Throughout the latter half of the aughts, the tide was turning. After suppressing all forms of earnest emotion throughout the previous two decades, young people were finally beginning to tire of appreciating things ironically and began appreciating them post-ironically, or for the truly advanced, simply appreciating them. Yes, irony and cynicism were in their death throes, but without someone to finish them off, they may have been allowed to fester beneath the zeitgeist only to return one day and flourish like never before.
Enter our pale knight of justice: Conan O'Brien. Sired in the wealthy suburbs of Boston by a lawyer and a doctor, he forged his razor sharp wit in the halls of Harvard University. In what was seemingly his and our darkest hour, this flame-haired champion rode into our homes, informing the world that the road to success was not merely open those entitled few who happened to be born into extremely favorable circumstances, but was built anew by each man with the asphalt of hard work and the yellow lane dividers of kindness.* And thus cynicism received its death blow. The monster had finally been slain.
Since then, the authors of this blog have been working tirelessly to resurrect it.
Conan: "All I ask of you, especially young people . . . is one thing. Please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you, amazing things will happen."
Audience Member 1: ". . . . Well that was lame."
Audience Member 2: "Or was it?"
Audience Member 1: (awed silence)
*Technically this happened 22 days after the aughts ended, but you'd have to be a real cynic to point that out.
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