Hilarious.

When I set out in the Boston neighborhood of Allston to do my man-on-the-street interviews about involvement in politics in the 18-24 crowd, I wasn't expecting much of a response. I live in Allston. Allston is a young neighborhood, with more than half of its residents between the ages of 20 and 34 (according to a 1990 census).

I wouldn't have been surprised if one or two of the people I interviewed had said they saw Obama the first time he spoke at the Common, but weren't going again because they didn't want to cough up the $23 [the second time he came to town, the fund-raiser cost that much to attend]. Or that The Daily Show made Giuliani seem like a real tool, so they’d like to vote for someone who could beat him. Something along those lines. And, to be quite honest, their lack of political involvement-- their overwhelming "no" answers to the last question, "Are you involved in the campaign of the candidate you support in the primary?"-- didn't surprise me in the least. It didn't even offend me that much.

At the risk of sounding like yet another politically-apathetic Allstonite, it is "just" the primary. It's not like I was talking to people who said they didn't plan on voting in the presidential election because they didn't care, or because they didn't think their vote mattered. Most people I talked to said they were registered to vote, even if they weren't sure with what party. The Massachusetts primary isn't until March 4—they have another 3 months to decide who they want to vote for, if anyone. The optimist in me thinks that at least a few of them will watch the debates after it’s narrowed down to two candidates. They’ll pick the candidate whose views best match their own, and go to the polls on Election Day.

What surprised me was how comfortable everyone seemed with this. “Oh, are these questions all about politics?” one person asked me after he answered that he doesn’t affiliate himself with a political party, “If they are, you’re asking the wrong person.” One of the young women I interviewed, after telling me she hadn’t picked a candidate she supports for the 2008 primary, said “Oh, is that all?” and she smiled as if she’d just successfully completed a test. Several of the people I surveyed were with a friend or two at the time. The group would laugh together when one of them answered they didn’t actually know anything about the candidates.

The optimist in me hopes the laughter is a defense mechanism, a way of getting around the embarrassment they might feel for not fulfilling an obligation to be at least politically aware, if not involved.

The pessimist in me says that the young adults I spoke to don’t actually feel this obligation in any way. That they have immersed themselves in a culture that is typical of our generation, a climate of political apathy in which their own ignorance of politics is funny.

Almost as funny as The Daily Show.