I am old enough to remember being at demonstrations and at concerts where people were chanting “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.” The odder thing (in retrospect) is that all three were not generally thought of as simply hedonism, but rather as routes to enlightenment!
Apparently, any new chant would involve sex and voting. The Washington Post (tip Betsy’s Page) has a fascinating article on the movement to encourage voting for Kerry by being cool, and sometimes, apparently, using sex:
“On election night,” Julie Binder says. “You wanna get laid on election night?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of you guys,” says Brian Lin, relieved this is not some freaky hooker encounter. “Orgasmo or something, right?”
Actually, Votergasm. A group that wants you to pledge to withhold sex from nonvoters for a week after the election (“Citizen” level), or have sex with a voter (“Patriot”). Make love not war, updated for this giddy, hipster, woke-up-to-politics-yesterday club scene that is the protest left in the 2004 election.
“Is there like a screening process?” Lin asks, because now he wants in. So he follows her into the back room of the bar to the clipboards: (“Pledge-fulfilling sex must be consensual, legal and generous. And safe. And hot.”) Behind him wait two guys arguing about Michael Moore and whether “George got his [butt] whupped” at the debate. Def Leppard is on, the beer is free, the beer pong is into its 25th round, and one Columbia frosh is getting some sugar from two seriously hot babes….
When publicist Michelle Collins announces at the bar that Votergasm.org is on a mission to “get young people to vote and have sex,” it seems to this college crowd like a perfectly natural combination.
“Vote, [expletive] yeah” yells a guy from one table.
His friend adds: “Sex is awesome.”
And then everyone resumes feeling righteous and having a good time. Everyone except Holden Caulfield over there in the corner (real name: Casey Amstacher), a pale kid with shaggy black hair. “I’ll have sex when I want to have sex,” he says. “But sex is not like a motive for me to vote. It’s silly to mix up all this sex and oh, we drink beer and we’re cool and we vote for John Kerry stuff. I vote because I’m adamant about voting.”
Poor Amstacher. That brand of sobriety is so 1995.
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