Anonymity

On the internet, everything is so easy to escape from. A person can launch verbal assaults and disappear without every having to confront his victim ever again. It's the equivalent of a hit and run, but the different is the police will come and track you down. There's no sovereign internet authority to do so on the internet, and maybe that will change with greater forum moderation on sites such as this. I suspect there are deeper sociological reasons that create this kind of mentality, but suffice it to say that consumer technology has enabled much of this behavior. We have quickly lost touch with sincerity of communication, and the giant veil provided by the internet is the perfect enabling agent for profuse sarcasm when it comes to split opinions.

Plastic Surgeons

I find his comments accerbic, given that I am older than her, have no deep facial lines or wrinkles and simply attribute that to good genes. I have never and never will resort to altering myself in order to conform with the dictates of a world overly obsessed with youth. The current obsession, this need to generisize everything and everyone is frightening. The lines we wear on our faces or bodies, evidence the life we've lived; that we have loved and lost and laughed and cried and felt deeply. How sad that we can no longer celebrate that uniqueness, but rather aspire to own it through a surgeon's knife.

American Idiot

Man, I can't disagree more with this review. It's like he saw a different show than I did. I'm a huge fan of Green Day, of this album, and I thought the show did both justice. Everybody keeps complaining about the narrative and that's just not the point. This show is about a group of people that haven't had a voice. It's about the people that stay on their couch and do nothing with their life despite screaming the whole time that it's what they're supposed to do. It's about over-exposure to the media and falling prey to what authority tells you to do despite trying to avoid just that. It's about making poor decisions and having to come home with your tail between your legs. While watching it I kept thinking about how I know each of these characters in my own life, and that finally they are given a voice in an arena that's attempting to reach out to a whole new audience than before. Green Day's genius is in their ability to put subversive counter-culture ideas into mainstream pop music so as to get their message out to the most people possible. Putting this show on Broadway does just that, and I feel like it's important for people to remember that this is not "selling out", it's finding a larger venue to get a message out, and re-invigorating an important artistic piece that came out 6 years ago. I loved it, I was moved, I was a fan of the band and the album before and this show only made me love both more. It's an important show and one that gives voice to a generation and says some pretty sobering stuff, not to mention the music is great, the cast is totally committed, the set/lights/sound are dazzling and it keeps the soul of what made this album great in the first place. Couldn't disagree with Scott more.

Nuclear Holocausts

If there is a glimmer of hope to offset the ticking timebomb of a theocracy sparking a nuclear holocaust, it's the rise of secular and atheistic protest of the younger generations, not just seen in Western democracies exhausted by the abuses and disinformation of the Catholic Church or the slimy intersection of Protestantism and conservative politics, but also with the recent Iranian outrage after those farcical election results, or the criminally under-promoted RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). We are starting to see a new generation of people in the Middle East who realise all too well, just how transparent a government basing its laws on Bronze Age texts really is.

Illusions

She's talking about the lies we let ourselves believe in order to make things easier, or pretend that things are the way we want them to be. You hold on to illusions because it makes life easier.

She's talking about trying to let them go and grow up and move on.

The U.S. Army

“I don’t imagine these trained killers would ever make decent fathers.”

If you don’t view Iraqis (or Muslims in general) as full humans, then killing them is not any more complicated than killing a cow or a chicken. The Nazis and all state propaganda seek to demonize their opponents in order to make the killing of them easier. I have family fighting for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, and you would be astonished at the lack of respect they exhibit for these people or their culture. These kids of ours over there are more like Terminix Pest Control employees than they are liberators of hearts and minds.