home with the children, and that this was impossible to imagine for the current crop of young people leaving high school and college.

The bit about stay-at-homes isn’t exactly true, because even in my generation, a stay-at-home mom was a luxury.  Nevertheless, their perception — and the one that they wanted their radio audience to have — is that this young generation is well and truly shafted.  And even if the bit about stay-at-home moms is wrong, everything else is correct.  These young people don’t leave college for a job, especially a job reflecting their degrees.  If they get a job at all, it has nothing to do with their studies, and that’s true even if their major wasn’t Womyn’s Studies or Puppetry.

Sirius 1 never gets into political attacks, so I didn’t hear any “and it’s all Obama’s fault” during the two or three minutes I listened to the talking heads exclaim over the fact that they and their generation face a dismal economy with equally dismal prospects.  One does wonder, though, if they or anyone in their audience is thinking “Obama promised us the moon and the stars, and all I get when I sent him to the White House was this lousy unemployment check.”

This generation will be the next Yorkshiremen: