With priorities a little askew, maybe it's time for our society to re-examine itself

Because this and this are two of the top stories on the Washington Post and Blog rings.

Political jokes have fueled our society for the longest time. But for goodness sake, when Howard Dean can be literally forced out of the political spectrum because of some noise that he made in an excited rally after the Iowa Caucuses, perhaps it's time for us to look at our priorities.

At least, within 48 hours of the fact, the infamous Inconvenient Youth scandal hasn't saturated the webrings and video sites with parody sufficient to unseat Gore. But in retrospect, while we dodged a bullet with the Gore III fiasco, greater things are happening in our society including the alive-and-kicking spell of racism from a Louisiana school to the recent court decision to allow segregation in schools, our energies seem to be directed at correcting the wrong social inequities.

After reviewing several of the Democratic primary candidates, I took quick note of the fact that the only person expressly addressing the issue of minority inequalities in business was Barack Obama in his plan to fight poverty (near the bottom).

Not to mention the fact that we've grown so complacent on an international level that stories like the developing Russian missile controversy fly virtually under the radar. This kind of disregard for the social universality of our existence is also part of the reason that we've developed no kind of plan in our government to deal with the Genocide in Darfur, global poverty, the conflict in the Congo, or even the work of other madmen in the world like former Liberian President Charles Taylor who's rebel groups committed unthinkable atrocities in Sierra Leone.

Even further in that state of social isolation is a general neglect of domestic poverty and a lack of decent health coverage for the poor demonstrating that along with our society's disregard for fellow, non-American man is a disregard for fellow, American man.

Similarly, though, there is hope. Since the new scrutiny of conservative pundits like Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael Savage began just a few months ago as their hate mongering, fact bending dogma came under more intelligent analysis, progress is being made in removing these voices from the airwaves and their influence is being duly noted. Referring to women who wear burqas as "hateful Nazi[s]" that want to "kill your children" to a national audience is one thing, but the fact that for this long we as a society have simply accepted it is another. Similarly, Ann Coulter's attack on John Edwards is sometimes met with agreeable laughter from conservatives. Is this really the kind of language that we need flying around our politics and is it any wonder that we've become desensitized to the important issues?

It's about time that the change begins, and it begins with college students right now. According to Millenials go to College by William Strauss and Neil Howe, studies show that the incoming generation of High School and College students are displaying an increase in public service, and an overall decrease in long-term, detrimental behavior like teen pregnancy and smoking. This kind of service and overall outlook for the long-term is exactly what we need in this country. When we can't even spare a couple of dollars to pay for our fellow man's well-being because we don't want their problems in "our backyards" the outlook is good for the Millenial generation and what we're about to do to the political landscape.

On top of this, a very interesting article about...well...the universe.